Finding the Specialty Firms and Specifiers

Past related articles are:

How Many Architectural Firms? - September
Finding the Spec Writers - October

Some products are used on many types of projects. Examples are gypsum wallboard, carpet, toilets, etc. While a bit more specialized products would would include sloped shingle and tile roofing, commercial aluminum windows and masonry brick and block. These products would be used on many types of projects by many design firms and specifiers.

Other products are very specialized and typically used on only certain types of projects. These examples come to mind:

Pull out bleachers for high school gyms
Fire-rated dryer venting for condos and apartments
Patient headwalls used around a hospital bed
Detention Equipment used in jails and prisons

Your goal is to identify the firms and specifiers doing 80% of the potential product sales for these specialized products. The number of specialized firms is probably smaller than you expect - perhaps in the 100-200 firm range on a national basis. While your products may be general, these ideas may help your thinking.

Start to identify the firms. Here are good starting places

Identify the design firms where you have contracts or recent bids
Dodge Reports (or similar) to identify firms. These may give you a 1 year snapshot of the type projects you want to be specified on.
Go over your past projects to identify additional design firms, perhaps over the past 5 - 10 years. Some of these firms may have merged and will take some work to clean up the list.
Work with your distributors or local reps to identify additional smaller firms.

Then identify the spec writers for each firm, see if the firms have multiple design offices and develop a marketing program targeting them. See last month's newsletter for some more ideas on marketing.

Colin

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Colin Gilboy
Publisher - 4specs
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