Could this be why you have so many "Quotations Pending"?

Pending? Don’t kid yourself.

Those customers didn’t come to buy, they came for information about buying. Information which you could have given them so much earlier and more cost effectively.

Kitchen consumers start ‘buying’ long before they make the purchase - if you give them the opportunity, that is. If you don’t, then maybe, just maybe, they’ll come directly to you - but they won't be buying. They’re not ready. You haven’t prepared them.

Nobody (including you) buys anything these days without visiting relevant websites. That’s where we go to educate ourselves and gain some fore-knowledge, especially when we’re shopping for high value product like a kitchen.

So the question is: what do buyers find when they visit your website? Is it just a clone of so many others? Or does it answer the real questions buyers are asking themselves? Some of these questions are straightforward some are more subtle but no less important. 

The straightforward ones are about the tangibles - product features, quality, cost; the more subtle ones revolve around the intangibles  - competence, integrity, trust. How does your website answer these questions? A lot of fitted kitchen websites just don’t succeed here.

Your website (and your use of other media) should be laying down a digital pathway that leads prospects to you, as the embodiment of everything you’ve led them to believe, thus far. But, be warned, if the reality falls short of the digital story, they’ll smell manipulation and deceipt  - and they’ll walk away. 

But right within your business you have a rich seam of raw, factual content and copy. lt lies right where you and your current customers overlap and interact, the daily ‘sharp end’. What you need is a means of garnering, interpreting and crafting this in creative ways which answer your future customers' conscious and unconscious questions.

Your website isn’t about slideshows and widgets; it’s about content and copy that answers the questions that buyers naturally ask. But content means so much more than brochure shots of kitchens, and copy means so much more than filling in the web designer’s ‘lorem ipsum’ spaces with “Welcome to...established in 1990...”, and limp testimonials like “...lovely job. Mrs J., Oxford”. 

Buyers go to your website looking for ‘bread’ but too often they find only the ‘stones’ of brochure-speak and company vanity. Your website content and copy should work in harmony to inform, educate and reassure the buyer that you are worthy of inclusion in their short-list.

Yes, working this out will take time and money. But it’s a waste of both if you’re always trying to crank up the sale from a cold, standing start with a buyer who’s only at the ‘information’ stage.

Time to take a long hard look at your Pending File - and your website.

Related post:

Fitted Kitchens and Buy/Sell Convergence

 Image credit: stockxchange Image ID: 1220957 

Fitted Kitchens - The Long Sell...

The ads you place are 'selling'

Your Twitter words are 'selling'

Your Facebook presence is 'selling'

Your website design is 'selling'

Answering the phone is 'selling'

Arranging an appointment is 'selling'

Your timekeeping is 'selling'

Greeting a customer is 'selling'

How you look is 'selling'

Your mood is 'selling'

Surveying is 'selling'

Designing is 'selling'

Your Terms & Conditions are 'selling'

Your showroom is 'selling'

Your conversations are 'selling'

Off-hand remarks are 'selling'

Listening is 'selling'

Observing is 'selling'

Delivering a kitchen is 'selling'

Fitting is 'selling'

Cleaning up after is 'selling'

Booking a service call is 'selling'

Carrying out a service call is 'selling'

Handling a complaint is 'selling'

Your customer's reported experience is 'selling'...

To all of the above we should add -

"Or not!"

At what point, do you think, do customers actually buy?

Don't mistake the cheque, or the cash, or the credit card swipe for the 'sale'. 

They're just a puctuation mark in a continuing dialogue.

Give up looking for miracle marketing shortcuts.

Commit to the long term and dig in deep.

Image credit: stockxchng/Ayla87

Fitted Kitchen Trade - Health Advisory

 

High Risk Group

An ongoing study has revealed that prolonged exposure to fitted kitchens can lead to a heightened risk of contracting MME (Melamine Molecular Exchange).

This progressive condition is not related to any chemical component of MFC (Melamine Faced Chipboard). It's a consequence of the pressure under which the material is formed which can lead to leakage  at an invisible molecular level allowing the actual transfer of melamine molecules into the human molecular structure. At present the condition is thought to be irreversible, but current bio-genetic research looks positive.

One problem is that early symptoms are unlikely to be attributed directly to the condition. They include edginess and increasing rigidity of the joints.

Later stages, however, are indicated by an increasingly angular comportment and occasional unsteadiness. This may be relieved by placing the subject's back against a wall and manipulating the legs.

As the condition advances, the subject may become listless and emotionally flat. Asked how they are feeling at this stage a frequent response, in the industry vernacular, is "bored" or "completely screwed".

Without careful handling as the condition progresses, there is an increased risk that the subject may give way to base instincts and become completely unhinged suffering irreparable damage.

Low Risk Group

For those within the industry who may be exposed to natural timber components, such molecular exchange is extremely rare, perhaps because of the product's organic nature. In the few recorded cases, though, the seasonal effects are reported to be "quite astonishing".

Molecuar Exchange

Molecular exchange was first identified, in a different context, in a report by O'Brien/De Selby (1967):

“The gross and net result of it is that people who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over rocky roadsteads … get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them …”

You can access the full report here.
 

[Image credit:stockxchng/www.digital-delight.ch] 

[Published 1st April 2012]

The Demise Of "Old Selling" And The Rise Of The Designer.

