Issues 25: Sealed units

READY AT LAST! Yes, there's a brand new database of sealed unit manufacturers. Well over 1,000 companies are listed, with all the essential information you've come to expect from us (full postal addresses, phone and fax numbers, contact names) plus the sort of features that are becoming essential: E-mail and website addresses . . . AND, wherever it was possible to obtain data, the number of units they make a week.

Now that the Building Regulations have been radically upgraded, there's a lot more interest in who's got Quality Assurance and/or Kitemarks for BS 5713, the British Standard specification for double-glazed units. So we include that, too.

AND THAT'S NOT ALL THAT'S NEW...

THE IRISH CHASE

STEEPLE-CHASE. Paper Chase or just Wild Goose Chase? Either way, it can be expensive. Trying to nail some of those Irish window companies makes you feel like one of the Dark Riders, hunting down a hobbit in the depths of Mirkwood. Go across the Irish Sea, drive inland, and you're excused for thinking some of the addresses could actually be in Mirkwood.

So, when you need to know your Gondor from your Arnor, or your Leinster from your Munster, Mike Davis on 01706 644308 will tell you what's what, and who's who, or you can hit our website www.winbase.co.uk for all the hard information. Over a thousand Irish companies, needles in haystacks, Bagginses in Rivendell - however you see them - we see them a lot clearer. Take the data on disk as an annual licence or dip your toe in the water with mailing labels. The choice is yours, so now you can cut to the chase.

DO YOU CUT IT?

DOES YOUR COMPANY have Quality Assurance? Are you registered for ISO 9000? If the answer is YES, then you should be listed in The Quality Index. This is the speci-fier's search engine for companies that cut the mustard. It's the same idea as Google and the others, only more exclusive - far more targeted. Sorts the wheat from the chaff, men from boys, that sort of thing. To see what's there, and who's there, try www.thequalityindex.co.uk for manufacturers of doors and windows. In the pipeline is a new category, for manufacturers of hardware and other door/ window components. If you have a website of your own, you get a direct Hot Link. Thousands of architects and surveyors can simply look in The Quality Index for an up-to-date listing of who's got Kitemarks, ISO 9001/2 and BBA certificates.

If they're interested in your products, they can click on your website details and take a look. At last, specifiers are saved the hassle of dealing with misleading claims about who's got what. If you've got the certificate, you've also got the inside track to thousands of decision makers. Be there!

ARE YOU THERE?

IF YOU'RE Quality Assured, please do check the website and confirm that all your details are correct. If there's anything that needs adding or correcting, please E-mail martin@tqi.info and we'll make the changes. If your company doesn't have any accredit-ation, the bad news is, from now on, that lots of decision-makers could be passing you by.

They'll find the details they're looking for, go to that website, and gather the information they need. This makes a fairly strong case for having your own website, doesn't it? It's a bit like the Yellow Pages, only with restricted membership - the elite get to be there (like a one-line entry) but what you need is the display ad that only Hot Linking to your own website can offer.

MONEY FOR NOTHING

WHEN YOU PAY for a service, you expect to receive it. In fact you have a bit of a right to expect that much. Data about your prospective customers is what we're paid for, so we supply it... or we don't get paid. A lot of data gets used, quite rightly, for mailshots. They cost quite a lot of money. We're always banging on about what a waste of money it is, mailing dozens of companies that ceased trading yonks ago. How do you know a mailshot goes out when it's supposed to? Hang on a minute, this is getting serious... how can you be sure it goes out at all?

JUNK MAIL, LITERALLY

EVERY YEAR, literally millions of pounds' worth of mailshots just disappear into a Black Hole. Most of them are international mailings which are, when you think about it, handled by all sorts of different people. Some enterprising geezer - probably someone who cut his teeth trashing free newspapers, instead of delivering them - worked out that an international mailshot could go adrift for all sorts of reasons, and all of them completely untraceable. It's one thing, as a kid, to get a few quid a week for not delivering newspapers that nobody wants, but it becomes big business, doing exactly the same thing with a few grand's worth of world-wide mailings - week after week.

If your letter doesn't arrive, it could be the agency, someone in Royal Mail or in some foreign post office. Cut out the middle man, save the waste, and dump the lot into a skip in Wolverhampton. Okay, so you don't send a lot of mailshots to Brazil or the Philippines, but you do need to be sure your mailing arrives when it's supposed to.

SEW... and SO?

IF YOUR MAILSHOT is going out nationally, you need to know that it's arrived and, increasingly these days, when it's arrived. It's likely that you have a rep based in a distant part of the country, and it's precisely this person who should always receive a mailing, so its arrival can be reported back. If your mailing is local, you can insert the name and address of someone senior in your organisation, based at head office. Either way, whoever does the mailing has no idea which of the many names and addresses are being used as "seeds", being used to check that you're getting the service you're paying for.

Dates can be important. If there are follow-up calls to be made, your campaign is going to fall flat on its face if the bloke at the other end doesn't know what you're talking about. Mailings can often be issued by an agency, who might not appreciate that, when you say they're to arrive by a fixed date, you mean exactly that, because the entire sales force is embarking on Phase Two the next morning.

Think about it. The alternative is to pay reps to sit on their hands for a couple of days (at least) because they can't do anything until the mailshot lands on the right desks. One or two of these people don't always need excuses to do nothing. If you can't get them doing the follow-up calls, the wife can get them doing the gardening. Bad example - most of them would probably prefer work to gardening!

FACT SHEETS

ONE OF THE MOST popular areas of our website are the various Data Sheets we produce to help one or two people in sales departments. The boss fancies having a go at doing this or that - often stuff that's old hat to others - and expects the team to get instant results . . . without a lot of help.

That much-needed help is right there on our website and all you have to do is click on the subject that most interests you, or suits your needs. For the benefit of anyone who isn't already aware of them, our Data Sheets cover various aspects of selling:

to fabricators
to installers
to the window & conservatory industry
to public sector specifiers
by phone or fax
in Ireland (a new version is just out)
to Direct Labour Organisations
with effective mailing
to sealed unit manufacturers.

If you already know about them (and have used one or more already), do please check to ensure that we haven't added new topics or updated them.

We're in constant touch with many of our customers, doing everything we can to help make the best use of our data, so we're in an ideal position to know what the issues are. If we reckon any specific query is likely to apply to lots of users, we put something together for wider use. You can also have them as hard copy - all you have to do is ask Mike.

Or log onto www.winbase.co.uk - you'll be amazed at how much free statistical information there is on our website... you only have to look. Oh, and no, sorry, we don't do hobbits!