Making the Perfect Sale

My husband and I have recently been in the market for a new bathroom. The back story is, that last year we moved into a beautiful new house, and immediately discovered that the previous occupants had lived there for 9 years without a shower (how does anyone do that?!?!) No problem we thought, we’ll just get a plumber in, tile up the wall and put in a shower above the bath.
So we bought our shower kit, a whole load of crazily priced mosaics, arranged the tiler and plumber and waited for the transformation to happen.

But inevitably it wasn’t to be as simple as we’d hoped. The tiles behind the bath didn’t sound right and the tiler suspected that water was leaking through to the stud wall behind. This was where we discovered, that what looked like a perfectly attractive and well put together bathroom, was actually a botch job, that warranted taking the whole thing apart and starting from scratch.
So we stuck up some very unattractive tile boards and decided to get a new bathroom.

… 1 year later …

Does anyone else find that it takes a long time to actually get moving on projects like this?
We sourced 2 bathroom design companies and this is our experience with the second one.

The first visit

One Saturday morning, I popped down to the local franchise showroom and was immediately greeted by a very friendly young woman called Joanne. After I had a look around their lovely showroom, she explained that their process is to sit down with clients first, understand their needs, show them some products and THEN if they are happy with that, they come round and put together a free design based on their specifications. Following this, they arrange a meeting to discuss the design and provide the quotation.

The second visit

After a disappointing design meeting with Design Company No. 1; I phoned Joanne as we were pulling away in the car and arranged a meeting for an hour later.
We arrived with my 5 year old daughter in tow, to find a lovely pot of tea and a plateful of little muffins and flapjacks. They were a big hit with my daughter. We then proceeded to have a detailed discussion around our requirements, our budget, and what we were looking for.
The whole experience was really friendly, chatty and relaxed. We arranged for Joanne to come round to our house that week, and made an appointment to view the design the following week.

The sale

On arrival the following Saturday, we sat down with Joanne (with more tea and flapjacks) and she showed us a hand drawn design that stopped us in our tracks. Wow, this was our bathroom, but not our bathroom. It was exactly what we were looking for, bar a couple of little things. I loved it! She then ran through all the choices she’d made, from shower enclosure, to floor tiles, to bathroom furniture, to sinks, to plugs, to mosaics, to bath, to toilet. Everything in detail with photos and catalogues. And then she showed us the price.
…When you start a project like this, you have a budget in mind. We knew what we were hoping to spend, and we had an idea of the split between the build and the fixtures and fittings.
…. So the price was a bit of a shock. We had left out loads of little costs, which added up to an additional £1500 on top of what we expected. Plus we had also chosen some items that were a little pricier than we’d intended (as you do…)
Then she showed us the build cost. The build cost amazingly, happened to be approximately 1/3 less than we were expecting. And in that moment she had us.
By spending so much time with us, explaining her choices, helping us to imagine what our new bathroom would be like, understanding our budget, and really showing us the impact of different choices – we were sold. Hook line and sinker. We made noises about needing to discuss it and went and had lunch – but the reality was that my husband and I both knew that this was the one. There really was nothing to discuss. After an hour we returned and put down a 50% deposit on our new bathroom.

Why was this a perfect sale?

