Greetings Floor Dealers!

Flooring is a commodity. Marketing great Dan Kennedy says that if you’re in a commodity business, get out. He didn’t mean leave your industry; he meant re-invent and re-categorize yourself to create differentiation within your industry. Sell differently, answer the phones differently, deliver your goods and services differently. There is so much sameness among flooring retailers—similar showrooms, similar products, similar ads, similar websites—that creating differentiation can pay huge dividends for dealers who invest the time and energy to do so. My goal with part two of this series is to give you strategies to spark your imagination, and inspire you down the road to creating total differentiation in your market.

Invent your own vernacular. Starbucks successfully commands premium prices for a commodity and part of their strategy for doing so is the creation of their own vernacular. They don’t have small, medium, and large. They have grande, tall, and venti. Examples from the flooring industry include Jimmy Williams from North Carolina who calls his installers “mechanics.” Craig Bendele from Florida calls his consultation process the Design Auditä, as do other dealers I coach. Here’s an exercise to get you thinking creatively in this direction: create your own vernacular for “salesperson,” “installer,” “staff,” “consultation,” and “estimator.” Email me your ideas and I may feature them in an upcoming column.

Wear medical booties when you visit a customer’s home. Without saying a word, you’ll instantly communicate that you are different and that you care about her home.  Some of the dealers I work with who do this include Scott and Pamela Schaefer from Ohio, Matt Capell from Idaho, John and Sarah Wolfe from California, as well as many others.

Invent unusual-but-value-enhancing guarantees. There are customer service lapses that are common in the flooring industry that cause frustration and/or worry for consumers:

  • unprofessional “scary” installers
  • tardiness to appointments
  • phone calls not returned
  • a mess left after the installation; etc.

Make a list of all the things that irritate consumers about the floor-buying process and create guarantees the reassure your customers that those things won’t happen when they buy from you. For example, Jerome Nowowiejski from Texas uses a guarantee that insures his customers receive a high level of professionalism, skill, and cleanliness from their installers.

Confirmation calls. Call all your customers the day before their measure or installation appointment. Call them when your estimator, sales person, or installer is on their way to the home.

Create a unique phone-answering script. What do you hear when you call most flooring stores? Some variation of “Thank you for calling Boring Flooring, how may I help you?” Instead, create a script that includes one of your guarantees. For example: “Thank you for calling Jimbo’s Floors where you’ll love your new floors or we’ll replace them free! How can I make it a great day for you?”

Uniforms for your entire in-store team. This can be as simple as a polo shirt with your store logo, slacks, and dress shoes.

Market to your customer list monthly. During my presentations at Surfaces in Las Vegas, I asked the attendees if they marketed monthly to their past customers. Only about 3% said yes. If you market to your past customers, you’ll not only reap huge financial rewards, but you’ll create total differentiation from the other 97% of dealers who don’t do this. As I’ve discussed in detail in previous columns, the best tool for communicating with your past customers is a direct response newsletter. Make it 80% fun, informative, entertaining, valuable information, but only 10-20% about flooring. Mark Bouquet from Illinois was on the verge of closing his doors when he implemented a monthly direct response newsletter. Within six months he was booked out for several weeks and scrambling to add new installation teams.

In my next column I’m going to reveal some little-known industry stats that will horrify many dealers. Stay tuned!

 

To Tons Of Customers!
Jim Augustus Armstrong is The “Coach”

Jim Augustus Armstrong is the President of Flooring Success Systems, a program that equips dealers to double their profits, cut their work hours in half and beat the boxes! Many dealers have totally transformed their businesses and their lives for the better after joining Flooring Success Systems.
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