It’s All About the Leads

HOW BELTWAY BLINDS IN MARYLAND SUPERCHARGED SALES AND PROFITS BY FOCUSING ON LEAD GENERATION

BY SOPHIA BENNETT

Oliver Schreiber, president and CEO of Beltway Blinds in the Washington, D.C., area, may own a window treatment company, but he doesn’t consider that his principal line of work.

“I’m not in the window treatment business. I’m in the lead generation business and the sales closing business,” he says. Window treatments happen to be the product he sells. But a company needs sales leads in order to be successful, so that’s where he focuses much of his time and effort.

This mindset has paid off. In spite of the pandemic, Beltway Blinds was able to increase its revenue by 75 percent in 2020. As of March, it was on track to see a growth rate of 53 percent in 2021. More importantly, the company increased its net profit from 1.62 percent to 15.85 percent last year alone.

Finding leads and setting appoinments

Traditionally, Beltway Blinds has pursued two main strategies for generating leads: trade shows and canvassing. In 2020, the company planned to do 120 home shows, boat shows, car shows, wine festivals and other events where large groups of people gather. Most were canceled due to the pandemic, but when they start up again, Schreiber will operate under the same playbook.

“When we go to a show, we have one goal in mind: schedule appointments,” he says. The booth has no brochures or swag. “We have nothing except our people in the booth (and an assortment of high-quality window treatments for show). There are no chairs, so nobody that’s in the booth can sit down. There’s no eating. There’s no being on your phone. The goal for our show staff is to speak to every single person that walks by the booth.”

Schreiber encourages his staff to make people smile by saying something as simple as, “You look like you could use some new window treatments today.” Once people stop to talk, each employee’s mission is to get them to set an appointment. The scheduled day and time are written on the back of a simple postcard that also provides the company’s contact information. (The postcard can also be handed out to people who want to follow up after the show.)

Digital advertising will continue to grow

“When the pandemic hit, we had to adapt and adjust,” Schreiber says. When the company’s traditional outreach tactics were suspended, “We found the internet was going crazy, so we focused our efforts on search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising and Facebook advertising. We had an unbelievable response to those ads.” More than half of new business in 2020 came from online advertising.

But Schreiber says, without hesitation, that online advertising is the way to go now and will only grow in importance. “Think about what you’re doing in your own life,” he says. “You’re looking for something and you don’t look at a newspaper or magazines. You go to Google and the first thing you do is type in ‘window treatments in your town.’” Younger people are especially inclined to do this, so as millennials and Gen Z become a greater share of the population, this trend will only increase. Beltway Blinds plans to continue its current practices of allocating about 75 percent of its digital advertising dollars to pay-per-click ads on Google and Bing and 25 percent to search engine optimization in 2021.

Phones, people and (software) programs

Key to the company’s success is having a good call center. “We scheduled 65 appointments yesterday,” Schreiber said during his interview. “Think of how many people it takes to schedule 65 appointments. We probably talked to 200 people.”

Referrals are essentially free advertising for your business. Taking advantage of them, and finding more effective ways to utilize advertising and promotional activities, can send any retail business soaring to higher sales and profits, much like Beltway Blinds. V