Email to MetalTex after they expressed potential desire to cancel and go with Sensei
Melinda,
Below is a summary of what we discussed in terms of additional capabilities you could use in IdeaRoom that you aren't currently. I also included a summary of our competitive differentiation in the marketplace that's useful to think about when considering which company is best aligned with your future direction, philosophy, and values.
Fully Customized, Accurate Pricing
You can fully customize and tailor your pricing for MetalTex and your price books. Accurate, automated pricing is one of the primary reasons people choose IdeaRoom over Sensei. Our customers that switch from Sensei to IdeaRoom often do so to have accurate pricing they can rely on for online marketing, closing sales, placing orders, and doing full cash and financing checkout.
Dealer Network Support & Dealer Subscriptions
IdeaRoom has built-in support for dealer networks. If you add all of your dealers into IdeaRoom, we create a unique URL for each dealer. When using their link, IdeaRoom will display the dealer's contact information and each submission is sent directly to the dealer. There is no additional charge for any number of dealers or salespeople. You can add them all, and they can use IdeaRoom to manage their leads.
As an optional upgrade, your dealers can choose to upgrade to a dealer subscription that gives them a URL on their website domain and co-branding for their business. For more ambitious dealers, this allows them to integrate their branded version of IdeaRoom more tightly into their specific marketing activities. This is an optional upgrade, and it's at a much lower cost since it re-uses your product and pricing data.
Usability and Ease of Use
I hear your point about adding and editing leans. There are actually some options for changing and refining how lean editing works that we may be able to enable for you. IdeaRoom is pretty flexible, and if something feels difficult, it's worth talking to our customer success team to see if there are options.
On the topic of overall usability, take a close look at the mobile phone interface. These days, mobile traffic is typically 60%-70% of your traffic. IdeaRoom is constantly refining and improving on mobile. As an example, we recently improved our call-to-action for saves/submit, and it resulted in a 30% increase in mobile device submissions. With over 300 customers in 3 industries, we gain a lot of insight into customer behavior.
Additional Building Features
You mentioned wraparound porches. We support those, and there may be other specific options, accessories, or building features you need that we support. This is a good area for us to dig into with our customer success team and make sure you're taking advantage of everything you can. Typically, IdeaRoom is more complete and detailed in terms of what we can represent in 3D. However, the products are always evolving, and you will have to dig into details with us and Sensei to do a complete, detailed comparison if that's important to you.
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Competitive Differentiation & Philosophy
Focus on Business Results not Software
From my perspective, what's most important is IdeaRoom's on-going focus on business results: increase in average sales price, increase in conversion rate for online leads, decrease in selling costs through sales efficiency. We don't just provide you with the software, we understand the practices you can use in most effectively using the software to produce those results.
Customer Experience and Ease of Use
For the specifics in the software (usability, features, etc..), I'd recommend you and your team do a hands-on comparison and determine which you prefer. Subtle differences can make a big impact. Customer experience in the software and in how the software is integrated into your sales process is most important in my experience. We have multiple current customers that evaluated or worked with Sensei or other solutions in the marketplace. Take a very a close look at the quality of mobile device support.
Future Investment in Improving the Software
We aren't typically the lowest cost option, and that's intentional. With a healthy subscription base, and with 100+ clients in the carport industry and growing (300+ overall), we can continue to invest substantially in improving the software and accelerating our lead. It is our intention to provide the best customer experience in the carport industry and accelerate that lead through constant investment.
Company Focus and Independence
The final thought I'll share on choosing to work with IdeaRoom vs. a more general digital marketing firm is that 3D Visual Configurators are our primary and only focus as a business. We've been developing configurators for more than 8 years, and we are profitable and growing. We are based in the US and backed by a strong community of business leaders and technology investors. You can trust the background and experience of our team: https://www.idearoominc.com/about/
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