For kitchen and bath designers, you may have noticed that business has begun to slow down. Many economic experts are saying that our economy is slowing down and that we may be heading into a recession. With interest rates at their highest level in well over a decade and the housing market peaking, all indicators are that they are right. What will you be doing during this last quarter of the year and next year to retain your prospects?

As a designer, it will be more important than ever to acquire and retain all the prospects you can to keep your pipeline full so you can close sales and still be profitable. About 1-1/2 years ago, if you are like most designers, you were probably seeing more prospects than your business could even handle. One designer I spoke with said that it was like “…people are throwing their checkbooks at me.” That won’t be happening again any time soon and you will need to fight to keep every prospect that walks in your door or contacts you by phone. You and your competitors will be vying for an increasingly smaller pool of buyers.

Differentiating yourself from your competition is the primary way you will be able to maintain market share and be able to stay in business, but how do you do that in a market where from the customer’s point of view, most cabinets, countertops, flooring, and many products like these are readily available anywhere they choose to go?

One of the best ways to differentiate yourself and compel your prospect to want to work with you is to show them that you care about them and their needs. In fact, you will probably have an even smaller window of time to be able to accomplish this before your buyer tunes out, and decides to go elsewhere, even though they are still in your presence. Communicating this to your client is going to be even more critical than ever. Remember that this is all about them, not what you or your business can do, what you have done for clients in the past, or what products or services you offer.

Engage your prospect using proper discovery questions to show that you care about them and their situation and also to learn more about how you can help them to achieve their goals and dreams for their space. Stop talking, and ask better questions.

For example, most designers are good at asking their prospects how long they have lived in their home but only the very successful ones follow that up with smarter questions like: “Where were you living prior to that?”, What inspired you to move to that area?”, or “Wow, that’s a long time in one place, have you ever re-done this space before, why now?” Then another proper follow-up such as: “That’s interesting, can you tell me more about that?”

If you are genuinely curious about your buyer and their story and you show this by inquiring and going a little deeper into your prospect’s motivation for redoing their space, you will be showing empathy for your client and proving to them that they are important and so are their ideas and needs.

This is going to be critical in the upcoming year to show how you are different from your competitors who are boring their prospects by going on about how they are a “full-service” design center and can provide for all their needs in a project and how they have been in business for over 50 years and have the latest trendy products available. Buyers will not care about any of this. What they want to know is how they and their needs are special and unique and how this person can partner with them to achieve their dream or vision.

The upcoming year is going to be more challenging to sell projects than it has been in a long time and it is time to fine-tune your skills to be ready. Now is the time to re-evaluate your process, self-assess your interactions and ask yourself, “Did I ask the proper questions?”, “Am I showing my prospect that they are important?” Role-play with your co-workers, and practice your methods and processes so that they are natural. Prepare for the questions that you inevitably know your prospect is going to ask.

As a well-known author on sales and selling, Jeb Blount has been saying, winter is coming. Are you fully prepared?

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My name is Duane Becker and I educate Kitchen Designers on key ideas to design and sales techniques to help them present their designs and motivate their clients to purchase. I have held design and sales seminars for the NKBA, KBIS, Lowe’s, and consulted for private dealers, individuals, and showrooms.

When I started my first selling job our team was always interested in the latest methods and techniques that would help us to get better leads, qualify our prospects better, and close more sales. We got to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and tried to lift each other up through challenging times.

Fast forward about 1-2 years later. My company hired a new salesperson whom I will call Gregg. Gregg dove head-first into the position and plowed forward. Within a couple of months, he was outselling everyone on the team, myself included. The funny thing about it was that even after a year of being with the company and being the top-selling person nearly every month, Gregg was still telling his clients that he was kind of new to the job.

I don’t know if Gregg was saying this to try and convince his prospects he was new or if he was working to keep his mindset in the “newby” mentality. Either way, it worked and he continued to be one of the company’s top sellers.

So why am I telling you this story, and what did I take away from this experience?

Have you ever noticed that many new hires who don’t know much about what they are doing seem to be really successful? Frequently, over time that success seems to taper off and they fall in with the rest of the team with average performance.

