Showroom Rotation Is

Just Like Writing a Blog

The venerable Jerry Epperson, who has been commenting on the furniture industry for decades, suggests that you re-arrange your showroom every three weeks.

That way, every time a customer returns, she might find things she didn’t see last time.

Essentially, rearranging your show room creates a relationship with your customer before they even become a customer.

This slideshow is our effort to do exactly the same thing with you.

We serve a lot of furniture stores.

In fact, we had a booth at the North American Home Furnishings Association tradeshow.

Charles was there:

Since you matter to us (yes, you personally) we try to create blog articles and slideshows that you’ll find useful.

Which is sort of like you rearranging your showroom to impress your prospects.

So let’s look at your showroom as if it were your blog.

What do you do first?

“Know thyself,” as Socrates taught us.

Who are you as a furniture store owner or manager?

Does this describe you?

Or are you more like this:

Or, being totally honest, are you like this:

As you know, customers respond to sincerity more readily than anything else.

It’s YOUR store, so it has to reflect who YOU are.

So once you have a clear self-image that you can believe in…

…you need to identify a few main types of customers.

We call these “personas”

Since everyone is unique and since you learn a lot of peculiarities about your customers, given the highly personal nature of your sale, you’ll probably come up with too many of them at first.

Optimally, you want five or six.

For our purposes in this slideshow, we’ll look at just two.

Men and women.

Thanks to technology, we’re the first generation since Socrates that can accurately describe the differences between men and women.

Men are like this:

(Ummm…the enabling technological innovation making this revolutionary insight possible is the emoticon. Did we forget to mention that?)

They work. Women are like this:

Men first.

Few things make a furniture salesperson smile as broadly as a mature man who finds himself on his own for the first time in decades.

He wants your help, he makes decisions relatively quickly, and he pays full price up front.

Furniture nirvana.

Unfortunately he can remember only one piece of furniture from his old life:

So you have to help him see other furniture.

Do you want him to see this:

Not an easy question, is it?

An open space invites people to move around.

It also makes it easy for him to look at each piece.

But will that sell furniture?

That’s the essence of defining a persona.

It’s not just about who he is.

It’s about what he wants, and helping him figure that out.

Maybe this is easier for a man to understand:

The antlers will draw him across the room

And while he’ll probably ignore the couch (it has tassels) he might want any one of the other pieces on display.

Without a doubt, he’ll appreciate the effort that went into the presentation.

If you have a restoration work room, be sure to include that on the tour.

Tools are always interesting…

…but the tour is what matters.

If he knows you’ve thought about him, he’ll feel like you want him to be your customer.

In Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, John Gray writes that “Men are motivated when they feel needed…”

If you’ve set up your showroom to make him feel that way,he’ll respond.

Only, he may not respond the first time he sees your showroom.

Marketing like this takes a little time.

Ultimately you’ll end up with better relationships and more sales….

…but each customer may need to see things arranged differently a few times before they sit down with you.

www.cross-check.com 888-937-2249

So now let’s think about women.

The emoticon joke makes a good point: women will have a much broader range of reactions to your showroom.

You’ve probably seen this before: one day your prospect looks like this:

And the next day, sitting on the same couch and looking at the same price, they look like this:

The complexities only begin there.

Since women have a broad range of reactions, try to create evocative presentations.

You never really know what’s going to appeal to someone until you watch them respond to it.

How does this make you feel:

Are you at a cool hipster party meeting fascinating people late at night?

Or are you in someone’s cold, dank basement?

If you can create a space that raises questions like those, try to create another at the opposite end of the spectrum:

Are you visiting with tasteful world travelers who will regale you with fascinating stories?

Or are you at your in-laws tract home, bored out of your mind?

Watch your customer, and their reactions will tell you where your sale lies

John Gray tells us that “…women are motivated when they feel cherished.”

When you go out of your way to give your prospect a broad array of experiences, her main take-away is that you care about her home.

The term is “Relationship Marketing”

And you can test it right now…

Do you appreciate this slideshow?

Do you feel that we care about your business?

If we wanted to tell you how we can help you close sales and increase profits…

Would you listen?

You wouldn’t be here unless the answer was “Yes”

But before we tell you about a service we offer that can literally increase your revenue, lets take one last look at your showroom as your blog.

Your showroom seems passive, like a blog article on a webpage…

…but in reality it can work really hard for you.

It can create a relationship with a prospect before you even greet them.

If a prospect feels like they know you, they will trust you.

If a prospect feels like you care about them, and you took the time to think about them and please them…

…they will want to do business with you.

And that’s where we can help.

Because once your customer has made a decision, they want their furniture in their house -- right now.

Why make them wait?

You know that over the course of the recession Americans closed 400 million credit card accounts.

You know that one in five people increased their use of checks

And you know the reason is fiscal responsibility.

Everyone from Millennials to Boomers has become more financially responsible.

They don’t want financing and they don’t want a credit card.

They want their furniture.

If they’re at your competitor and they don’t have the funds for it, your competitor loses the sale.

But you work with us…

…because you know we care about you.

And we have a service that lets you give your customer what we call “in-home layaway”

It’s not financing…

…but it lets your customer take their purchase home today…

…While guaranteeing your revenue.

Let us tell you how it works.

Learn more here, and we’ll be in touch:

Commonly known as "hold check," this service is designed to provide customers a flexible payment schedule and increase sales for your business. Consumers can write 2 - 4 checks for the total purchase amount, up to 30 - 45 days, and all funds are guaranteed by a check service provider

Approval of out-of-town, out-of-state, even checks from Canada and US territories

Checks are approved quickly and easily at the POS via Internet, phone or terminal

CrossCheck, Inc.

1440 North McDowell Rd.

Petaluma, CA 94954

888-937-2249

sales@cross-check.com

www.Cross-Check.com