We’re a couple weeks removed from the biggest trade event of the year – Design and Construction Week 2015. In year’s past, we took this time to digest what we saw, follow-up on press opportunities and take a collective sigh of relief. As we discussed in our recent newsletter, our team walked the equivalent of a 1/2 marathon in three days. It’s an exhausting grind physically but even more so mentally. It takes time to truly process what we saw and offer insight to the big trends our team noted during the show. Individual products are only a piece of a larger pattern – what was the overall macro trend?
“From Despair Comes Improvement”
The overall consensus of both our clients and other attendees was renewed optimism about the marketplace as a whole. Few believe we’ll ever return to the levels saw before the market collapse and to be frank – that’s a good thing. Companies are emerging from the recession smarter and more efficient on all facets of their business. When production and demand slowed, organizations had to re-think their operations and approach. What we’re seeing now are organizations better structured for sales optimization and better controlled supply chain. Several sales professionals at the show said their company had invested, or were making plans to invest, in CRM systems to better track their output and offer better alignment with marketing to close leads. In one particular booth, I was given a demo of their leads gathering process. The tried and true card scan remained the first step. From there though, the data was exported directly into the company’s CRM system and an automated email, based on the person’s geographic location, was sent from the sales professional covering the territory’s own email. No sifting through hundreds of Excel files after the show. The company was able to strike while the iron was hot. Marketing and Sales working in-step? Now there’s a trend this agency can get behind.
It’s hard to find a positive from the economic downturn. This said, companies appear to have taken this time to look in the mirror and improve from within. The result? A smarter organization.
