Wim GE De Vos

Small businesses with a BIG impact

home technology for visionary architects & premium home builders

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Kloof Road house
Kloof Road House by Nico van der Meulen
Why is this of interest? ⏭Premium home technology is on the rise and on the move. 
Every premium home will have beautiful integrated technology at their very core. And the starting point for this technology is the design phase of the property.
Note: Good design principles in this respect are all about offering options & future-proof homes.
Homes will be connected and not just smart.
And home tech has shifted from convenience-focused applications to
experience-focused integration of all components.
This is very similar to what we see in car design.
How can Genesis be service? 🟢 Simplify and beautify things.

We are convinced we can simplify and beautify the whole business of home technology for end-clients, architects, builders and installers of technology.

Via the Genesis Builder Program we can help you in designing, marketing, selling, delivering and servicing homes better.

Who are we? 🖥Genesis, home technology architects.
We are focussed on premium residential home technology solutions & services.
Our partner network of 300 certified and trusted independent installers of technology is second to none.
Together with our partners we are passionate to make WOW the standard in homes of today and tomorrow.
Latest reference of a visionary home builder who has partnered with us:
PGA Catalunya Golf Resort ⛳️ – more info here.

 

 

Connected Home – 3 levels

Connected homes 🏠+🏠 example: Sonnen clean energy – more info here

Connected home + car 🏠+🚙 example: Vinli integration – more info here

Connected home + owners 🏠+👩🏼‍⚕️ example: Control4 Foresight – more info here

Which ocean do you surf 🏄‍♂️? What planet are you on ?

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Blue Ocean Strategy

Which Ocean do you surf 🏄‍♂️? *

Screenshot 2020-01-18 at 15.04.34

 

What planet 🌏 are you on?

Planet Traditional: everyone is looking for the extraordinary deal.
What matters is: price – features – status.

Planet NEO (New Economic Order): people need to feel a connection with what they buy. It needs to represent who they are.
What matters is: design – how things work – authenticity – who you buy from – uniqueness – discovery.

Facts to bear in mind…

On planet NEO the tendency is towards smaller, personal companies.

93% of the world´s big spenders across industries live on planet NEO. 

During the economic downturn of 2008-2012 NEO´s became more NEO and spent actually more on what really mattered to them.

Entrepreneur, friend, surfer, boarder Ryan Gustafson shared the following explainer video with me.  Check it out and decide which planet you are on… VIDEO

*I am a big fan of Blue Ocean Strategy: learn more here

 

Genesis: our customer segments 🍰

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value-proposition-canvas.png

The Strategyzer model we use defines customer segments as follows:

Customer Segments are the different groups of people or organizations your enterprise aims to reach and serve. This includes users who might not generate revenues, but which are necessary for the business model to work
(e.g. users of Google’s free search engine are essential to their advertising-based business model, or doctors are usually an essential, but non revenue-generating part of a pharmaceutical company’s business model).

Questions to ask

  • For whom are we creating value?
  • Who are our most important customers, clients, or users?

Genesis customer segments:

Installers of Technology = IoT´s:

Our delivery channel partners. Specialised engineering companies dedicated to selling, designing, installing, delivering and servicing home technology to premium homes.
We see divide these into 2 groups and call them “Home Technology Architects”:

  1. Apprentice IoT – on route to build a successful business
  2. Mature IoT – established successful business

 

Premium Home Building Professionals:

Our specification channel partners. Professionals, already convinced about the need to include technology in premium homes of today and tomorrow. They are looking to learn how to integrate more technology in a simpler and more beautiful way into premium homes.
Note the niche we are looking to serve… only those focussed on premium homes & are looking to learn…focus.

  1. Visionary architects – looking to learn how technology can serve their vision of the homes they design
  2. Home builder – looking for technology that adds value to the homes they sell
  3. Interior design contract division – looking for technology that serves the design of spaces they create

 

Map your customer segments with your value proposition and you start unraveling the mystery of your business…see image on the top for a first step (courtesy Strategyzer).

Next step then is to answer the following questions:

  • What change are you trying create?
  • Who are you trying to change?
    (for more on the importance of this last question turn to the wizards Seth Godin and Steve Blank – obvious next question then becomes “What change do you want to create?”…)

 

Short questions with BIG answers…

extra context re. home building professionals – below an email sent to our supply partners a while back…

