Rising Star: Max Fatello
Location: Hampton, NHPosition: Sales Consultant for NH & VT • Marketing & Sales Associates How did you begin your career in the LBM industry? I first started working for Marketing & Sales Associates (MSA) doing videographyat trade shows and events. Shortly after, I transitioned into inside sales and support,and then later into an outside rep. […]
Thermally Modified Wood Is What’s Next
“I want this project to look just like wood,” the client tells his architect. “But I don’t want to maintain it.” Conversations like this have been vexing specifiers and installers for a generation. Wood is beautiful, warm, and alluring, but the unwillingness to perform periodic maintenance has made it a nonstarter for a growing class […]
Why Customer Feedback Is Valuable—and 5 Tools for Collecting It
You’ve heard it before: Customer feedback is a gift. It’s given to you from your most valuable business asset—your customers. As inbound marketing, sales, and service software platform HubSpot advises, if you never ask for customer feedback, you’ll never understand what drives customer satisfaction. And, if you don’t know what drives satisfied customers, you can’t […]
Evaluating Your Current Marketing State for Action
I often hear people confusing the terms “marketing” and “advertising.” Some consider advertising to be any activity that promotes their business. Others think marketing is interchangeable with sales, probably because the terms are often lumped together, as in “sales and marketing.” And often, the terms marketing and advertising are used interchangeably, even though they are […]
Winning the Tug of War in Sales
Often, when speaking with a salesperson, evaluating a client’s business, or training a sales team, I refer to the schoolyard game of tug-of-war. Now, to set the stage for this analogy, this isn’t a win-lose situation where the “sales team” is on one side of the rope and they are battling the “customer team” on […]
FIRING LINE: “Planet Warbucks”
What do you give a builder who has everything? An extra 30 days. I probably shouldn’t have waited to bring this up, but I know how to solve some countries’ financial problems: Put a builder on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) negotiating team. Warbucks Construction was a multimillionaire developer and a good customer, at least […]
Debunking 5 Common Cybersecurity Myths
Also known as IT security, cybersecurity refers to the act of safeguarding internet-connected systems, critical data and other digital assets from potential cyberthreats—threats that may attempt to exploit sensitive information, steal funds or disrupt normal business operations. In other words, cybersecurity consists of the strategies implemented to help protect people, processes and technology from cyberattacks […]
5 Tips to Build Trust Using Content Marketing
Trust as an aspect of content marketing is a huge topic to tackle. It can encompass the basics of human trust, trust in business and trust in marketing. Each of these is hefty on its own, let alone combined as a single blog post. But there are some basics at work in all these segments […]
THE TIME BOMB: If parting is such sweet sorrow, Zeke was the sweetest guy you’ll ever meet.
Disciplining employees is never fun. Like most companies during litigious times, we made sure we dotted every “i” and crossed every “t” when we were forced into disciplinary action. We started with a friendly chat, escalated to a verbal warning, then proceeded to a written warning, and then possibly a suspension without pay (depending on […]
Rising Star: Emily Holtshouser
Location: Manchester, NH Position: National Account Manager-Pro Supply • Simpson Strong-Tie How did you begin your career in the LBM Industry? My dad has been a part of the LBM industry as an outside sales representative for building materials distributors since before I was born. I grew up in an LBM family, which showed me what […]