1. She qualified her customer. We were beyond the research stage and into decision-making mode. Joanne recognised that and behaved accordingly. She invested her time at the right point in the process.
2. She checked our budget. Before she invested any real time with us she made sure that we were her target customer and had the right amount to spend and also made sure that what she presented us, matched that price.
3. She made every touch point professional and pleasant. People buy from people they know like and trust, and she ticked the box on all three points. She was extremely friendly and a real pleasure to deal with. She spoke very confidently about all our requirements, including how to achieve our walk in ‘wet’ shower area in a very small space and there was no sense that what we were requesting was difficult or expensive to do.
4. She listened. She didn’t sell us what she wanted to sell us, she listened to what we were saying and drew up plans that showed she understood. She reflected back our requirements to us perfectly.
5. She made the experience feel special. The tea / coffee / cakes was a really nice and unexpected touch. Her drawn plan of the bathroom was fantastic, and it felt like she had spent a lot of time on it. These things show that she valued us as a potential customer and was giving us a ‘high end’ service.
6. She took the time to help us imagine ourselves living with our new bathroom. By showing us all the products and going through why she chose them, she made it very difficult for us to downgrade our aspirations based on the price.
7. She was comprehensive. We are very confident that there will be no surprises. The attention to detail was like nothing I’ve ever seen before, right down to the type of plug we will have in the sink.
8. She explained why each choice was the right one. We understood her thinking and her choices and agreed.
9. She gave us a reason to signup right away. It was sale time and the sale was finishing that weekend. However, she did also say that they would be having another sale for a weekend in two weeks time. We could make our decision now and get things moving or we could wait two weeks and still get a similar price.
10. She closed the sale. She put the paper in front of us, explained what the next steps were and she asked us to proceed. It was all done in a really comfortable and easy way.

We came away from the whole experience feeling excited and looking forward to our new bathroom. At no point did we feel like we were being ‘sold’ to… though I think we were handled by a master saleswoman.
By Women Unlimited

Your Moving Billboard

Your company vehicles can spread your message at no additional cost. Use professional lettering or magnetic signs with your logo, slogan, phone and website easily visible. It's low cost advertising and will help grow your business in the local area. Here's a few ideas to help get the greatest benefit from this type of advertising.

 *Keep it Clean - Don't give the impression that you don't care how your vechiles look.
 *Use High Numbers - If you number vehicles don't start with #1, try #22 it makes you look like a bigger business.
 *Don't Say Too Much - Use large letters & numbers so people can see easily. You want them to contact you for more information.
 *Drive Carefully - Always be aware of how you drive with courtesy and don't irritate other drivers or your advertising will don't the opposite that you want it to.
 *Don't Block Other Cars - When you unload or make deliveries let others get out or in easily.
 *Park to Be Seen - When not driving leave the vehicle near busy streets so the advertising can be seen by passers-by.
 *Don't Speed - Nothing worse than a vehicle with your business name on it getting a ticket by the side of the road. Yes, everyone does look.

Barry is a speaker, business and franchise coach. www.idealetter.com

My Upcoming Schedule

Wed Feb 6th I will be speaking at Currently Speaking Toastmasters. The meeting is 6:30PM to 8PM at the fire house meeting room Dublin & Academy. I will tell a short story called "Barry's Paper Route" Guests welcome

Wed Feb 20th 7:30 AM I will speaking at the Valley Hi golf clubhouse on "The Customer Experience" for the Pikes Peak Sales Pros meeting. Guests welcome

Wed Feb...... 20th 11:30 AM I will be speaking at the Jose Muldoon's restaurant near Constitution & Powers on "The Customer Experience" for the Colo Spgs Business Alliance. Guests welcome

Tues Feb 26th 7:45 AM Colorado Springs Business Partners meets to network and exchange ideas. At the Embassy Suites meeting room just North of Woodmen & Commerce Center Dr. No cost/guests welcome

Tues Feb 26th 11:30 AM I will be speaking at the Sky Sox Banquet room 4th floor near Barnes & Tutt on "More Cheap Marketing Ideas" for the Business Linx meeting. Guests welcome

Thurs Fed 28th 5 PM I am speaking at the Interquest Rotary at Liberty Hts Retirement Comm, 12105 Ambassador Dr 80921 on "The Customer Experience" (longer version). Anyone who wants to know what the Rotary is about is welcome as a guest.

Hope to see you at some or all of these, more coming soon.

When to Give Up?

Knowing when to call it quits on your startup

FORTUNE -- Before Craigslist, before Monster.com, there was Drei Tauben Ltd, a proprietary system for help-wanted advertising for technology jobs. Christopher Frank started the company with two business partners in 1991 and spent two years building the business.

