Your kitchen and bath business must be creative, innovative, and stand out from a crowded field of competitors to be successful. In today’s business environment, especially since the advent of COVID and its lingering effects 2 years later, being creative means much more than your exceptional design skills when conceiving the inspiration for your clients’ dream kitchen and bathroom. It means being creative in finding new ways to be profitable and increase profit margins. These ideas and solutions may be invisible to your customers but must be very customer-focused, working to their advantage and yours.
What is the value of an industry buying group to your business?
Individual businesses can take advantage of being equivalent to a “big player” in the industry through membership in a buying group—the power of one, the power of many. Your purchases are no longer the smaller quantity and dollar value of your company. It is now part of the collective purchase value of the whole group and its members.
The value of an industry buying group includes:
- Member group pricing
- Direct relationship with vendors
- Focused customer support
- Stringent vetting of vendors to reduce purchase and quality risks
- Improved lead times
While group pricing is a top consideration, there is far more additional value when you join SEN Design Group, and those benefits are equally important elements of the whole package. As most business owners can see, pricing is not the leading decision point for your prospects — they want more than the lowest price. They want a memorable customer experience, support, quality, and timely completion of their project. In today’s environment across all industries, including those outside of kitchen and bath design, the issues with supply chain and manufacturing are well-known and understood (whether the customer likes it or not). The additional value that you can provide as a result of the relationships and support you receive from vendors is the differentiator over your competitors. It is the difference maker. And it is a major benefit of membership in a buying group.
With some recent changes in our cabinetry vendor partners, we want our members to know that SEN is fully supporting their members by providing other vendors who can make and assist with the necessary transition for you to work with them. The cabinet vendors are stepping up big time! The recent Cabinet Fair is only one example. The panel discussion, presentations by the multiple vendors, and questions by SEN Members stimulated valuable discussions and ideas for all who attended.
SEN Design Group provides exceptional support in 3 important areas
Industry buying group
Since the cost of goods sold represents the single greatest expense on a company’s profit and loss statement, SEN Design Group was inspired to provide kitchen and bath business owners the ability to purchase goods from the industry’s leading vendors with an outstanding selection of products, extra savings, and rebates available only to group members.
This is truly the power of one, the power of many.
Business education
So that kitchen and bath business owners can learn sustainable tactics to become profitable, grow their business, and increase profit margin with highly relevant education created specifically for our industry. No other group or organization provides this type of education—available at SEN University. SEN recognizes that successful, profitable kitchen and bath businesses are positive for the industry, Partner Vendors, and all members of SEN’s strategic community.
The types of education available with a SEN Membership that work towards profitability:
- Lunch ‘N Learn webinars (included in all SEN Memberships)
- 4-Day Executive Business School with an optional Day 5 Profit Plan School
- 2-Day Good-Better-Best Sales School
- 2-Day Online Project Management Course
- One-Day Regional Seminars
- Online Bath Remodeling Course
- Kitchen Design & Sales—Level One
- Kitchen Design & Sales—Level Two
Technology
A competitive advantage often starts with innovation. Technology is a game-changer in productivity, efficiency, and how easily you can provide an exceptional customer experience to every homeowner who works for you. Every SEN Membership includes a DesignAlign™ license, with Signature U and Executive U membership levels including unlimited licenses.
What DesignAlign technology does for kitchen and bath businesses:
- Increases productivity – Save up to 75% of valuable time to gain a client commitment.
- Multiple Choices at your fingertips – Utilize Cabinet Selector to produce accurate budgeting for custom cabinetry in minutes – Bellmont, Bridgewood, CWP, Dura Supreme, Jay Rambo, & Nobilia are all mounted and ready to go.
- Increases efficiency – Eliminate wasted hours planning and estimating during pre-commitment time; use your time to sell more jobs and double your income.
- Fits in the budget – Included in your member dues; non-SEN members will be paying upwards of $400/month for DesignAlign.
- New, improved technology – Responding to the needs of kitchen and bath businesses, gaining client commitment during the first meeting, and creating unique customer experiences is what this new DesignAlign technology was designed to do.
