What are you saying?   Just imagine if a customer said, “I can buy your product cheaper from your competitor.”  How would you respond?  I hope it’s not, “Thanks for letting me know.  I can lower my price.”  That’s the wrong answer. A salesman recently told me how he responded this way and added, “Well, you know we have a price matching policy.”  He then cut his price. 

Ouch.  Price matching policy or not, when you immediately match a competitor’s lower price what you do is send a dangerous signal to your customer. You signal that all you have to offer is a low price and nothing more.

It’s elementary, my dear Watson.  Don’t immediately match a competitor when you learn of a lower price.  Instead, do some detective work.  Do your competitors provide the same level of service as you?  Are the products truly identical? In this case, the competitor’s price didn’t match the current supplier’s faster and reliable service. 

When I asked the salesman what would happen with a service delay, he told me about numerous, expensive legal penalties that his customer would have to pay.  I asked him if he had discussed this with his customer. He hadn’t. That was a mistake.

No business professional wants to save a few bucks only to be open to thousands of dollars in liabilities as a result.  What this salesman should have done was to begin a sales conversation about his customer’s needs, the consequences of not having the needs met and what the salesman offers.  Then he could demonstrate that his service was worth a higher price.

Get back to basics.  You have to be prepared to have these kinds of conversations.  What parts of your product and service are unique and worth paying more for?  Now would be a good time to start learning if you don’t know how you stack up against your competition.  Know what their strengths and weaknesses are.  Now look at your own. 

See which of your customers need your strengths.  Look at your business and know which competitors can’t match your strengths.  Breathe a sigh of relief.  These customers are less vulnerable to your competition. 

You do need to find your vulnerable accounts so you can avoid having to lower your price.  Vulnerable customers are those that don’t need one of your strengths.  Their vulnerability isn’t certain when you uncover these accounts. You might be missing something.  Maybe your customer could value something you offer and you haven’t discussed it with him yet.  Schedule an appointment and discuss it now. 

Go ahead and lower your price if you can’t distinguish yourself from your competition. Just remember, if you don’t know why a customer should pay more for what you sell, you’ll end up saying something you’ll regret later.  What you’ll say is, “Sure, I can match that price.”

There’s a new customer in the market that represents the largest consumer group in the U.S. but most Baby Boomers don’t understand — and that could be a very costly mistake.

I can tell you right now you may not like this article. With all the effort and energy spent, is anybody making money with social media?

Strange way to begin… but reading this is one of the most important things you can do for your business.

Why? Because there’s a whole new batch of customers – about 72 million of them (the largest group in the U.S. today!) – whom you’re about to do business with — and they are completely different from you and all the other customers you’ve had.

I’ve been speaking all over the country about social media and a new group called Gen Y. This group was born between 1977 and 1994, so they’re now between the ages of 18 and 35, and to boomers, they’re really, really weird.

They’d much rather spend time on Facebook than watch TV. They’re adored by their parents. One out of three have at least one tattoo. They don’t see marriage as important in their lives. They eat out more than eat at home. They’re more likely to read a blog than a newspaper article, and if they do read a newspaper article most of them read it online. Of those who do watch TV, nearly half prefer to watch the shows on their computer.

What’s their preferred method of communication? Email? A phone call? Nope. It’s …texting. They send about 50 text messages every day. In fact, nearly half say texting is “just as meaningful as an actual conversation with someone over the phone,” according to eMarketer. Just as many say the primary reason they have a cell phone is for texting and 41% say they’ve made a purchase using their smartphone. And email is something their parents do – not them!

Makes you feel like a dinosaur, doesn’t it? I know I feel that way. Most people I talk with don’t understand this generation and seem overwhelmed just trying to figure out how to reach this group. But I’ve got a few ideas to make it easy – and profitable – for you…

The secret to reaching this group is to understand them first. You can see from the description I just shared that they’re not like most people you already know.

