Kitchen & Bath Design News is the industry's leading business, design and product resource for the kitchen and bath trade.
Issue link: http://kitchenbathdesign.epubxp.com/i/165636
displays. If you don't, your options are often either to lower margins or hold fast to your pricing requirements and risk losing sales on easily shopped products and brands. will address many of the issues and strategies showrooms can explore to counteract showrooming, improve instore experiences, better understand customer journeys and convert the Internet from adversary to ally at its October 9-12 Annual Conference and Product Showcase in Chandler (Phoenix), AZ. It's content that your business needs to become better. Steven Weinberg is the national sales manager for California Faucets and served as a past president of the Decorative Plumbing & Hardware Association. TRAINING MATTERS Getting your interests aligned is key to maintaining margins and the overall health of your business. Emphasizing brands that reduce your closing rate or lower your margins can be devastating to your bottom line. Everyone in the showroom needs to understand which lines generate the greatest margins, in addition to being focused on making sales. Gravitating to highermargin products rather than low-margin order taking requires training or retraining your sales team. The objective is to help educate those who come into the showroom and help them make good selections rather than just take an order for products that they were "told" to buy. This may also require educating or re-educating those who "told" the consumers what products to purchase. Sales training, as opposed to product training, is a key component here. Salespeople often get product knowledge from manufacturers' reps, but rarely do they receive sales training. You may want to consider sales training for those on the selling floor. Your return on that investment should more than make up for the cost. Finding brands that offer limited distribution and protection from Internet discounters is a key to realizing much healthier showroom profts. Yet, these lines and manufacturers are often neglected or simply overlooked. Higher margins are there to be had. This requires the proper focus by the showroom owners, managers and everyone on the sales foor. You have to be naive to believe that showrooming is not afecting your business now or will not adversely affect it in the future. The entire retail and purchasing paradigm has changed. DPHA YOUR OPINION JUST GOT MORE VALUABLE Sign up for the designer Star Partner™ Program and you will earn cash rewards every time you specify a Thermador product. As the best program in the industry, we will also make sure you are always up to date on the latest that Thermador has to offer. You will be doing right by your clients by recommending the most innovative appliances, while earning rewards for yourself. Everybody wins. SIGN UP AT THERMADOR.COM/STAR-PARTNER ACCESSORIES ARE NOT ELIGIBLE FOR REWARDS. SUBJECT TO RULES AND RESTRICTIONS, AND REWARD AMOUNTS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE. PAYMENTS MAY BE CLAIMED ONLY AFTER DELIVERY TO AND INSTALLATION BY THE END USER. ALL TRANSACTIONS ARE SUBJECT TO AUDIT, BSH RESERVES THE RIGHT TO END THE REWARDS PROGRAM WITHOUT NOTICE. PROGRAM NOT AVAILABLE IN THE FOLLOWING STATES: CA, ID, WA, OR, MT, WY, AK, HI. PROGRAM ENDS 12/31/13. THO183-14-109585-2 Circle No. 14 on Product Card