Greetings Floor Dealers! In this series I answer questions that were asked during the two sales and marketing training sessions I presented for dealers at Surfaces in Las Vegas. What should we say when someone asks the price of a product right at the beginning of the sales process? You don’t want to get into [...]
Greetings Floor Dealers! I had the privilege of presenting two sales and marketing training sessions at Surfaces in Las Vegas to over 300 floor dealers. The sessions were fun and dynamic, with a very enthusiastic group who asked a lot of good questions, some of which I thought would be instructive to highlight here. How [...]
Greetings Floor Dealers! This series is about the mindset and strategies used by dealers who build $5 Million businesses with gross margins of 45% or more. In Part 1 of this series we covered the mindset necessary to be a 5/45 dealer, so in this installment I’m going to cover some practical strategies you can [...]
Greetings Floor Dealers! This series is about the mindset and strategies used by dealers who build $5 Million businesses with gross margins of 45% or more. To successfully command premium prices (gross margins of 45-50% or more) in today’s environment, and build a $5 Million business, two critical components must be in place. The first [...]
Greetings Floor Dealers! It's no secret that box stores, online dealers, and other discounters are trying to steal your customers. Most dealers would like to put Home Depot in their crosshairs for a change. To do that you need to implement strategies that create differentiation, position you and your sales team as trusted advisors, and [...]
Greetings Floor Dealers! "Have you ever lost customers because you couldn't match Home Depot's $39 installation?" I asked a group of attendees on a recent Marketing Mastery webinar I was co-hosting with Dustin Aaronson (FCNews Associate Publisher). More than half said they had. Well, Home Depot has upped the ante. If you've lost customers because [...]
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. [...]