10 Major Benefits of Digital Transformation for Home Improvement Remodelers

29 ways to implement Digital Transformation for Professional Home Improvement Remodelers and Manufacturers

By Ron Grancorvitz and David Pfeiffer, Trifecta Group LLC.

What is Digital Transformation?

Digital Transformation is the adoption of digital technology to increase productivity and improve customer experience. This often means replacing non-digital or manual processes with digital ones or updating older technology.

Currently, many professional Home Improvement Remodelers are still using paper forms, flip-charts, and physical touchpoints to sell their products. Why? Because it works, or at least it used to.

With the COVID lockdowns and increased concerns about personal safety, the majority of physical selling has been put on hold. Companies that hope to return to the “good ol’ days” should instead take this time to prepare for the up-and-coming generation that is very digital- and safety-oriented. Current and future trends will drive their business away from physical touch-points and toward digital ones.

Digital Marketing Transformation

To sync up with the aforementioned digital trends, the sales pipeline will need to be reconfigured. In the past, many home improvement companies used aggressive selling techniques to reduce the sales cycle while using marketing to create an awareness of the brand. This is illustrated by the left side of the diagram below.

9 Benefits of Digital Transformation for Professional Home Improvement Dealers and Manufacturers

Past and Future Marketing/Sales Pipeline

The right side of the diagram above illustrates a highly digital approach where online tools that help the customer sell themselves. This usually involves configurators and visualizers to enable users to see their home with new products installed in them. You can see these apps in 3D Kitchen remodeling (Lowes) and furniture visualizations (Ikea).

This article will assist you in answering 3 questions:

Why should you embark on this digital transformation journey?
What are the benefits of digital transformation for professional remodelers?
What does digital transformation look like in a professional remodeling company?

This article will discuss the major benefits along with ways to implement a digital transformation system.

Benefit #1: Customer and Employee Safety

Since the COVID outbreak, safety has become a key aspect for customer and employee interactions. Digital transformation can assist in supporting safe transactions via a contactless or near-contactless sales process with self-help visualizers and virtual meetings.

Self-help Visualizers and Galleries

Homeowners love to imagine the “what if” for their home improvement projects. This creates the impetus for serious sales calls. The better the “what-if” visualization tools, the simpler the sales process becomes.

Home improvement companies like Owens Corning, Lowes, ProVia, and Jacuzzi Bath Remodel. enable homeowners to imagine their home improvement projects using visualizers.

Some of these tools are entirely online and other visualizers are part of the in-store retail shopping experience. Other remodelers support an extensive portfolio of their work to inspire homeowners to find the home remodeling of their dreams.

Either way, visualization tools are now part of the selling process for all higher-end home buys.

Virtual Meetings

Visualization tools and portfolio galleries entice homeowners to contact the remodeler. The salesperson is a critical part of bringing the project together. Professionally-installed home improvement projects requires sales expertise to finalize the project configuration, price, and financing.

While many people might still be wary about letting salespersons into their home, most homeowners are now familiar with Zoom, Google Hangouts, Facetime, and other virtual meeting technologies.

Visualization tools and virtual meetings enable the contactless safety of remote purchases. In benefits 2 and 3, we will talk more about how these tools are essential to the future of remodelers.

Trifecta Group Difference

At Trifecta-group, we build self-help visualization and virtual meeting solutions that enable the remodeler to ensure customer safety during this pandemic while maintaining their sales goals.

Benefit #2: Sustainability

Many customers consider a company’s sustainability programs as selection criteria for the companies they buy from. Sustainability is also good for the remodeler’s long term future.

Going digital creates a number of solid sustainability benefits:

Going Paperless

When processes go digital, it usually means paperless as well. This means saving on brochures, forms, and many other forms of paper. This saves money and increases sustainability and productivity.

Lower Carbon Footprint

By going digital, the costs associated with physical marketing and sales activities are reduced or eliminated. Fewer sales trips to people’s homes and less travel to home shows does more than save you money, it reduces your carbon footprint.

