Lighting manufacturers and retailers are facing an identity crisis. Original designs are quickly imitated by others, big box merchants display “me too” products at cut rate prices. While imitation is flattery, it cuts into the identity of the source design and reduces sell-through of that type of merchandise. Much energy, time and money is spent at trade markets and shows to wow the buyers to display products. Effort is put into store displays and point of sale materials, yet little focus is put on the front line sales person who is the product ambassador for the consumer.
Delivering a good product at a good price is a base level expectation; showrooms want suppliers that will provide them with a competitive advantage that goes beyond a monetary advantage. Showrooms have expectations of assistance in the training of their staff beyond that of product knowledge and most vendors, independent sales representatives, and the retailers themselves, don’t have the background skills or time to accomplish this.
Daily, customers visit showrooms and in the best case scenario sales people are helpful, possibly offering a margin reducing discount, and in the worst case, they lurk and wait for the customer to “buy” or ask a question and then dread the interaction, typically then suggesting the lowest priced option.
Today we must be able to maximize the customer visit with sales dollars and in rapport building. This can be accomplished by building brand, both the dealers brand and the vendor’s brand, with a focus on creating bond and form the foundation to create a long term relationship with the customer and the end user.
Now more than ever before, sales teams must connect with people, to offer insights and ideas on how to solve and manage customer’s challenges.
To succeed in the current market place, retailers, vendors and agencies must make an investment in the front-line sales teams in order to achieve higher levels of market penetration, brand awareness and sales intelligence.
Customers do more research on items they want to buy than they ever have in the past. It’s no longer enough to be an expert on your products or to uncover problems and offer solutions that may or may not exist. Reaching the customer on a human to human emotional level is the way to succeed. The phrase “they don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” is more applicable today than ever before.
Educated and internet savvy clients of today are familiar with the deceptive and manipulative techniques of yesterday’s salesperson. Gone are the days of the salesperson that is a fast talking manipulator with “closing techniques”. Customers will not tolerate that behavior in the 21st century. The sales people and companies that hold onto these old ways will become extinct. They will be replaced by the companies that embrace the salesperson as a helper, as a well-connected concierge. We must want to put the customer’s needs first, therefore to be successful in sales we will have to.
Customers will gravitate to those salespeople and their companies that show concern and care for their well-being and their relationship regardless of how long that relationship is for. Thus, salespeople must develop a deeper relationship with their clients, even acting as their “counselors”. Those salespeople and companies that embrace this “new” way of working with customers will reap the majority of available business and in the never ending streamlining of the sales channel; they will be the most successful.
This means front line salespeople must be up on current design trends and technology as it applies to this industry. They must increase their human and social capital investment in customers as well as in their associates and chosen industry.
Are you ready to commit to this investment?
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