As a wholesaler, what’s your favorite way to sell a stick of lumber? From sell sheets to posters to human experts, it’s important to keep your selling points and information fresh as the industry grows and changes.
At the Northeastern Lumber Manufacturers Association (NELMA), our goal is to research, brainstorm, and develop ways to help wholesalers sell a stick of lumber. As the rules-writing agency for Eastern White Pine lumber and the grading authority for the SPFs grouping of species that includes Eastern Spruce, Balsam Fir, Red Pine, and other commercially important softwood lumber species grown in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions, our job also includes standing as the leading agency for export wood packaging certification and the marketing voice for the regions’ wood products industry.
As the marketing arm for softwood lumber across the Northeast over to the Great Lakes, our job is to create selling tools to help you sell lumber easier, more efficiently, and successfully. Here are a few ways we’re trying to make your job easier.
Retail Directory. Register your business with this free tool, share the wood products you sell, include full contact information, and your listing in the NELMA Retail Directory is complete. It’s a super easy and informative way to ensure that customers can find you and find the products they need. Head to www.nelma.org to register today.
Lumber Swatch. Without a doubt, it is one of the most popular pieces we’ve ever created. We can’t keep them in stock at trade shows, much less in the office – no telling how many of them we hand out in the space of a year! Think of a painter’s swatch, but with wood profiles. If your customer is looking for a specific kind of wood “look,” show them this and let them choose the one that most appeals to them. If there’s an easier way to help a potential customer make up their mind and buy, we haven’t found it. Yet.
Video: Eastern White Pine vs PVC. Let’s talk trim for a minute. Which is better: the real stuff, or PVC? We think you probably already know the answer: real wood. Wood doesn’t need to look like wood because it is real wood, made with sun, soil, rain, and a seed. PVC is made with fossil fuels. This short, easy-to-watch video takes the raw facts about PVC vs Eastern White Pine and shares them in a fun way. Take a look at the NELMA YouTube channel when you have a second and check it out for yourself. www.youtube.com, @nelmaTV
Siding Installation Videos. Brand new and ready to help educate, we worked with our good friends the Maine Cabin Masters to develop a series of how-to videos on siding installation, using a shed in the backyard of our own office. Want to know more? Visit the NELMA YouTube channel to check out all six videos.
Virtual Tours. The best way to show a customer what wood will look like in their project is to actually show them. We’ve done that with our series of Virtual Tours on the NELMA website (www.nelma.org). These videos change the way we view and use case studies as we replace hand-held photos with interactive videos and informational product tags. Each of seven virtual doors opens to a different project showcasing the many and varied uses of Eastern White Pine.
NELMA.org. Check out the Retailer tab – made just for you – for technical information, span details, design values, and the fun Graders Academy online game. Learn more about the history of Eastern White Pine with our Kings Broad Arrow information and how our Pine was one of the catalysts leading to the American Revolution. We’ve worked hard to clearly and concisely encapsulate all interests for our retailer audience and put everything in one place in a clear, clean, accessible format.
Video Guides. On our website, you’ll find two helpful video guides, each highlighting the important variations of characteristics permitted within each of the grades of Eastern White Pine. The Five Grades of Eastern White Pine and The Four Grades of Spruce Pine Fir – South videos each showcase a layer of multiple boards on screen, pausing for callouts to spotlight wood characteristics intrinsic to each species and grade. Want to show your customers what to expect with their Eastern White Pine or SPFs purchase? Show them these videos and watch them absorb customer product knowledge. And added bonus: imparting this level of knowledge to your customers (not to mention your staff) just might reduce callbacks. When you teach the customer what to expect and their knowledge rises, your callbacks will hopefully decrease.
In an industry where it’s becoming increasingly difficult to grab the customer’s attention, the solution seems to be marketing efforts designed to education and inform. Catching customer attention requires creativity, especially when a commodity is the product. Let us know how we can help you sell more lumber!