Productivity

Moving to the digital systems usually reduces data reentry costs, thereby increasing productivity and allowing the company to move human resources into higher value-add positions.

Trifecta Group Difference

For some of our home improvement clients, we developed a completely paperless presentation, configurator, visualization, contracts, and financing apps as a total selling solution. This allowed the remodelers to increase sales while decreasing their carbon footprint.

Benefit #3: Maintaining or Gaining a Competitive Advantage

One of the most powerful benefits of digital transformation is the flexibility it provides to customize and optimize sales and marketing processes by region, customer type, product lines, competitive environments, seasonality, and more.

Below we will outline some regional scenarios that could illustrate the power of a digitally transformed system.

Competitive Lead Generation

Your Digital marketing can be adjusted in each region to compete with hot-selling product lines or to locate niches where your products will have a competitive advantage. Digital ads can be targeted at very specific customers based on demographics, e.g., age, income, home age, climate, season, and more.

Regional Offerings

It is important to be able to swap-out sales assets (e.g., presentation, discounts, product lines, etc.) to meet the needs in each region of the country. For example, certain product offerings might include features that are important to a southern climate.

Competitive Pricing

Because of the logistics of professionally installed remodeling projects, competition is very regional. Digital enables you to make quick updates of pricing, contract, and finance terms to maintain lead over the regional competition. Imagine a regional vendor is running a discount on certain home improvement products, a digital app would enable you to proactively offer a discount to counter their promotion.

Trifecta Group Difference

For some of our national clients and manufacturers, we developed presentation and pricing systems that would change the sales presentation and pricing in the app depending on the sales region the dealer rep was selling in. This allowed the company to meet local city-state regulations as well as meet or exceed competitor discount special running in those regions.

Benefit #4: Better Leads via Digital Marketing

Lead generation through digital marketing is one of the major benefits of digital transformation. Digital marketing includes digital ads, retargeted ads, social media, content marketing, self-help websites, and more. The result is a predictable revenue stream where salesperson can be focused on customer service instead of lead generation. Through digital marketing you gain access to the following benefits:

Targeted Access to Large Potential Customer Base

Digital marketing enables the targeting of very specific groups of people by interests, income, level, region, and many other demographics and psychographics. Digital marketing flexibility can be used to make adjustments to messaging and other marketing assets to optimize leads by customer type. Imagine an email campaign where you would target neighborhoods where remodeling permits were recently granted to take advantage of higher aspirations in those neighborhoods.

Direct Marketing

Digital marketing flexibility can be used to optimize customer leads to fit the market and revenue goals of the company. Campaigns can be adjusted to convert ready-to-buy customers by offering incentives while keeping other potential customers informed and inspired about the brand.

Nurturing Campaigns

Digital Marketing automation (a.k.a. nurturing) campaigns build awareness and desire over time. These same programs can bring them back to purchase other home improvement products. Nurturing campaigns can remind your brand advocates to share the brand with their neighbors via social media or in conversation.

Brand Exposure

Digital marketing, by its nature, is always building the brand even when focused on direct marketing for lead generation or nurturing campaigns. This broad brand exposure is important to continually remind customers of the brand products until they are ready to purchase.

Continuous improvement through Analytics

Access to feedback, both statistical (analytics) and personal (messages), can guide your continuous lead generation improvement program to audiences that no one else is targeting, increasing your competitive advantage.

Bottom Line

Digital Marketing leads are targeted and better informed about your brand and your products. Therefore, they are more likely to move forward with their project without excessive sales compliance techniques. A consistent digital marketing program, automation, and analytics build a consistent stream of leads, providing a consistent revenue stream.

Trifecta Group Difference

Trifecta Group is now supporting pay-per-lead capabilities. We have used many of the above techniques to build out digital marketing programs to target specific customers. Our lead generation programs can procure quality leads for a low-cost per lead for professionally-installed home improvement products

All the digital marketing benefits outlined above have a direct effect on Benefit #5.

