The Spec Shaman

The Spec Shaman

The building industry's top specification experts, LEED gurus, and design hotshots offer their best advice, research, and insights to help building product manufacturers increase product specifications. Building product specification is what keeps us up at night. Our team of experts are dedicated to helping building product manufacturers implement meaningful action to create positive outcomes. The goal of this blog is to create insightful, relevant content that building product manufacturers can utilize in their daily lives. Whether you are the company Owner, President, Marketing Manager, Sales Leader, Product Rep, or office intern we hope to provide you with strategies to improve product specification results and grow key parts of your business significantly.

On: Nov 27, 2017 By: Brad Blank
How to Hire Fiercely Competitive Building Product Reps
Building product manufacturers need competitive closers in good times and bad times. Many building product reps look good when the economy is good. But when the economy crashes, building product manufacturers quickly discover the underperformers. “The one performance factor that distinguishes the rainmaker from the ordinary sales person is that he or she sells more,” says Jeffrey Fox in his book How to Be a Fierce Competitor.
On: Nov 22, 2017 By: Brad Blank
Enemies of Building Product Specification
“Sales efficiency is quantitatively defined as the amount of selling time spent face-to-face with customer decision makers, or phone-to-phone with decision makers if you are a tele-marketer. Effective sales people who spend more time in front of customers sell more. Anything that steals selling time is a theft of organization revenues and usually of sales person compensation,” says Jeffery Fox in his book How to Be a Fierce Competitor.
On: Nov 16, 2017 By: GreenCE, Inc.
Home Depot is Leading the Way - Again
With sales of $94.6 billion and earnings of $8 billion in 2016, you would think the nation’s largest home improvement specialty retailer would be happy to leave well enough alone.
On: Nov 14, 2017 By: Brad Blank
6 Reasons Not to Fire Building Product Reps
“Profit-positive sales people are desperately needed by every organization,” says Jeffery Fox in his book How to Be a Fierce Competitor. Fox defines a sales person as someone who generates more gross margin dollars than his or her total cost to the organization. The total cost might include hiring and retirement costs, salary, commissions, car, phone, insurance, office expenses, travel expenses, and training.
On: Nov 1, 2017 By: Brad Blank
Signs of a Bad Building Product Manufacturer’s Meeting
“Meetings are one of the most pernicious thieves of selling and productivity in business. There are too many meetings and too many bad meetings. Good companies constantly rip out the root causes of inefficiency and waste in production, administration, distribution, and marketing. Good companies abhor waste, and because meetings are often huge time wasters, meetings are managed to make money and to overcome challenges,” says Jeffrey Fox in his book How to Be a Fierce Competitor.

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GreenCE offers AIA HSW online continuing education, LEED online courses, ADA online courses, and LEED Exam Prep. GreenCE helps design professionals obtain their AIA HSW hours, LEED-specific hours, barrier-free hours, and IDCEC CE hours. The website delivers LEED Exam Prep for the LEED Green Associate exam, LEED BD+C exam, and LEED O+M exam. The online LEED certification courses educate architects, engineers, interior designers, contractors, and students.

GreenCE is a USGBC Education Partner that offers the only free LEED exam prep in the country. The LEED certification course includes a free LEED exam study guide, free LEED practice questions, and LEED certification tips and strategies. In addition, GreenCE offers free courses for LEED APs to obtain their LEED BD+C hours, LEED ID+C hours, and LEED O+M hours. Most GBCI courses are free and in video format.

GreenCE is an AIA Education Provider and offers free AIA online courses. The free AIA courses are sponsored by building product manufacturers. In addition, the platform offers barrier-free ADA courses for Texas and California architects. Texas barrier-free online courses and California Accessibility courses meet state requirements. TX ADA courses and CA ADA courses are created by the top ADA experts in the country.

Building product manufacturers can get specified by using GreenCE services. GreenCE develops AIA and LEED courses for product manufacturers to educate architects. The online architect courses help build brand awareness about building products. In addition, GreenCE hosts manufacturer webinars for 200-300 architects at a time. The AIA webinars and LEED webinars are free for architects who can learn about various products.

Finally, GreenCE helps manufacturers develop Health Product Declarations (HPDs), LEED v4 product documentation, mindful MATERIALS documentation, Google Portico documentation, and Declare Labels. We value our relationships with design professionals and building product manufacturers. They are crucial to our success.