Why do you suppose that is? What are they doing differently than everyone else on your team is doing?

As a team, we were fully aware of what Gregg was doing. By staying in the “newby” mindset, he kept on with the basics of selling our products because he knew that the basics worked. Gregg was persistent and consistent, never stopped and in the end, was very successful.

This is something we all noticed and learned from and something that in my sales career now, I try to remind myself. Gregg was successful because he did not skip the necessary steps to the sale. Tirelessly, he performed the steps that he knew were needed, EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Keep up with the basics, keep up with what works, and be consistent.

It is easy to listen to the voices in your head that are telling you sales lies every day. Lies like:

• “This prospect is not really interested”
• “Cold calls and cold emails don’t work”
• “Our products (or services) are too expensive”
• “They are just price shopping”
• “I’m too busy maintaining my current accounts to waste time with this prospect.”

If you wanted to succeed like Gregg, turn off the lies your brain is telling you, the lies that are keeping you from being successful. Your brain is telling you a story that is holding you back from doing your job the way you know how to do it.

Stop thinking too much about it, and just do it!

Go back to the basics of what works.

If you need some inspiration, Read some good books on sales and selling, and view some online tutorials on selling and prospecting to help you get back on track. If you are like me, you will rediscover selling practices that work well that you have always known about and you will sometimes say to yourself: “I used to do that all the time, and it worked, why have I stopped?”

Maybe it is time to reinvest in yourself and develop yourself a little further. There are many different approaches to proven ideas. Find an author, trainer, or mentor that resonates with you, and you can breathe new life into what has been proven to work.

Stop overthinking the steps before you do them, and just do them!

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I want to know your thoughts and reactions, please comment!

My name is Duane Becker and I educate Kitchen Designers on key ideas to design and sales techniques to help them present their designs and motivate their clients to purchase. I have held design and sales seminars for the NKBA, KBIS, Lowe’s, and consulted for private dealers, individuals, and showrooms.

By Duane Becker

I like going to Starbucks when on the road. Go ahead and think what you want, but I had a very unexpected experience there a while back.

I had placed an order at one of their locations using the mobile app. Simple enough, right? When I arrived at the location that I have been to many, many times I discovered my coffee wasn’t ready yet. The person behind the counter asked my name for the order and said they did not have an order for me. She asked to see a record of the order and when I showed her a record of it on my phone, she pointed out that I had ordered it from the wrong location. There is another Starbucks down the street indoors that I had placed the order through, NOT the location where I had planned to pick it up.

The woman said that this happens a lot and that this will not be a problem, but to just go to the person at the checkout, explain what happened, and they could place an order for my coffee at no charge. Wow, I hadn’t expected that, and I did just that.

This shop happened to be very busy on this particular morning, and because of this, it was taking a little longer than usual for them to get to my order. After about 10 minutes of waiting, someone asked me the order I was waiting for and they got me my coffee quickly. Right about the time this person was handing me my drink, another employee who I am guessing was a manager approached me, apologized that I had waited so long for my order, and handed me a $10 gift card for my inconvenience. This was all due to something that was originally my fault and my error!

This is the kind of excellent service that keeps people as loyal customers. Do you think I will keep supporting this company, and especially this location? Absolutely!

When you are meeting with your prospect, and courting them to become your client, what are you doing to not only provide value but also provide unexpected value?

If you are a kitchen and bath designer, keep in mind that the value item does not necessarily need to be something of monetary value. It could be a service, a welcome package, how you treat them, a gracious gesture, a way of doing business, a referral program.

The important thing is that this is perceived as valuable to your prospect. What you provide them of unexpected value might be different from one person to another. I would suggest you create a selection list of added value items that you can pick from, depending on what would be best for your client. Of course, you may do something completely different for a specific client but it would provide a starting point.

These are the small efforts that not only create loyal clients but also will generate referrals for years to come!

Please comment on what you currently do to provide your clients with unexpected value.

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As always, your comments and thoughts are welcome!