We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that created them.”
With big box stores taking a considerable chunk of business away from kitchen and bath firms since the early 1990s, independent dealers must be as versatile as possible in the ground they cover with their products and services.
Many dealers miss out on lucrative opportunities to make more money by selling ancillary products in their showrooms. Once you’ve decided on the cabinetry brands your firm sells, the next step is branching out to cover all areas of kitchen remodeling needs.
With the right personnel and showroom displays in place, your firm can sell every aspect of kitchen remodeling projects. Sell remodeling jobs as complete as the big box stores – and charge more for them – by being perceived as a better value.
Your people and services make the difference
Does your showroom have everything prospects need for their remodeling jobs?
Once a prospect builds trust in your firm, you have the opportunity to be their single source for all of their remodeling needs. Firms that provide continuity in advice, complete product selection, design, and installation assure their clients a successful result and save them from oversights, errors, delays, and overspending.
How well does your firm provide what matters most to clients?
While your clients think about the products and “the look” before visiting your showroom, your staff and services sell the job.
Being a one-stop-shop source is advantageous for both clients and firm owners. Consider it from the prospect’s point of view. When your firm is the only source for their kitchen remodeling project, you’re selling them convenience, peace of mind, and improved quality of life.
Kitchen and bath design firms sell promises
Prospects buying a new kitchen are entering into a substantially complicated, expensive process that will take many months before they get to enjoy the final product.
Shopping for a kitchen is nothing like shopping for a car. You can’t test drive a showroom kitchen display to know how your new kitchen will look, feel, and function. Consumers must make informed buying decisions based on samples, plans, and specifications, but they won’t know if they will like the final result until it’s fully assembled and paid for. Essentially, they are buying a promise of their dream kitchen.
Overseeing the creation of this most complex and expensive room to build in a home, the sales designer is the conduit of communication in remodeling jobs. Lead with your best people! Put your most charismatic and outgoing personnel in charge of communication for what is planned, ordered, and installed. They must be able to paint a picture of the finished room. Confident, people-oriented team members win jobs and keep clientele happy.
The dealer’s perspective on ancillary products
Being able to provide virtually all the products that go into a kitchen project has five enormous advantages:
- Leads are expensive – costing upwards of $300. It’s cheaper and easier to add more products into a sale than to go out and find another client.
- Your firm develops a reputation as an all-needs kitchen and bath source, drawing many showroom visitors.
- The gross margins on lighting, stools, sinks, faucets, etc., can be as high as cabinetry.
- The effort to sell these add-on products is minimal when you have already won the client’s trust.
- You belong to the SEN Design Group. SEN has already handled negotiations with quality industry vendors. So you save time selecting your ancillary product lines, buy many of them at 5-7% lower pricing, and earn a higher markup and gross profit.
Speaking of ancillary products; there are several ways to display them, so they effectively sell themselves, such as:
- Situate appliances into the showroom displays to make realistic and appealing settings; this allows prospects to visualize their dream kitchen project.
- Display ancillary products together, independent of the kitchen models, so that prospects can view them independently. These kinds of displays reinforce kitchen model themes and encourage prospects to add them to their investment.
- Hang a dozen different decorative pendant light fixtures (a few of which are featured in displays) at varying heights in one corner of your showroom space.
- Set a dozen stool styles sitting on different height pedestal stands in another corner.
- Showcase an array of faucets on a revolving 4-sided tower display.
Join the digital age in every area of business
You’ve got a beautiful website archived with beautiful professional-grade pictures and videos from past jobs. It’s also continuously loaded with your ever-increasing number of new project photos. Your blog is up to date and posted every week. The calls and email inquiries are coming in high numbers.
How’s your selling system?
We are not talking about your staff but your team’s process to deliver a plan and price to consumers in a timely fashion so they can make an informed buying decision. If it’s taking several weeks to get back to prospects and 4-6 hours of your time, you are doing your client and yourself a disservice.
With DesignAlign technology on your side, you can budget an entire kitchen project and deliver that “price” during the first 2-hour prospect meeting, saving you and your client an enormous amount of time.
When prospects understand the component costs that go into a project, they accept the final budget range number as credible. The Good-Better-Best sales process, embedded as DesignAlign’s centerpiece, enables prospects to shop within your company digitally. This kind of upfront education and pricing transparency is appreciated, making it easy and comfortable for consumers to retain your company quickly. Closing rates increase—sales increase.
By being a one-stop showroom, honing in on the Good-Better-Best Sales Process, and implementing innovative technology into your business, you can restore sanity to your team’s professional world and provide a better work-life balance while increasing sales.
—The SEN Leadership Team