Benefit #5: Faster Sell-rates, Shorter Sell-cycle

As in any sales pipeline, if the previous stage is effective, it makes downstream stages even more effective. When digital marketing is optimized for good leads, the selling is faster and more productive. Read below to see why digital sales leads are better than those from home shows and traditional canvassing.

Selling Themselves

Because the customer has participated in self-help and visualization digital experiences, they tend to be more educated and inspired to engage in the selling process since their goals are aligned with the remodeler. This reduces the need for hard-sell compliance techniques.

Ready to Buy

At this point, many customers are ready to buy but need help with the final configuration as it relates to their specific home improvement project. They want to understand some of the options with a possible build out, along with financing and contracts.

Personalized Selling

With the ability to swap-out sales assets (e.g., presentation, discounts, product lines, etching, etc.) and download their customer’s configuration, the salesperson can sync up with their vision for the home improvement project. From here the salesperson can use their product knowledge to personalize the product options to meet the customer’s desires and budget.

Trifecta Group Difference

For our home improvement clients, we have created apps that can bring together the customer initiated selling process so that the salesperson and measurement inspectors can work with the customer to make their vision real.

Benefit #6: Up-Selling Brand Quality, Aesthetics, and Features

Once the salesperson gains an understanding of the customer vision for the project, they use their knowledge of the products to bring it to life. The final sales process would use a tablet app to take the customer from idea to contracts in-home visit or virtual one.

Informed Salesperson

At this point of the sales process, the digital marketing system has produced a highly useful profile on the customer, specifically their demographics and their project aspirations in the form of a visualization configuration.

Upselling and Options

With the ability to swap-out sales assets to match particular customer profiles, the sales person has an opportunity to upsell product quality, higher-end features options, and aesthetics.

Price Framing

The exploration of options can all be done in a visualization app with attached pricing and financing to balance the desire for their upsells with a low monthly cost. This might include brand quality and aesthetic product tiers. Price framing makes it easier for people to make decisions regarding product options.

Trifecta Group Difference

A digital configurator is what really makes this upselling and price framing very effective due to the ease of use for the salesperson and the accuracy of the end price of the project. We have developed various price framing systems to support the sales philosophy of the company. We can also make recommendations about your sales funnel and pricing framing.

Benefit #7: Closing the Sale – Bringing it Home

In Benefit #7, we discuss what digital transformation technology can do for your selling process and backend order processes. The salesperson needs to make the customer feel like they are in control as they are guided through the maze of options, terms, and conditions. A digital interface is a great way to achieve this.

Financing that makes it work

As mentioned above, interactive financing as part of the product pricing is an essential part of the closing process for expensive home improvement projects. Supporting multiple finance options for customers with various credit scores are important to the closing process.

Standard and Real-time interactive discounts

Whether for competitive or other reasons, discounts can make or break an in-process deal. Most vendors have a series of discounts for veterans, law enforcement officers, along with utility discounts based on concerns or competition. Sales management needs to balance between what discounts the salespersons can promise and discounts that need authorization. These discounts vary by region, season, competition and promotion.

Digital Contracts

Prefilled contracts and ability to sign the contract in a legal way is essential to a digitally transformed sales process. Many contracts require support for custom clauses dependent on the products purchased. A contract editing system is also useful for contracts that change frequently.

Trifecta Group Difference

Trifecta Group has developed several versions of the tools discussed in this section. In our app development, we have supported multiple finance companies, some with electronic loans applications and others with paper-driven forms. We have implemented various discount and coupon discounts with various calculations in-line with the products sold. We have implemented many contract systems with digital signing, initials, and fast fill forms.

Benefit #8: Keeping the Sale

Digital communication systems also make sure the deal remains intact during the measurement, inspection, and installation steps. It is not uncommon to hear remodelers talk about the difficulty in setting up measurement and installation appointments. Phone calls, text messages, and even apps can be employed to keep the project on track.