But here are a few interesting insights:

• 63% use social media to engage with brands and more than 50% say that Facebook, blogs, and brand videos affect their opinions about products, according to the L2 Gen Y Affluents: Media Survey, which evaluated the responses from nearly 1,000 adults.
• Websites are as influential as physical stores in shaping Gen Y sentiment, second only to friends’ opinions, according to the survey.

And from my own research I’ve found that they want control over the shopping experience. Years ago, if you told someone that they could design a room themselves or use the self check out, they would have been offended. Today, Gen Y shoppers prefer it! They want to go online and click on a virtual room and see what it looks like in different colors. They want to click on the various skins for their laptop and design them themselves.

They want to keep you at arms’ length. They’re skeptical and they don’t trust most businesses. But there is a way to reach them. How?

Entertain them.

Have fun with them. Mohawk Flooring does a great job with this. Now, you may think you can’t do a lot of fun things with flooring. And you would be right. So Mohawk had fun with its name and created Mohawk Me – an app that allows you to give anyone a virtual Mohawk hairstyle by downloading a picture of a friend or yourself onto one of its eight images. Based on your selection, it also recommends the “perfect Mohawk flooring choice” to match their personality.

Created by Mohawk Flooring, Mohawk Me is a fun app the company created to appeal to Gen Y consumers. It's all about hooking their hungry fish by giving them something fun to do and then talking with them about flooring.

Created by Mohawk Flooring, Mohawk Me is a fun app the company created to appeal to Gen Y consumers. It’s all about hooking their hungry fish by giving them something fun to do and then talking with them about flooring.

It’s brilliant. As you can see people have quite a bit of fun with it. It’s a great way to get users engaged, and without even knowing they’re start to get some flooring ideas!

My point: Traditional marketing won’t work with Gen Yers. But that doesn’t mean you abandon tried-and-true marketing principles – principles like “Go where your hungry fish live.” (Heard me say that before?)

So where do these Hungry Fish live? YouTube and Facebook.

Dr. Robert Wagstaff proved that you really can sell just about any product using social media – and he’s 76 years old! Several years ago “Dr. Bob” developed the Orabrush, a tongue cleaner designed to help cure bad breath. Sounds gross, and in fact he tried selling it using traditional marketing — and it bombed. After 10 years of trying, he sold about 100 (about 1 a month) at $5 each. Walmart and CVS weren’t interested in carrying it on their shelves. A $50,000 infomercial tanked. He even tried selling the patent to Oral-B, but they wanted nothing to do with it.

So he took his product to a marketing class in 2009 at BYU to get ideas. Jeffrey Harmon, a student at the time, was interested in selling it on Facebook using a video he created for $500. In five weeks, Orabrush sold 10,000 units. Within one year, the company passed $1 million in sales.

The videos are funny, entertaining, clever, and so far they’ve attracted more than 38 million views on its brand channel. Orabrush is only behind Apple and Old Spice, with over 150,000 subscribers. It also has more than 300,000 fans on Facebook. It’s the only advertising the company has done. But it gets better. Just last year, Orabrush announced that the Orabrush is now being sold in 3,500 Walmart stores throughout the U.S. Hmmm… I guess they’re interested now!

How do you sell something as gross as the Orabrush? Turn it into a YouTube video. Have fun with it. It’s a formula that’s worked for this company that was struggling to sell just a few units every month. Now they’re selling millions!

What’s fascinating about Gen Y’ers is that once they trust a brand, 63% will use social media to engage with brands. They’ll “like it” on Facebook, subscribe to its YouTube channel, and sign up for offers, according to the L2 Gen Y study. This stat is worth repeating because it surprised me too: more than 50% say that Facebook, blogs and brand videos affect their opinions about products. That’s just as powerful as word-of-mouth advertising and you have control over it!

If that’s not proof enough here’s another great example from one of our clients.  JeeperzCreeperz sells and installs automotive aftermarket accessories. It’s a family-owned operation that started as a hobby for Kevin Bentz and his wife Charri and has grown into an online and brick-and-mortar accessory store for off-road vehicles, especially Jeeps.

