Masonry Magazine September 1978 Page. 14
MARKETING AND MASONRY
But this very individualization carries with it a considerable burden-disbelief. Today, most people might well assume that masonry is, almost by definition, expensive, old-fashioned and inefficient. An important part of your selling effort should be devoted to the business of proving otherwise.
Happily, one of the best ways of fighting low awareness and a lack of basic interest is by jolting an audience's beliefs, proving, in a convincing manner, that the facts contradict what they've traditionally thought about your product. What we're dealing with here (to those who've studied psychology) is "dissonance" an elegant term for a very simple concept. "They don't believe you? Prove otherwise." This proof, however, must be offered in terms of the audience's own self-interest-things that they think about. Otherwise, your communication simply looks shrill, ill-tempered and irrelevant.
Among points of primary importance to your particular prospects might be such advantages as greater schedule reliability, more assurance of client satisfaction, better money mechanics, easier conformance to regulations and codes, or more spectacular design results.
If you can persuade convincingly that masonry has a provable superiority in one or several of these aspects-all concerns of undoubted importance to your audience-they are bound to take notice. This matching of your selling points to their interests is at the very heart of effective teaching, communications-and selling.
Battling low awareness and disbelief requires two important things of you:
1. That you always work in terms of the prospect's viewpoint not yours.
2. That you persuade with solid, dependable evidence of uniqueness and superiority evidence that doesn't melt under scrutiny or challenge.
We now come to the fourth and final component of the marketing transaction-price or cost, the economic factor. When we stop to think about it, any market situation, no matter how elaborate or casual, is almost wholly dependent upon the variable of cost. After all, you can have the best and most complete answer to a customer's needs. But if the price is not supportable in the marketplace, if lower cost substitutes offer a better all-round deal, all your other advantages don't count for too much.
Your industry has, of course, a sizable complication here. You are dependent significantly on general business conditions, government policy, the state of health of the construction industry, and other economic forces well beyond your control.
It's a truism of marketing economics that the closer you get to the final consumer, the lower his cost and more frequent his purchase, the more basic and necessary your product, the less cyclical is your business. Laundry detergents, breakfast cereals, toothpaste-manufacturers of these types of products enjoy a remarkable inelasticity in their sales, selling at relatively predictable levels in bad times as well as good.
No Need to Silently Suffer
But this doesn't necessarily mean you have to be the completely passive "patsy" of economic forces outside your control, or silently suffer the actions of policy planners who may, or may not, have your interests at heart. There are several things you can do in this area of pricing and economics:
1. To the limited degree I understand your business, there should be sufficient flexibility to make your pricing an extremely attractive alternative to more expensive construction techniques at those times, and in those situations, where the cost of a project becomes all-important. During periods of recession, inflation, uncertainty and intense cost/profit pressure a willingness to negotiate some trade-offs may be necessary.
Marketing enters this broader business issue of pricing in making sure decision-makers are aware of and understand whatever pricing advantages you can offer.
Anchor
MCAA FALL
EXECUTIVE BOARD MEETING
Dealer
Inquiries
Invited
Designed especially to provide a low charging height and a high discharge height coupled with a power dump. A fast mixing machine capable of dumping into wheelbarrow, concrete buggy or mortar pump.
For information, phone (312) 247-2530 or write
ANCHOR MANUFACTURING CO.
2922 W. 26th St., Chicago, III. 60623
THE INN
ATMCCORMICK RANCH
Scottsdale, Arizona
November 9-12, 1978