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CLIENT SNAPSHOT
Real Estate,
Restaurants
While Bagwell Marketing
has served many clients in
the real estate business,
owner and marketing
consultant John Bagwell
says having a solid base
of clients in other markets
helped minimize the
impact of the housing
market downturn, which
rippled across the U.S.
starting in 2008, causing
housing values to plummet
and wreaking havoc in the
real estate industry. “Our
No. 1 market is family
restaurants,” he says. “It
just happened that way.
We also do a lot in the
rent-to-own industry. We
get a lot of referrals from
satis ed customers.”
SALES CHALLENGE
Growing e
Bottom Line
“While we do retain a large
number of our customers
through the years, there
certainly is turnover each year.
That means we have to be
continually looking for new
customers. In the past we
have been able to generate
a reasonable number of
sales with little effort. Loyalty,
however, is hard to control.
Because our relationship is
largely by phone, it is easy to
become just another vendor
and not a true partner.”
BAGWELL MARKETING
Dallas, Texas
Q&A WITH
John Bagwell
What are your clients’ most frequent uses for
promotional products, and what items do they
prefer using?
We sell a lot of keychains with a house-shaped
emblem (our No. 1 item); mostly they are gifts for
their clients or for prospecting. We also sell a lot
of Halloween bags (our No. 2 item) within this
industry. Agents give those out, with their logo, at
events and of course to customers and prospects.
Our thirdmost popular promo item in the real
estate area is a giant Christmas stocking. is is
usually for an agent o ce that has lots of tra c
coming in to a xed location. Sometimes they
will donate it to a school or nonpro t. I know a lot
of distributors don’t sell this product because it is
a once-a-year purchase, but I have an 80-percent
renewal rate each year on this. Calendars are, of
course, always popular, along with door hangers,
tote bags—even stadiumcups for a special event.
What questions do you ask clients to help them
select the appropriate products?
Most people who come to the website have a
pretty good idea what they want. e real estate
agent has already been searching the internet for
house-shaped key chains, so they come ready
to buy. We do try to cross-sell and ask what they
are using the item for. Sometimes we are able
to switch them to something that is a better t,
particularly if it is for an event. Sometimes we
get someone who has no idea what they want,
they just need something for an event. I’d say
75 percent are calling for a speci c product.
What advice do you have for distributors who are
stuck in a creative rut?
I would say the No. 1 thing you need to do is
connect with new prospects and customers
on social media. Find an industry that you can
become an “expert” in, and grow your presence
there. People always like to see what you have
done for someone else in their industry, even if
it is for a direct competitor. Network within your
clients’ industries. I attend a hospitalitymeetup
in Dallas. I’malways looking for ways to connect
with people in the restaurant industry.
TOP-GEAR STRATEGY
Go Digital
“Ten years ago we made the decision at our
promotional distributorship to go digital and drive all of
our traf c through our website,” says Bagwell. “That
created a business structure that no longer involved
making sales calls but required using the website as a
lead generation system.”
Bagwell points out that this type of program
presents both positive and negative issues. “On
the positive side we have an unlimited number
of prospects, and people generally know what
they want. We can sell anywhere in the world,
and have sold promo items in Australia and
the United Kingdom.
“On the downside, the internet customer also
wants it in a hurry and expects someone to respond
within minutes–not hours. There are also more
distributors working websites and the competition has
become greater. While we have been content to ‘pick
the low-hanging fruit,’ we realize that we must do
more to just stay even with last year’s sales,” he says.
To keep customers in the loop, Bagwell
says his team has increased their social media
presence and places additional advertising
on the internet to drive traf c to the company
website. “We also email and send postal mail
to our customers. One of our most successful
programs is to contact customers that purchased
a product in the same month the previous year.
For example, if they bought trade-show bags last
October, there is a good chance they have that
same event coming up again this year,” he says.
“It is doubtful we will ever go back to doing
business the ‘old way,’ with cold calling and
networking,” adds Bagwell. “We must be focused
on getting new customers to our website.”
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NOVEMBER 2016
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FEATURE
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Strategies For Gaining New Business