Facing tough competition online from other aftermarket sellers they turned to Facebook and over several months built their page up to 1,700 fans, but very few sales. But within a few months, they increased their sales leads by 4200%. How? They built trust by showing which industry associations they’re active in, and they offered a $10 discount for everyone who became a fan on Facebook (an “ethical bribe”).

They also posted questions and comments to encourage discussion – about anything except the company. They asked: “Where is your favorite wheeling spot? Post up!” (58 comments). “If you could find a killer deal on some part, what would it be?” (35 comments). What’s cool is that the best responses were those that talked about their wants and needs.

So what did Kevin and Charri do? They had their staff monitor the discussion looking for comments that could be a possible lead and contacted them. Simply by creating a forum for others to post their comments, they created their own lead generation system. So instead of getting 1 sales lead per month, they’re averaging 43! How cool is that?

Perhaps you’re resistant about jumping into social media. But it’s time. Gen Y is the largest consumer group in the U.S. and their income levels are expected to double within the next five years. That’s a market you want to reach!

Have fun with it. Try engaging with them (I know they’re weird, but try) on YouTube or on Facebook. Consider creating an app. Don’t know how to do it? Just drop us an email we will give you some resources. Also, hire a Gen Y person to do it for you. Test it and see for yourself what works. We’ll be glad to try to drag you into this market – even if you may be kicking and screaming

Always taking you from where you are to where you want to go.

Jon Goldman, President & CEO
Brand Launcher
Lumpy Mail

We all know that life moves faster these days. For example, it took at least 8 years for new technologies like AM radio, television, VCR’s and cordless phones to penetrate 60% of U.S. households. Facebook grew from 100 million users to over 800 million users in three years! Good technologies meet a need, grow in popularity, and become commonplace. Meanwhile, someone figures out how to make more money using them.

Enter social media. What’s the “New ROI” and what does it have to do with social media? You know the classic definition of ROI – Return on Investment. You spend money to make money, with the question being how much do you make for your trouble? Kevin Knebl has defined the “New ROI” as the Risk of Inactivity. That is, what are the consequences of being left behind by, as Abraham Lincoln called them, the people who hustle?

Think about changes in the last few years – Blu-Ray movies, smart phones, tablets and e-readers, $4/gallon gasoline, Pinterest, etc. Think about technology changes in your business – cell phones, email, Web sites, etc. Those are a lot of changes. What changes will happen in the next few years? Specifically, where do you want to be in two years when it comes to social media? We are all trying to figure out how to best use social media for business, and that is absolutely the right question – How? Not If. Not Maybe. Not Should. How?

Of course, How? rhymes with Now, which is when we should probably start so we get where we want to be in two years. As George S. Patton said, “A good plan implemented today is better than a perfect plan implemented tomorrow.” Now’s the time to take the first steps toward using social media for business, to minimize the “New ROI” – the Risk of Inactivity. 

Find a partner. Who sells to your customers and doesn’t compete with you? Partner up with that salesperson to exchange leads. Here’s what consumer air conditioning contractors do. They sell to homeowners. Remodelers also sell to homeowners.  Many remodelers are unaware of air conditioning requirements in new spaces. They install a unit that is under capacity. As a result, the homeowner is dissatisfied with the remodel.

When they partner, the remodeler gets the right air conditioning specs for the job, the customer is satisfied and the air conditioning contractor makes a sale. That’s win-win-win. Who can you partner with who can bring you leads and result in your making a sale?

Keep your boss in the loop. There’s nothing worse in business than an unexpected circumstance that turns your plans upside down. Now think about your selling. You don’t like unexpected problems either. When you work with your customers you expect an open dialogue where they tell you when they have issues so you have an opportunity to fix them. You can even handle the unexpected issue, provided you know about it.

Now consider your boss.  Unless you have final say on all key issues in your business, your boss is going to be an integral part of your sales strategy. Your boss signs off on pricing and approves exceptions to company policy. You get more responsiveness when your boss trusts your judgment.

