A friend of mine needed flooring for his home, but he didn’t know any flooring dealers. So, he went online and Googled flooring stores in his area. He looked at the websites and read the reviews of the dealers appearing in the top three search results. All the websites and reviews looked pretty similar, so [...]
In my last two columns, I discussed the pitfalls of buying leads from popular online referral services. I also discussed several proven alternatives for generating high-quality leads. In this installment, I’m going to discuss how to get other businesses to send you an ongoing stream of leads for free. The Power of Referral Leads Every [...]
To understand why customer recognition is so powerful, let’s take a minute and put ourselves into our customer’s shoes. Cathy Consumer is a 35-year-old mother of three kids, all under the age of ten. She and her husband work full time. Cathy loves her kids and is a devoted mother, but they’re a little weak [...]
In Part 1 and Part 2, I presented strategies for developing and nurturing referral relationships with other businesses, and how those relationships can generate $250,000 to $1 Million (or more) in annual revenue with extremely low marketing costs. Essentially the goal is to round up, nurture, grow, and profit from a herd of businesses who [...]
Even with dealers in some markets experiencing relatively high sales volume, now is a very challenging time to be in flooring retail. Box stores and online discounters continue to create downward price pressure, and many local retailers attempt to compete by cutting margins and using cheap-price advertising. However, by using the right strategies, getting margins [...]
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 [...]
“Jim, I have a Facebook page, but I’m not getting much business with it. I think I could be doing more with my page to generate sales. What do you suggest?” I was on the phone with a floor dealer helping her prioritize her marketing when she asked me this question. This question is posed to [...]
The dealer who has implemented systems and strategies so he/she can succeed in any economy is in a far stronger position than the dealer who is forced to ride the economic roller coaster. I want you to be in that first group, which is what this series of articles is about. In Part 1 I [...]
“We need a systematic plan for attacking our marketing,” Matt M., a floor covering dealer from Arizona, told me. Steve N., a dealer from California, added, “Foot traffic is bad. We just want at least seven customers a day. We get two to three customers and it becomes difficult to stay motivated.” Both of these challenges [...]
As I covered in Part 1, the vast majority of sales in the $20,000 range and above don’t come from advertising. They come from repeat customers and their referrals. In this installment, we continue with strategies and principles for magnetically attracting high-end, high-margin sales. Marketing to your past customers. Over the years you’ve most likely [...]
