I had a little too much fun in the snow this past winter.  I’m new to Colorado, so snow is still a novelty to me. About the second or third storm of the year, enough snow stuck to bury the roads.  Time for some fun!

Being a California boy, I couldn’t resist the temptation to pull the parking brake and crank the wheel hard when I went around corners.  The result was a slow-motion “Dukes Of Hazzard” style slide as I rounded the bend.  Whenever the conditions were “safe” (e.g., no patrol cars in sight), I’d pull this little stunt when going around corners, making a U-turn, or pulling into the driveway.  Give me half an opportunity, and I was a-slidin’ like a madman! (Well, as mad as a man can be when doing a power-skid at a snow-blinding 8 miles an hour.)

I may have had a little too much fun because I knocked the alignment out, and my car started pulling to the left.  Since I’m new to town, I didn’t know a reputable mechanic, so I asked a friend for a referral.  I called the repair shop I was referred to. It turns out they didn’t do front end alignments.  However, they referred me to another shop that did do them.

Upon arriving at the second shop, I got greeted by a fellow wearing coveralls covered in so much grease that Exxon sent out a team to explore them as a possible means for ending our dependence on foreign oil.

I don’t want to be offensive and call the waiting area “dirty,” but let’s just say that there were layers in the grime dating back to the Jurrasic period.  Also, the coffee maker looked like a breeding ground for Ebola. Yet I still hired them to work on my car.

And that’s the lesson.

There is no way in h**l I would have hired these folks had I just walked in off the street cold. Because they got referred by a reputable mechanic (also referred), I left my car there.

Now, to be fair, if it was a larger town, and I had more options, I may have looked around a bit.  But as it was, I needed my car fixed fast. There was no way I was going to take it to someone who was NOT referred, and I didn’t have time to get another referral.

Okay, so here’s a business that by all outward appearances had no reason for me to choose them.  In fact, a lot of reasons NOT to choose them.  Yet the power of the referral compelled me to leave my car in their care and trust them to do a professional job and not rip me off.

If a referral can cause me to use such an unlikely candidate as this mechanic—a mechanic who had everything going against him—imagine the power a referral has to compel people to buy from your flooring dealership.

It’s a Venus Flytrap

A dealership that (hopefully) doesn’t have any of the drawbacks that this mechanics shop did, but instead has the following:

  • A clean, professional, inviting showroom
  • Well-dressed and well-trained staff who greet walk-ins with a smile and a script leading them into the Design Audit
  • A salesperson who hands them a beverage menu and asks what they would like to drink
  • A showroom that smells like fresh-baked bread or cookies because the staff bakes several batches each day for just that purpose, and keeps a basket of these baked goods out front for walk-ins to enjoy.

It’s a slam dunk that you’re going to get the sale.  A dealer who has implemented these strategies has turned their business into a “Venus Flytrap,” where prospects walk in, but they don’t walk out (without buying).  It doesn’t matter if they’ve visited three other stores. It doesn’t matter that you’re the highest priced; 9 out of 10 times you will get the sale.  And Flooring Success Systems members who have implemented the strategies listed above can attest to this.

So how much would it cost to implement this handful of strategies?  A little time? A little money?  Not much.  The real question is how much is it costing you NOT to implement these strategies?

In the next installment, I’ll talk about how to get other businesses to send visitors to your “Venus Flytrap.”

 

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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