In this installment, I continue with a series of interviews with industry leaders on what they see successful retailers doing to grow their sales, keep margins up and beat the boxes. In the last interview, I sat down with Bob Eady, President of T&L Distributing headquartered in Houston, TX, to get his perspective on what [...]
Every flooring prospect has an unspoken question on their mind: 'Why should I buy from you instead of your competitor?' If you don’t effectively answer this question you wind up losing customers and competing on price. One effective way to answer this question is by creating differentiation, and I spoke with Lindsey Waldrep, VP of [...]
Greetings Floor Dealers! This is the final installment this series. This week we continue with mistakes 10 through 13. Mistake #10: Failing to Position Yourself as a Trusted Advisor I want you to get a picture in your mind of a family doctor and next to him a used car salesman. Are you seeing those two [...]
Greetings Floor Dealers! This is the third installment in the series. This week we continue with mistakes 6 through 9. Mistake #6: Failure to Have a System to Generate Referrals In my opinion, this is the second biggest marketing mistake. (The first is not marketing to your past customers as discussed in the previous installment [...]
Greetings Floor Dealers! This is the second installment in the series. This week we continue with mistakes 3-5. Mistake #3: Being Dishonest, Unethical, or Misleading Odds are, if you care enough about your business to be reading FSS, you’re probably not a sleazy, bait-n-switch type of dealer. So this is more of an encouragement for you [...]
Greetings Floor Dealers! In 2007, I published my four-part series titled, 13 Deadly Marketing Mistakes. Now that the market is heating up, this topic takes on new relevance. Dealers are increasing their spending on marketing in order to grab ever-increasing market-share, so we've decided to rerun this series to help our readers maximize their marketing dollars. [...]
Greetings Floor Dealers! Before I moved to Colorado, there is a lube shop I used to patronize that had such great customer service that I wrote a couple of articles about them, and even talked about them in some of my training manuals for flooring dealers. When I pulled up to the work bay—and before [...]
Greetings Floor Dealers! "You're quote is $1,500 more than the other flooring store." Jimmy, a floor dealer from North Carolina that I coach, stood in his showroom listening patiently while his customer complained about his "high" price. When he finished, Jimmy politely replied, "Well sir, let me save both of us a lot of time. [...]
Greetings Floor Dealers! "We're kicking Home Depot's Butt. We love having them as neighbors because we take a lot of business from them." I was on the phone with Mark Bouquet, a floor dealer from the suburbs of Chicago and one of my Flooring Success Systems members. He went on to tell me that they [...]
Greetings Floor Dealers! As the owner of your business, being the rainmaker is your most important job. Making the shift from seeing yourself as a “flooring store owner” to a “marketer of flooring” is the key to unlocking the financial potential of your business, and to achieving the freedom and lifestyle you want. Most store [...]