- Strategic community – so that you can surround yourself with other industry professionals and experts who inspire you. SEN’s community is filled with professionals who have lived through the same challenges as you, understand specific industry experiences you face, and have had a level of success that you aspire to reach. The value of a community like this is immeasurable. The spirit of helping each other, an “all for one” and “when the tide rises, all boats rise together” mindset is what being part of a buying group is all about – businesses, friends, and colleagues all working together to help each other.
As Tony Robbins teaches — Get rid of negative people who bring you down. Surround yourself with people who lift you up, lend you knowledge, and help you learn from your mistakes. Raise your standards for your inner circle.
THAT is a strategic community!
During the Cabinet Fair this past month, many great things were clear. Listening to the various cabinet vendors, and the questions from SEN Members in attendance — SEN understands the challenges and is fully supporting our members and SEN Vendor Partners are fully onboard too.
Important points discussed at the Cabinet Fair
- Between SEN Leadership Team, the cabinet vendors, and SEN Members, perhaps we can lessen the onboarding workload for members of the group and find a solution to make the process easier.
- Cabinet vendors are the center of every kitchen and bath remodeling project. Every sale starts with a visit to the cabinet comparison wall – a lot of time is spent there. A sale can be made by simply showing cabinet doors and then building the conversation from there.
- SEN Vendor Partners, in this case, Karen Winstrom and Dura Supreme, are willing to talk to SEN business owners about trying to stay ahead of trends.
- Bridgewood talked about the fact that, while it is a bit cliché, you can have the latest and greatest technology and products, but business really is all about relationships. It is an area where Bridgewood puts great effort – in their employees and in the relationships they build.
- And Bridgewood follows a strategic community mindset, like SEN, and converses regularly with other cabinet manufacturers.
- Lead times are prioritized for SEN Members with SEN Vendor Partners. This is a huge plus with the current supply chain issues!
- Differentiation is a tremendous benefit in your showroom and CWP can help provide that with custom products.
- CWP strives to help SEN Members close more sales, reduce errors, complete projects on time, garner raving fans, and improve profit margins.
- CWP has empowered every employee to act as an owner to provide excellent customer experiences and support.
- CWP has SEN fast-track onboarding.
- Dura Supreme has emphasized customer experiences and support by working in pods so that their dealers work with the same, reliable team daily for customer service.
- Quality control is a key pillar in Dura Supreme’s business — they hold themselves accountable for quality builds and correct any issues that occur, so they are not repeated.
- JSI has a distribution model that allows for speed and in-stock inventory.
- Providing quality products and the mindset that they don’t cut corners is strong a pillar of JSI’s business.
- Northpoint Cabinetry is currently working towards their long-term goal to have 5 month inventory (matching their pre-COVID standards).
- SEN Members have good lead times with Northpoint, better than current industry standards.
- DesignAlign currently has the Cabinet Selector feature working well with many vendors already mounted including Bellmont, Bridgewood, CWP, Dura Supreme, Jay Rambo, & Nobilia – saving users a tremendous amount of pre-commitment time with prospects, turning them into paying customers quickly.
The enormous efforts SEN Vendor Partners put into being an outstanding supplier to SEN Design Group’s members is clear. SEN is working very hard with its Vendor Partners to continue to “up their game” and provide the best products, services, and customer experiences and support. At the Cabinet Fair, it was quite clear that this group of vendors want success for SEN Members. This is why we have a full, thorough vendor vetting process. SEN is meticulous in our choices and only chooses the best vendors who will provide the best opportunities for their members to succeed.
SEN continues to “up our game” too, by working to grow the buying group membership, to help benefit every member and vendor through increased rebates (for members) and increased business (for vendors). It also means that we set our goals even higher for 2022! Additionally, we are actively persistent in growing the benefits of membership through exclusive business education. This is the purchasing power which epitomizes the power of one, the power of many. It is a win-win-win scenario for Members, Vendor Partners, and SEN.
All these efforts, creating new membership benefits, working closely with Vendor Partners, a push for new members and vendors to join the group, the business conferences, and bringing the best industry experts into the mix – this is the extraordinary support you can expect from SEN Design Group and membership in this outstanding buying group.
—SEN Leadership Team