How do you make that happen? You keep your boss informed about issues you’re facing and how you’re addressing them.  That builds trust. The worse thing you can do is keep issues hidden from your boss. If you do, when you need a quick response or support for an idea, your boss will be less likely to deliver. A sales emergency is not the time when you want to be on your own.

Think before you do. I know you’re busy. Everyone is today. If you want to see the difference in sales success, just look at activity versus results. I see a lot of active people, but they’re just not producing results. They rush through tasks thinking they’ll accomplish more. They won’t. Here’s how you can get better results.

Before you start a task, first think about it. Take a few minutes to consider what you’re trying to accomplish and who should be involved.  Then complete the task. After you’re done, do a debrief. What did you learn? Would there be anything you do differently in the future?

Thinking is all too often undervalued in selling. Successful salespeople are the ones who think about their selling, evaluate it and draw conclusions. Do you take the time to think about your selling and the tasks you need to accomplish? If you don’t, now would be a good time to start.

You can develop your own ideas to improve your selling. You also can imitate what other people do to increase their sales while you increase your sales, too.

Let me ask you a tough question: Can your business run without you?

Can you take off for a few weeks — or even a few months — and never look back knowing that your business will run just fine even if you’re not there?

Take me for example. I’m not even in the country as you read this. I’m on vacation for several weeks. I haven’t talked to anybody in the office. I have no meetings scheduled. I’m not even worried about the business.

A business isn’t a real business if you have to be there in order for things to get done. That’s a J-O-B, not a business. Sure, we all have responsibilities and unique skills we bring to the business but if it can’t run without you, you’ve actually created a liability for yourself, your family and your customers.

Instead, you want to build an asset — a business that can go on without you. Here’s how…

For most business owners today, the most important assets you have are not your computers, your inventory or even your customers. It’s your employees!

Yet, when was the last time you really sat down to evaluate your hiring process like you scrutinize over your sales or ordering processes? How do even know when to hire someone?

For most, the decision comes once they realize that they simply can’t get everything done or they realize they can afford to spend the money. Often, business owners will opt for a quick fix and say, “Let’s just get somebody – anybody to help!” That can be a BIG mistake.

In one of these jobs, the customer returned and mentioned what a terrible job the other company did and they wished they gone with them. Well, guess what? It’s too late. Your own lack of selling skills contributed to that terrible install as well as losing you the job. And it’s a sure bet that the other salesperson wasn’t even that good. Take responsibility, your sales skills need a drastic makeover.

Do you immediately open the conversation with something about flooring? About today’s sale? Or about product knowledge? Guess what? You can’t sell!  Today’s customer is more defensive than ever. She is more demanding and is armed with information. Every sale starts with a web site, which should be loaded with information. She is looking for value and there is only one way she judges the best value.

More men than ever are coming in to our stores alone. What is the cause of this phenomenon? The economy has more people worried about spending money and especially men. You can’t sell this guy because he is just pre-shopping and will encourage his wife to buy where he perceives the best values lay. Value has nothing to do with cost. In his mind, value has to do with whether he likes you or not. Herein lies the basis of all selling. Making a personal connection with your customers means more than traditional selling skills or product knowledge. People make their decision to trust people based on whether they like you or not. This is backed up by the hundreds of books by super salespeople who state they talk about everything except what they are selling. This is the importance of a personal connection. Many of these super salespeople make over a million a year selling. It is the only thing that will separate you from the competition. It’s never the price, it’s whether they like you or not.

I have been teaching this to successful salespeople in this industry for years, but in these difficult times, it’s more critical than ever. You can contact me through Floor Covering News for more information. We all complain about the big boxes, Empire and LL, but never figure out what we may have done wrong. You have to take responsibility. Creating a personal relationship with someone you just met is the most important skill in sales and requires knowledge, practice and most of all, a desire to please people.

