Issues 24: Hot Linx

HOT LINX 1

DOES THE NAME LINX mean anything to you? No reason why it should, maybe, but someone on your sales team should be able to answer exactly that question. If they can't, you've got problems.

You means your company. It's all too easy to lay the problem at someone else's feet. Linx is the name of a window specifier with about 5,000 homes, and they're replacing a lot of windows at the moment. How can your organisation have a slice of the action if you don't even know who they are?

It's a new name, and with it goes a new address and phone number so, if you have details of a local authority or housing association in Lincolnshire - assuming you worked that bit out - you're on the right lines. Get someone on the case and, by lunchtime, you'll probably have the answer.

What a waste of time and money! Then your records have to be updated and so on. Windowbase customers don't have this problem, of course, because they get Linx as part of their updating procedures. They're selling while you're still looking. Don't be too annoyed, therefore, if it's too late by the time you get in touch. It's like those old TV commercials that said you should have gone to Radio Rentals. Only, this time, you should have come to us!

Not just Linx, obviously. That's just a single instance to focus your attention. There are local authorities all over the country, transferring stock to housing association ownership, and it's a pain keeping track of all the changes. If you're doing it yourselves, that is. Take a look at our website: www.winbase.co.uk for more information about how to get your hands on accurate information about specifiers.

While you're at it, you might care to see how inexpensive similar information costs on Direct Labour Organisations.

HOT LINX 2

GOT YOUR OWN website yet? How much does it cost? How many visitors does it get? How do they find out about it? Have you ever asked yourself any of these questions? It's one thing to have your own website but it's an expensive toy if nobody's using it to buy your kit.

Maybe, you reckon, they go to one of those search engines. You know, Google, Yahoo, or someone like that. Have you ever tried finding your own website details in Google? No good searching on Windows, because there's more stuff to do with Microsoft than anything else in that one.

If finding it is troublesome, people aren't going to bother, so you could be spending (wasting) a lot of money each year, and nobody even knows you're there. If they're looking for quality companies, the search should be easier, surely. Key in Quality Windows and the list seems equally endless.

There's a website called The Quality Index. It contains details of everyone who's got BBA, ISO 9000 and Kitemarks. Take a look some time: www.thequalityindex.co.uk.

If you've got one of those certificates, your name should be there. Specifiers, in particular, know exactly what you've got and how to get in touch. Just the name, address and phone number at the moment, plus certification details where they can be verified.

In other words, the wheat's been sorted from the chaff at long last. No more calls for a level playing field. No more competing with companies that claim their BBA certificate is still current, when they let it lapse six months ago. You know the sort of thing: our system supplier has BBA and we make windows in accordance (etc, etc). Yeah, yeah! We all know it's cheating.

The Quality Index is like having a line entry in Yellow Pages. You might fancy is a hot link to your own website, and you'll be able to have exactly that in the very near future. E-commerce can be over-rated sometimes but, when people want to know what's what, the Internet is definitely the place to look, as long as it isn't for a needle in a haystack.

TOO MUCH

WE ALL HAVE ACCESS to more information than we can handle, these days. Websites coming out our ears. The problem is getting people to visit yours. They have to know your details, and key them in dead-right when, at their end, there's dozens of the damned things. So it all gets lost in a new technology fog of its own making.

Fog? What they need are yellow foglights, not yellow pages. Something that cuts through the gloom, and highlights exactly what they want to know. All you have to tell them is “we're in The Quality Index” and they can do the rest. That might be all the average local government specifier needs to know. All the rest is there already. If you make trade windows, or you're targeting house-builders, they'll be looking for all sorts of details, including (possibly) your price lists etc - the sort of information that normally goes into websites, these days.

NOT TOO MUCH

A HOT LINK, in case you didn't know, is used to skip about from one website to another. You'd like a visitor to The Quality Index website to see your company's entry and basic details about quality, and want to know more. Specifiers might not need to know anything more. Perfect! BUT...

Installers or house-builders are sure to look further. Even as far as your price lists, if you already show them. They (you) need a hot link. Perfect again!

Buyers and estimators can make their way through your details, without tying up staff at your end. They can make their comparisons, and follow-up calls for confirmation of your prices. Saves everyone's time, helps maintain a margin and keeps prices down.

The Quality Index is therefore an easy-to-remember website that also operates as a search engine, but it's only available to companies with the right credentials. An exclusive club - but anyone can visit, and take a look.

If you want a hot link to The Quality Index, it will be FREE for the first year -better than an ad in the Yellow Pages. Instead of getting not much more than a box, with a picture and a few well-chosen words, what the small charge, from the second year onwards, will give you is the chance for customers to gain access to ALL your website information. The rest, as they say, is up to you.

What's a bonus is that, once they've used The Quality Index to access your website, they're less likely to wander off into someone else's.

The Quality Index has recently been updated. It's as accurate as we can make it. Check it out. Look for your own company's record, and check it's accurate. If there's anything wrong or missing, please tell us, because we need to know - and we can put it right.

We can't do anything about a hot link to your website if we don't know its address. Let us know by email: sales@winbase.co.uk.

E-MAIL ADDRESSES

WOULD YOU LIKE a complete list of everyone's E-mail addresses in the industry? Wouldn't we all! It's the same old problem: we want everyone else's details but we don't want to receive a couple of dozen Spam messages a day. Windowbase data's E-mail addresses are deliberately aimed at the company, and not individuals within it.

Accurate E-mail addresses take a lot of compiling. Put a dash instead of a dot, and it goes nowhere. Send it to dot com when it should be dot co dot uk, and the wrong company probably receives it. It has to be right or there's no point doing it. With every working day that goes by, Windowbase's compilation of E-mail addresses is getting bigger and bigger. If we're not certain it's right, we don't publish it.

Usual quality story, then - doubtless someone can flog you a couple of thousand addresses, about 40% of which are accurate. You get less from us (at the moment) but they're not full of rubbish!

If you're junk E-mailing, you don't care if nearly half don't hit the mark - you need lots of noise out there. If, however, you want to build up a reliable list because it's going to be important in the future, maybe you'll join us in the Less Is More category.

You know the sort of thing, because you've been there before. Start with a file that contains lots and lots of stuff that might be inaccurate and, one day, don't you just know it, it's all going to be chucked out because the future, your future, will demand data that isn't contaminated with garbage. You can start off right or, sure enough, you'll have to start again.