Dear Willie Wonka,

I would like to ask for some extra attention and time to deal with our request below. It concerns our future and success…
As our strategic partner I wanted to ask you for some input and help. Help in growing our business together. The second stage of our rocket 🚀… The so-called “specification channel” stage: ✏️
The “delivery channel”: ✅is established and organically grown further
This we have – about 300 established partners across France, Italy, Spain, Portugal. 
These are our current “installation partners”, “dealers”, “integrators”,  “installers of technology”. 
(The people and companies you see at ISE who sell and install technology products)
Status: We have the trust and the ear of this channel. Based on this channel alone we are able to grow 30-50% under the current favourable market conditions. Our focus is on serving them by making their life simple and work on a project basis when and where we can.
The “specification channel”: ✏️
This is what we need to develop. There are thousands of these.
These are mainly “architects”, “contract divisions of design and build brands” and “technical design offices”.
They are hard to reach as this is one of the most over-marketed groups in the building industry.
Interesting read on how to reach this group here: How to market to architects. Some lighting companies and building component manufacturers do this quite well. Our industry however does not (yet)…
Status: We are reaching out to architects via trade shows ( eg: http://www.architectatwork.com/), Builder Program (https://www.builder-program.eu/) and via some of our installers. We offer to help architects to include (specify) technology in their high-end projects.
Request:
  • What architect-facing marketing materials do you have?
  • Do you have experience in marketing towards architects? If so, could you share best practices?
  • Are there any specific online activities you use to reach architects?
  • How do you handle architects requests for info? Can you elaborate?
  • Do you have a plan or strategy to market to architects?
In our opinion this “second stage of the rocket 🚀”  is what is needed to keep growing and empower installers to sell premium systems. So we invite you to work with us to make this happen.
Thanks in advance and always happy to discuss over the phone or in person to take a deep dive on this.
Wim

Growing vs leveraging your sales force

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simplify software.jpg
Genesis is a pure-play B2B company selling solutions. In our quest for growth we asked ourselves the following question:

  • add sales people ?
    OR
  • leverage the best sales talent we already possess ?

Our sales talent needs to do 3 things basically. More or less 1/3 of their time is spent on the following.

1. Admin of some sort (system design, expenses, email replies,…)
2. Prospecting for new opportunities (projects, clients, applications, relationships,…)
3. Magic moments. Spend time building relationships and developing opportunities with existing customers (when the magic happens)

At Genesis we have chosen to leverage the best sales talent we have.
Statistics really… 
Multiply guaranteed success vs multiplying the number of gambles…

Using dedicated software has helped us leverage the success of our best sales talent as follows:

A. Reduce admin time and effort.
So more valuable time is freed up for prospecting and magic moments.

  • find information faster
  • easy system design and accumulative learning (templates and sharing of best practices)
  • clients can self-serve (getting information, initial system design/spec,…;

B. Optimise prospecting for new opportunities (data leads us to insights…):

  • premium homes = the opportunity
  • visionary architects = the creator
  • best-in-class installers of technology = the craftsman

C. More magic moments…

  • tailored system designs – The difference between style and fashion is quality. (Giorgio Armani)
  • perfect timing – A wizard is never early. He is never late. He is always perfectly on time. (Lord of the Rings)
  • Gamification of our work-life – badges, leaderboards and fun trips for our loyal partners.

Leveraging your best sales people is always a good idea (small a-teams run circles around large abc-organizations…) but has proven to work especially well in the following scenarios:

  1. Selective distribution: grow via a select group of partners (relationships and insights are key)
  2. Moving from product to system sales (systems are sum of products + knowledge + services and tailored to specific opportunities)
  3. When good and experienced are in short supply
  4. When it takes a long time to train new salespeople

Small decision that get us to where we want to be.

The choice is (y)ours. as always.

Note: more on where to start your digital transformation journey in this post.

3 Axes of B2B – Genesis Technologies

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Wim GE De Vos strategyzer.jpg

The growth of Genesis Technologies is a to a large extent the result of a clear channel strategy. In our opinion B2B is both a science and an art.

For Genesis Technologies the 3 axes of B2B (channel strategy) are:

Profit 💰

Channel partners (installers of technology) are guaranteed to make more money by working with Genesis Technologies. Either by selling more or bigger systems, by being more efficient or by delivering higher quality systems.

Higher profits are the fuel ⛽️ that drive our partnerships 🚀.

Tribe 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

Channel partners´ relationship with Genesis Technologies goes beyond a 1-to-1 simple service/supply mindset. Learning, service and caring happens between several nodes (true partners) in the network.

Learning happens collectively 🤝 and is accumulated 📈 within the tribal network. The network gets stronger 💪🏻 with every project, problem solved, lesson learned.

Respect 🙏🏻

Respect for channel partners´ decisions, work, history and future is essential on Genesis Technologies approach to partnerships. No 2 companies are identical. Even if dreams, objectives, ambitions often are shared.

Genesis Technologies´ story is about people 🙋🏼‍♂️🙋🏽‍♀️🙋🏼‍♂️🙋🏽‍♀️. And partners are before anything that: people, people with dreams and a history.

 

So now I have revealed Genesis Technologies strategy “3 axes of B2b”. Open for competitors to copy, for supply partners to amplify and others to share.

Let´s make WOW the standard in whatever you do. Every time, every day.