In a previous SURFACES│StonExpo/Marmomacc Americas Blog “You’re Really Good At Change, But What’s Next?” I reported some practical, inexpensive ideas on how you can use technology in your business. Here are a few more tools and ideas you and your staff can use right now:

-Search for your store on Google and consumer review sites (like angieslist.com, yelp.com and complaints.com); if you find compliments about your business when you do the searches, have them on a computer ready to show to customers in your store, and put links to them on your Web site;

-Get a small, inexpensive “shoot and share” video camera; ask your staff to each record themselves as if they were telling a customer about your business and why the customer should buy from you; when they have a version they like, ask them to show it to you and one another; they’ll be practicing – on one another instead of a customer – while training each other; you might even find videos good enough to use on your Web site or YouTube.com;

-Ask satisfied customers for video testimonials about their new floors and your business; these can be used (with permission) in your store, on your Web site, etc.; (yes, I know, you think customers won’t agree to do this, but as time passes Gen X’ers and Millennials are much less concerned about privacy issues than Boomers, so you may be pleasantly surprised at the results).

Yes, at some point, all new technology is scary. But if we take small steps we’ll learn and benefit from the technologies. After all, there’s a reason that DVD’s replaced VHS tapes, and Blu-ray is replacing DVD’s. When people see benefits from new technology, they adapt the new technology. These tips can help you benefit from new technologies today, simply.  Good luck!

Trust is becoming increasingly important as you try to serve your customers. It’s part of the reason why they

-check your Web site and your competitors’ Web sites, or Google you and review sites like angieslist.com before coming to your store;

-check with their friends on facebook.com and twitter.com for second, third and fourth opinions before buying from you; and

-bring friends to your store and want to check with their family before committing to buy new flooring.

How do you earn their trust, then? Certainly your reputation and brand are critical to ever getting them in your door. Once they walk in, what can you then do to earn their trust? Because they can’t trust someone they don’t know, it’s critical to build a relationship with your customers.

First, we need to listen to each customer, both online and when she comes into the store. Each customer has a unique situation and we need to be ready to provide unique solutions, not the same solution as we try to give everyone else based on go-to products.

We need to demonstrate by our actions – good eye contact, sincerity, and listening – that we genuinely have the customer’s best interests in mind. We are her partner in finding that unique solution. Nothing is more important than she is.

She needs to believe that the options you present serve her interests as well as your own. What do I mean by this? Just because you have three rolls of a beige texture in the back doesn’t mean that you should put it first on her list of carpet options! Make sure the products you show her deliver on her unique needs in a way she’ll understand. This is possible if we have listened well and demonstrated our partnership role.

And, your customer needs to understand the selection process, and that it truly is her selection. You’re not selling – you’re enabling her selection of the best product for her.

Trust based on this kind of a relationship with your customer will strengthen your reputation in your market. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “Glass, china and reputations are easily cracked and never well mended.” Protect your reputation by building trust with your customer.

In most cases, moisture problems can be avoided before they occur by practicing good installation procedures.  The first step in a successful installation is to make sure that the wood to be installed is acclimated to the job site properly.  This means that the job site needs to be as close to normal living conditions as possible before installation begins.  Once the wood is acclimated properly to the job site, it should be tested thoroughly, along with the subfloor, for moisture content.  To get accurate readings, several different pieces of wood from several different bundles should be tested. 

Often, anxious homeowners or builders will try to push wood flooring installers to skip this acclimation process because of scheduling problems.  Contractors need to be firm, and educate their customers about how wood reacts to environmental conditions.  It often is useful to keep pictures on hand that show the results of improper acclimation and moisture testing.  One look at a cupped or crowned floor, representing thousands of wasted dollars, and weeks of messy and costly repair, is often all that is needed to make the point loud and clear. 

Sometimes, despite all the installation precautions taken, moisture still can wreak havoc on a wood floor.  Faulty dishwashers, overflowing sinks, leaky pipes, malfunctioning ice makers, careless homeowners – all these problems can introduce moisture to wood floors, causing significant damage if ignored and untreated.

As a flooring professional, it’s important to know how to diagnose and repair these kinds of moisture-related issues.  This topic – Installation Failures: Tile and Hardwoods – will be discussed at length during SURFACES │StonExpo/Marmomacc Americas on Tuesday, January 24.  I look forward to seeing you there.