I thing Sillarys are in serious error at the moment with all these silly offers.
My customers can now go to b&q for an upgrade in quality.
All Sillarys look at is the number of leads generated and think every thing is rosie. They are looking at the next sale of the company, so it is all short term, short sightedness.
They are breaking some of the basic rules of selling and in doing so making our job very difficult, hence the drop in turnover. NEVER
assume anything you don’t know what the customer is expecting or is
prepared to spend - unless of course they tell you that they want the cheapest deal you
can offer. Which is of course what we are all hearing thanks to the silly offers. Always try to start by showing them your higher quality (and priced)
fabrics. Get them to choose a fabric they like and work them out a price. You will
now know how much the customer is expecting to pay. If the price of their preferred
fabric option is too much for them you can then offer lower priced fabrics from your
collection.
If you work the other way around, ie point out your lowest priced fabrics
and give a price for them, it will be almost impossible to sell up, even if they have a
bigger budget and were expecting to pay more.
I have a wonderful array of fabrics in my vertical blind book, which are nearly redundant as I am stuck selling clouds and the like because of customer preconditioning.
I would love to sell up, but the advertising is targeting the wrong customer who will then not pay another £100 for their choice.
I wish the people who think this is a good idea would go back to asda and selling baked beans!
I also notice that Arena have a nice new "commercial presenter" and all we have is "christy"
. This has been a big gap in our fabrics for ages, its time something was done. Not just with the fabrics, but with the whole commercial package, which at present is non existant!
Would it be ok to buy my commercial stuff from a trade supplier and then sell it to the customer as Sillarys have'nt got anything of worth? I think not somehow. Then do something about it! Lets have the stuff so we can compete.
Mind you all the above could apply to woodens which are still c##p, decent vertical headrails and blackout romans (opps! we finally do them).
I think I might have gone off on one, I better close, bye ;D
. This has been a big gap in our fabrics for ages, its time something was done. Not just with the fabrics, but with the whole commercial package, which at present is non existant!