When I think of Old Selling I think of MFI at the height of it's powers.

They thought the process of selling could somehow be separated from the process of buying. Unfortunately, their laser-like focus on ‘The Sale’ often dissolved into a shortsighted blur when it came to fulfillment of the customers purchase.

This led to a curious kind of contradiction in which they managed to win sales and lose customers - with equal efficiency.

MFI treated a 'Sale' like it was some kind of laboratory-bred hybrid which would lend itself to mass reproduction by lodging the appropriate formula in the minds of sales staff.
With accountancy as the dominant discipline they mistook the bookkeeping entry for the real thing.

MFI’s new owners have acknowledged  that selling kitchens is “just too difficult”. So, thankfully, the public is going to be spared the misery of finding this out all over again.

So what is it that makes kitchens so difficult?

Well, for a customer, what exactly is a kitchen purchase?

Is it the dream inspired by a showroom display?
The actual design she sees on the computer screen?
Or her personal perception of it?
Is it the jumble of boxes that arrives on the back of the lorry on the day of installation?
Is it what’s left behind as the fitter sweeps up and drives off?
Is it the stylishly lit, fully stocked, proudly demonstrated, social hub of the next family gathering?
Or is it the recently discovered leak behind the dishwasher, the malfunctioning oven, the misaligned door?

For the customer it's all of of these, regardless of any dreamy preconceptions. As a retailer this totality is what you are really selling.

A kitchen is a product inextricably linked with services - design, installation, aftersales. All these components are interdependent. In the customers mind there is no distinction between them. The word “kitchen” is just shorthand for the whole experience.

It’s no longer possible to get away with a convenient separation  between the company's idea of a sale and the customer's idea of a purchase. The exchange has to have an inherent balance, a symmetry between the promise and its fulfillment.

Old Selling isn't good at this. It has difficulty grasping the fact that selling is more than just a challenge to the salespersons ego; more than a relentless push towards “The Close”.

Today’s sale never closes. It’s permanently open. It must be made and re-made with every customer engagement - before and after of the point of purchase.

For kitchens, a designer is better suited to this new environment than a Salesperson.

In a sense, at first encounter you don’t have anything to sell. As a designer your job is to co-create with the customer the ‘product’ to be sold/bought.

Design becomes the common ground on which you get to know and understand each other, as you must, in order to go the distance that lies on the far side of the 'sale'.

You are not aiming at a 'sale' but at everything that happens, and everything she will experience, beyond the sale. Selling is the medium through which you facilitate this process, not the purpose of the process.

The receipt of a deposit is just a formal record of a decision to buy that is made incrementally along the way. It’s the sum of your company’s virtual presence, its physical presence, its conversations, its perceived competence.

The design process offers an oblique means of establishing your integrity with a ‘Sales’ resistant customer and a way for the customer to confirm the validity of her initial perceptions.

Of course, the design skills I’m talking about here go beyond software proficiency and product knowledge - and they go far beyond  Old Selling too.

It’s a mistake to accept any separation between designing and selling, just as it is a mistake to let Old Selling get in the way of buying.

Related posts:

http://www.thekitchenword.com/blog/2011/8/17/fitted-kitchens-and-sell-buy-convergence.html

http://www.thekitchenword.com/blog/2011/7/13/to-sell-more-start-at-the-finish.html

Copernicus Kitchens Or Ptolemy Kitchens?

  

Around the 16th-17th century, Ptolemy’s view of the Universe was that Earth rested at the centre and all the planets, including the Sun, revolved around it.

Copernicus came along and was able to prove that, in fact, the Sun lies at the centre, with the planets, including Earth, in constant orbit around it.

With regard to kitchens, instead of the Earth and Sun, let’s consider companies and consumers.
 

Ptolemy Kitchen Co. believes it lives in a commercesphere at the centre of a wider consumerverse made up of thousands of orbiting customers.

Copernicus Kitchen Co., on the other hand, recognises that it’s the  consumersphere that lies at the heart of a commercial cosmos made up of thousands of orbiting companies.

This shift in perception may be quite subtle but the implications are significant when it comes to communicating with the marketplace.

Ptolemy Kitchens loves broadcasting. The megaphone is the weapon of choice to "get the message out there". When it comes to creative copywriting, fiction seems to be its strongest talent: "Up To 70% Off!" is a popular theme. “It's a numbers game. Just get them in the door and we’ll do a sales job on them." That’s the mantra.

But broadcasting 'buckshot' is expensive, inherently indiscriminate, and wasteful. Think of the average 1% return on a direct mail shot.

Copernicus Kitchens takes a different approach. Its method is closer to GPS than broadcasting.

It has ‘communication satellites’ in constant orbit around the consumersphere. These are configured for two way communication to determine a mutually agreed destination. Only then can they help to plot a course by providing useful, relevant information and a customisable  journey plan.

Broadcasting can be reassuring. There’s a certain comfort in hearing the echo of your own message  even as it ricochets off unintended targets.

The GPS method, on the other hand, is finely focussed. It requires constant listening to the consumersphere and continuous fine tuning. It’s results may be measurable and cumulative but patience and discrimination are required - and an aptitude for working in the dark.

Copernicus Kitchens, though, is in it for the long run.

Ptolemy's had his day.