Do you rely on your vendors to supply data sheets? For may of us, our catalogue is a collection of vendor data sheets. The data sheets on our web site are just copies of data sheets provided by vendors, with no modifications whatsoever. Or worse, there are no data sheets on our web site, and a visit to our page just presents a link to the vendor. Once the customer follows the link, it’s goodbye! They never find their way back to our site.
So why is this a problem? I think it’s safe to say that we want customers dealing with us, not directly with our vendors. If we let the customer contact get out of our control, who knows what may happen? The vendor might not know that we initiated the order, and they may take it direct, or pass the lead to another distributor. Even if the vendor handles the customer well, we still lose, since we lose an opportunity to build a relationship with our customer.
So how do we fix this? We need our own data sheet. The simplest thing to do is just modify the vendor’s data sheet to include our logo, and replace the vendor’s contact information with our own. Discuss this need with your vendor. Maybe they will even do the work for you. If not, ask for the original data sheet file, and modify it yourself. As a last resort, you can modify the finished data sheet’s PDF file. If you don’t have access to the program used to create the sheet, chances are that your Marketing Consultant will.
If you have printed copies of the data sheet that you distribute, make sure your contact information is on every sheet. Get a good pre-inked stamp with your logo and contact information, or have some good quality labels printed. You may need a few sizes, since a lot of data sheets don’t have space for your information.
The best solution is to make your own data sheets. Work with your Marketing Consultant to design a format that will work with most of the data sheets you need. You can probably copy and paste much of the content from the vendor’s original, but the sheet will reflect your companies look: logo, company colours, fonts, and style.
Your own data sheet will ensure that every call will come to you. It also makes your company look more professional, and will firmly associate you with the product in your customer’s mind.
Do you need help modifying your vendor’s data sheets, or do you want to design your own sheet?Give us a call. We can work with a variety of file types, and can offer design skills, or convert files to PDF for distribution. We can even help you create and write your own data sheet from scratch.