Copies of Electronic Paperwork

Since the project documents are all digital, an approval workflow is built to send the customer electronic copies of their contracts via email. Once approved, then the back-end system allocates inventory for the project and starts tracking the measurement and install processes.

After-sale Measure Appointments

Some home-improvement products require a measure technician to validate the project configuration and check measurements. This appointment is usually set up in the remodeler’s CRM or a public app. Multiple levels of reminders are sent out to ensure the customer will be available on-site at the time of the appointment to sign off on the measurements.

Install appointment

Typically an install appointment is set up for some time in the future taking into account the availability of product inventory. Sometimes this appointment has to be adjusted if the install package is missing products. Multiple levels of reminders are sent out to ensure the customer will be available at the time of the install appointment.

Trifecta Group Difference

For some of our home improvement clients, we developed a measurement app that communicates to the remodeler’s CRM so the measurement inspector can perform home measure validation. The app would download the old configuration and then allow the measure technician to make modifications to the project. These changes would then be evaluated for possible pricing changes or salesperson feedback. We have also designed a communications app to support the post-sales communications between the customer and the remodeler.

Benefit #9: Salespersons Management through Analytics

Managing the sales force is essential to converting the leads into revenue. A digital process enables levels of tracking and analytics not possible in paper-based systems.

Sales Visit analytics

One of the more powerful features of a digital experience is the measurement of sales metrics. How long did the salesperson spend on each slide? What slides or pages were skipped? This information correlated with their ability to close the sale enables the optimization of their training plan to increase their effectiveness. Likewise, an app can record the sales session (with permissions of the homeowners) to better coach the salesperson on their sales techniques. This can include real-time report dashboards.

Trifecta Group Difference

For our home improvement clients, we have supported sales and marketing analytic dashboards that help you keep your business on track and growing.

Benefit #10: All in one place

All in one place

The salesperson benefits when everything is in one app. Multiple apps and devices used in a sales visit significantly increases training time and turnover of salespersons.

In-App Training – An app built for a salesperson will often contain training videos and helpers to get the salesperson comfortable with digital technology.

In-App Appointment Assignment – In-app appointment assignments allow the sales manager to reallocate appointments to the sales team in cases of sickness or missed appointments.

Interactive discounts and assistance – As stated in Benefit #7, interactive discount management can be used to close more deals. Interactive chat in the app or via text messaging is another way to assist the salesperson in the heat of closing the sale.

Trifecta Group Difference

For our home improvement clients, we have apps and systems that bring all these digital transformation capabilities in one app, even for multiple user types; training, appointment management, and interactive discount systems.

Conclusion

Some remodelers may be thinking that once COVID-19 passes, they will be able to return to the normal methods of marketing at home shows and physical sales calls. But that is a risky bet for two reasons:

Suppose another breakout occurs, how many lockdowns can your business survive?
But even more important, these digital trends were already in play before COVID by several leading remodelers and manufacturers. COVID-19 just accelerated them.

Trifecta Group Difference

Trifecta Group is an innovator in the home-improvement professional Remodelers and Manufacturers.

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Start cashing in on the Digital Transformation benefits discussed in the article by calling Trifecta-Group (414) 640-2873 today for your free consultation.

BONUS: 10 Benefits of Digital Transformation for Home Improvement Remodelers

Infographic

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10 Major Benefits of Digital Transformation for Home Improvement Remodelers

What is Digital Transformation?

Benefit #1: Customer and Employee Safety

Benefit #2: Sustainability

Benefit #3: Maintaining or Gaining a Competitive Advantage

Benefit #4: Better Leads via Digital Marketing

Benefit #5: Faster Sell-rates, Shorter Sell-cycle

Benefit #6: Up-Selling Brand Quality, Aesthetics, and Features

Benefit #7: Closing the Sale – Bringing it Home

Benefit #8: Keeping the Sale

Benefit #9: Salespersons Management through Analytics

Benefit #10: All in one place

Conclusion

Infographic

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