Door Industry Journal - Spring 2016

Also online at: www.dijonline.co.uk 30 THE door industry journal spring 2016 garage doors feature “ “First Seek to understand then to be understood” - thoughts on the art of selling and the LiftMaster MYQ technology Mark McEvoy, Commercial Director at Garage Door Systems was sitting on a plane flying between Belfast and Manchester. He knew there was a deadline for stories to be sent to the Door Industry Journal … and, as usual, it had passed. Rather than read the inflight magazine, he put his time into writing a piece on something that had been on his mind that was worth sharing. The start point It’s been just over two years since Garage Door Systems successfully introduced the new LiftMaster EVO (Evolution) garage door opener range to the UK and Ireland. On the back of this launch our existing and new customers have experienced the tried and tested reliability, simple programming, wireless wall station as standard and superlative GDS service they have come to expect. (OK sales pitch over) (Well perhaps just a couple more points) On top of this they now have also gained a raft of addition benefits including 0.8w standby power, LED lights, 868 & 433 dual frequency options, faster travel speeds, to name but a few......oh and MYQ, a smart technology for controlling the opener from a phone or tablet. MYQ was the icing on the cake.....and by all accounts was an industry game changer. From a personal perspective I received excellent in-depth product presentations and training, watched the YouTube videos and ensured the branding and infographics were printed on just about any piece of literature that went to press from Garage Door Systems. When I met with installation companies throughout the UK I would always ensure to mention MYQ and in general everyone nodded in agreement with me and we concurred that this was indeed a very good idea. The realisation something was missing It wasn’t until quite a considerable time after the launch (18 months) that I was having a meeting with Jack Akkermans (LiftMaster Director Sales, Europe) and it dawned on me that something wasn’t quite right. Whilst discussing how well we (Garage Door Systems) believed the market had reacted (and it had) to ALL the new features & benefits of the EVO range, Jack brought something alarming to my attention. In Germany the uptake of MYQ was close to 40%, other European countries were similar and the figures across America were also equally impressive. Our uptake figures were nothing close to this, why? At this point a light turned on for me and I quoted from Steven Covey’s book “The 7 habits of highly effective people” ......”first seek to understand then to be understood” I realised that up to now I had only been paying lip service to the benefits of MYQ. I knew I could do a good job of updating customers that MYQ was really good and that LiftMaster were leading the way in terms of home automation and having great meetings in California with Apple, Google, Nest and Amazon. What was missing was the detail they needed on what it really meant to their customers on a day-to-day level. The next day I had MYQ installed on my own garage… The story now – know your product! Since installing MYQ on my own garage door I now have a much more informed conversation with my LiftMaster customers. Mark McEvoy doing the recycling