The Pacific Outdoor Living Certified Contractor Program is a program whereby paving stone and pond installation contractors in the greater Los Angeles area can receive regular paving stone and/or pond jobs. The contractor is certified as meeting the quality standards for Pacific Outdoor Living, and he also agrees to purchase paving stones or pond products from Pacific Outdoor Living Pro Division.
An Overview
Pacific Outdoor Living has been selling and installing paving stones and ponds since 1999. Pacific Pavingstone, Inc., PPI, is the paving stone division and ponds are installed by California Waterscapes, Inc., CWI. In addition, POL sells wholesale items such as pond equipment, rocks and paving stones under Pacific Outdoor Living Pro.
POL currently uses its own in-house crews to install approximately $300,000 worth of jobs each week. Over the last 9 years POL has become known for its high quality installations and excellent service and has developed very efficient techniques in installing both pavers and ponds.
As POL expands it has chosen to do so by certifying contractors to do the installations. This certification program is very unique in that the program is designed to help the contractor build his business, not just to be solely a contractor for POL. It is our intention to put together the best training and apprenticeship program available.
The program, in the form of seminars, courses, practical exercises and real life apprenticeships will include many of the hard won and very workable techniques for building ponds and installing pavers, for setting up and running a contracting business and for marketing and selling directly to the home owners.
In addition to training contractors on all the above, POL will have:
• Sold jobs that it will in turn sell to the contractor to help the contractors expand their businesses and to keep both their crews going and the cash flowing while they are building their businesses.
• Pacific Outdoor Living has a successful program to market and sell quality pond and paver jobs to home owners. As POL expands geographically it will use those same techniques to market and sell jobs that will in turn be sold to a POL Certified Contractor.
A participating certified contractor is eligible to receive these jobs as they become available. Each customer from these new jobs now becomes the contractor’s customer. The contractor is expected to place his sign at the job site and use this new customer to get referrals. If a neighbor requests a bid the contractor is expected to give a bid and sell the job to the neighbor and the neighbor also will now be their customer.
The contractor will be required to market and get his own customers and not just to rely on POL for work. POL wants to help the contractors to build their business and as a result purchase more product from POL Pro.
As mentioned earlier the complete certification program includes training in not only the technology of installing ponds and pavers but the technology of basic business, marketing and sales.
Pacific Outdoor Living’s Functions
In the system described above POL is wearing several different hats in helping the contractor begin to develop a system that they can apply to the rest of their company.
POL is wearing the marketing hat by obtaining the job in the first place. It is then handling all the sales functions. It prepares the job folders that will be easy for the crew to follow without the Sales Rep going back to the job.
POL will do a customer survey at the end of the job on all the ponds and pavers installed by the certified contractor to ensure complete job satisfaction. The contractor will be notified of any non-optimum condition or problem with the job and will be given ample time to correct the error and to keep his good standing with the customer (and with POL) and the opportunity to continue to get referrals.
POL is responsible for training and paying the Sales Reps, paying all marketing costs and paying all POL staff that handle the customer or the job in any way. In exchange for the above POL will receive a percentage of each job.
Working Together
The contractor agrees to purchase their pond and/or paving stone materials primarily from POL. A contractor who is in this program has two separate relationships with us. They are first and foremost a customer and as such it is our responsibility to provide service above and beyond your expectations and to keep you happy so you would never want to go anyplace else.
The other relationship is one in which we want to insist on you being successful and we want to work together with you for our mutual benefit. Obviously it is not in our interest to work with you to improve and expand your business just so you can go buy your product from someplace else. From our point of view, there should never be any reason for you to buy your pond or paving stone materials from somebody else except in a rare case where you find you are short an item at a job site and we are too far.
About
The Author...
Terry Morrill is CEO of Pacific Outdoor Living Pro Division (www.pacificoutdoorlivingpro.com), a distributor of Aquascape pond equipment and products, and a distributor of quality interlocking concrete paving stone products. The company is located in Sun Valley, CA. Pacific Pavingstone (www.pacificpavingstone.com), also owned by Terry Morrill, has twice been listed on the Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing companies in America, and this year is listed on the Inc. 5000 list. California Waterscapes (www.californiawaterscapes.com) is the largest designer and installer of commercial and residential ponds in the U.S.
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