There is no doubt your company has earned loyal customers over the years, but this begs the question: How do you attract contractors that aren’t buying from you so they, too, can become loyal customers?

To answer that very question, RSP Publisher Jill Bloom sat down to chat with John DeRosa, director of contractor training at SRS Distribution. DeRosa said one solution to the question is to both challenge your approach to selling and rethink your interactions with potential customers.

“We were always taught from day one that you need to be an expert on your product and align those products to the needs of the customer,” he said. “I would even argue that most contractors don't really have … explicit needs.”

In the video, DeRosa elaborates by drawing on a concept borrowed from the book “The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation” (Dixon and Adamson, 2011), which encourages salespeople to approach customers with unique insights tailored to their pain points.

“If I could show the customer that the pain of same is greater than the perceived pain of changing, then there's a pretty good chance that I'm going to be able to win that business and get that relationship,” he said.

He goes on to show how this concept can be applied when interacting with customers, and why it’s important to help identify and solve problems to not only win over large operations, but smaller ones where owners are wearing 15 different hats (owner, project manager, installer, etc.).

“The key is, how do we as distributors — and really ultimately as business partners — how do we figure out how we can help them free up some time so they could focus on the areas that are really important to them?” he said.