The Luminaire Selector: A Revolutionary Sales Tool
Lighting Manufacturers and Their Agency Reps Collaborate for More Exposure in a Competitive Market
Dallas, Texas: As the lighting industry continues to change at a rapid pace, so does the process of reaching project decision makers. Research conducted by Luminaire Marketing found that specifiers want a more informative and efficient way to make decisions on their projects. When asked how they research their product needs, seventy five percent indicated they would contact their sales rep.
The Luminaire Selector, developed by Luminaire Marketing is a sales tool that meets the direct needs of the lighting agency and their clients. With some agencies representing up to 150 different lighting manufacturers, The Luminaire Selector creates efficiency for the specifier, while creating exposure, benefitting the sales rep and the manufacturer.
Version 1 of the Luminaire Selector was tested for three years with a handful of agency reps. Though basic, it resided directly on each agency’s website with data scraped from the manufacturer’s site. Hyperlinks led the user back to the manufacturer’s site. Even with basic information, response and feedback were very positive. It gave clients the ability to visually see all the manufacturer’s products by category, save the images to a wish list and share the information via email. “We learned a lot about how agency reps and clients used The Luminaire Selector to share information back and forth”.
Version 2 of The Luminaire Selector has been a year in development and is set to launch the end of July,2017. Lana Rice, President of Luminaire Marketing stated, “We took feedback from both agency representatives and clients to develop a sales tool that provides a more efficient and informed way to sell products.” Ms. Rice stated that this included creating a more collaborative approach between the manufacturer and the agency. “Our experience from the launch of Version 1 was that the lighting manufacturer needed to be a partner in the development and marketing of the new software”. It is an extension of their own websites, offers more exposure, both to the agencies and specifiers, and allows the manufacturers to keep new products and new product application information directly in front of the agency’s clients 24/7.”
Through its research, Luminaire Marketing believes that lighting manufacturers could benefit greatly from partnering with their agencies in the launch of Version 2. “The benefits heavily outweigh the investment, for more exposure to specifiers than lighting manufacturers have had from their agencies previously” states Ms. Rice. Through our research we found that the agency clients overall are not browsing manufacturer’s websites. Specifiers are frustrated by agency line cards. And while there are third party design websites, these sites are not being used for specification project building.
Additional research found in the case of lighting agencies, the software not only needs to be a resource, but a sales tool. “With additional resources within the software package the agency is kept front and center of their clients. Specifiers told us, “We want to work with agencies who provide us the most up to date tools and resources. That makes our job a lot easier and saves us time” states Ms. Rice.
Ms. Rice continues, “The lighting industry is changing, the way specifiers put projects together is changing, and the way agencies get out in front of their competition and represent manufacturers to their clients has changed. With increasing numbers of manufacturers being represented, agencies are finding it more difficult to reach their clients with the information they need. We are seeing the benefits from our existing agencies using Version1 and the beta Version 2.
About Luminaire Marketing: We are a full-service branding and marketing company with complete focus on the commercial lighting industry. We offer in addition to The Luminaire Selector; web design, brand solutions and more. Our team is comprised of experienced lighting professionals from manufacturers and lighting agencies.
A demo of The Luminaire Selector 2.0 is available at www.theluminaireselector.com. For more information on becoming a manufacturer or lighting agency partner contact: [email protected] or 1.800.792.9812