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.

It has been a while, readers and something has been nagging me. So many companies claim to be the best at what they do. This, or they claim to be different, unique or claim to value their customers and many other claims like this.

To be truly successful in most businesses, you must differentiate yourself. If you are unsuccessful at doing this, your product or service will be reduced to merely a commodity where the only thing that matters is price. Remember that in the absence of differentiation, all that remains is price.

It is very important to stand out from the crowd, to not get lost in the “sea of sameness”, to quote Larry Levine. Research your competition to see what they are doing and discover how you can do it differently, and hopefully better.

I suggest that you take an hour or two to brainstorm about what your prospect is feeling, and thinking and what will get their attention when they first meet you. It is time to seriously think out of the box with regard to how you can set yourself apart. (Sorry for the cabinetry pun).

There is a point I am getting at with this thought. I am sure you have all seen advertising where individuals or companies state that they “…truly care about our customers.” or, “We offer a very unique purchasing experience.”, or “For one of a kind service”.

Actions speak far louder than words.

My belief is that if you are actually offering your customers something special and unique, you don’t need to advertise it and much of the time, maybe should not be advertising it. If you have managed to create a unique experience for your clients, word will get out about it and your actions will carry far and wide from your client’s testimonials much better than any publicity will.

When General Motors launched their Saturn dealerships, one-price shopping and a complete tour of the vehicle and how it was made was a very new thing in the car industry. They did not have to advertise how their process set them apart. They let word of mouth do most of their speaking for them. Through this, they were able to help their Saturn cars (in my opinion, a car that was very so-so), sell incredibly well because of their customer’s overall experience.

Tiffany and Co. does not state anywhere in their advertising or website what your purchasing experience will be like. They never say anything like “We value all our clients”, or “Our customers deserve the best”, or anything such as this. They don’t have to because their reputation has spread about the amazing experience they offer when you make an appointment to shop with them. They do talk about the services they offer, but they never state how these might be different from their competitors. Sure, they offer some of the best and most unique merchandise (and very expensive), but the shopping experience has gained a reputation for being top-notch and truly special.

When I see or hear of any company that states “for a truly unique experience”, or anything like this, I am immediately skeptical. If the overall experience is unique, they wouldn’t have to say so.

It has been determined through surveys that more than half of consumers based their decision to buy not because of the product or service offered, not because of the perceived value-to-price ratio, but because of their overall buying experience.

For that reason, you must be different and if you are, in your client’s view, you will be successful.

Please don’t advertise it, just DO IT!

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As always, your comments and thoughts are welcome!

If you have kids or have a close friend or relative who does, you probably know that a young person needs to hear a request multiple times to remember it or to have it “sink in”. Why is that? Well, a young one has so many things in their world that are important to them, they probably have no idea why something is important to you, and subconsciously tune it out. You may have even said something like “..I have told you a thousand times …”, right?

Similarly, people who study advertising have said that it takes many times for the average person to see an ad for them to act on it, or to truly think about it and it may go something like this:

• The first 4 times you see an advertisement, you hardly notice it.
• The fifth time you see it, you read it.
• The 6th – 8th times it appears, it starts to bother you.
• By the 9th time, you start to wonder if there’s something to it..
• Views 10-12 prompt you to casually think about it. Maybe you ask a friend about it or do a quick scan through their website.
• By the 13th time you see an advertisement, the product or service might be worth something.
• In views 14-19 you slowly convince yourself to make a purchase and start saving for it.
• By the 20th time you see the same advertisement, you are sold.

Data provided by Red Crow Marketing

What is my point with all this? Well, you as a Kitchen and Bath designer are reviewing so much information with your client that it is nearly impossible for them to remember all that you are saying, especially since most of the time, the project or process is something they have never been involved with before. Your client will remember the things you say that are only important to them, not necessarily the things that are important for you to have them remember.

If there are critical elements to the project that your client must be aware of, there are only two things you can do to help your client to remember them:

1. Put it in Writing
2. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat.

Then when you are done, Repeat it… AGAIN!

I am sure that you have had clients that did not remember some very important things about their project even when you HAVE repeated them. This has been confirmed by many others in our industry.

Obviously, there are many things to review when there is a large project in the works, and it is important that your client is aware of some very important things, but expecting them to remember what you have said when you have been feeding them information with a firehose for the last 30 minutes just is not realistic. They have never done this before, or, most likely, not with you, so this is all new to them.

Treat them as though they are a 5-year-old, or like you are an advertisement. If you want them to understand the importance of an instruction, or a procedure, repeat, repeat, repeat,…

then repeat some more.

What do YOU do to be sure your client remembers what you say? Tell me in the comments below!

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As always, your comments and thoughts are welcome!