They created a user-friendly platform that could be customized by organizations that wanted to advertise job opportunities online under their own brand. Revenue started to come in and the partners had connected with an association of technology schools interested in using the system. All the signs were promising to tap into the $100 million market for technology job ads.
But revenue was growing more slowly than they had anticipated. Every month or two, the partners had to sink more of their own money into the business. In the fall of 1993, they decided to shutter the company.

"It was painful. It was like a death," says Frank, 45, who is currently a vice president at American Express and author of Drinking from the Fire Hose: Making Smarter Decisions Without Drowning in Information. "When you're passionate about something, you feel it in your bones. When that doesn't work as planned, it just drains you."

Closing down a business and giving up on the potential that inspired you to launch it in the first place is perhaps the hardest thing an entrepreneur can do. By nature, entrepreneurs see setbacks simply as problems whose solutions aren't yet evident. That same quality can put a blind spot when the answer is one you just don't want to hear: "Move on." The history of small business is littered with the shells of could-have-been success stories, companies built on a brilliant idea whose time hadn't come or was too challenging to execute profitably.
"Optimism is a gift of the entrepreneur and also an occupational hazard," says Jay Goltz, a Chicago-based serial entrepreneur. "There's a very thin line between optimistic and delusional."
From interviews with entrepreneurs, here are a few classic signs that the best choice is simply to close your small business and start fresh.

You draw blank stares
In retrospect, Frank pinpoints his company's trouble to the series of meetings Drei Tauben had with the traditional print publications that knew the ins and outs of the advertising business as well as the clients that paid for job ads. They just couldn't understand why anyone would go online to look for a job instead of opening up a newspaper. At the time, the Internet wasn't anything like it is today.
When you cannot convince your strategic partners nor your customers of the logic behind your business model, it doesn't matter if you're ultimately proven right. No matter how big the potential market may be, you first need real, live customers to write one check, and then a second.
"When you're trying to make that decision, should you stay or should you go, you can't base it on the macroeconomics," Frank says. "You need to assess your local market and your target audience. Is there revenue to support the business? Who are your customers?"

You're pushing a boulder uphill
Another bad sign: you keep sinking more money and time into a venture -- and it doesn't get any easier.
Michael Paolucci spent three years building Solvate, a New York-based peer-to-peer labor market, but kept falling short of the momentum and growth he needed to continue attracting venture capital. Instead, the company showed flat growth and was shuttered late last year rather than seeking another round of funding.
"We were ahead of the market," Paolucci says. "It's a little early for people to be transacting in certain ways for certain kinds of work through the network. I think what we tried to achieve is going to exist at some point."

By contrast, Paolucci is now co-founder and chairman of Slooh, a small, profitable company that connects telescopes to the Internet, broadcasting celestial events like lunar and solar eclipses. This company is on a slow-and-steady upward trajectory. "It doesn't fit the venture mold. We see it getting a little bit better every year," he says.

New or newly discovered roadblocks
For Jill Cartwright, founder of Boston-based Go Gaga, the recession came on like a brick wall. She'd launched the ergonomic diaper bag company in 2007, and it quickly became profitable, with distribution channels throughout the U.S., Canada and Australia and business partners like Babies R Us, Diapers.com, Amazon.com, and eBags.
But by the last half of 2010, Cartwright was losing an average of three independent boutiques a month, due to bankruptcy. With a virtual supply chain and minimal overhead, she could have dramatically scaled back and kept limping along. Instead, she decided to halt production last October.
"Like so many entrepreneurs, I wanted the business I created to be something dynamic that was constantly evolving," she says. "I found myself so bogged down in the nuts and bolts of running the business that I wasn't growing it. This wasn't what I had envisioned for myself."
Similarly, CEO Patrick FitzGerald was optimistic about the prospects of Reproduct, a Philadelphia-based company that recycled greeting cards into office furniture and carpets. That is, until he met with the U.S. Postal Service and learned that it would take an act of Congress to reduce the postage required for customers to return used cards for recycling. Without a lower postal rate, his business model fell apart.

"When the 800-pound gorilla says, 'No, it's never going to happen,' you have to say, 'Okay it's done, it's a failure,' " says FitzGerald, now a lecturer at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, who previously founded successful companies including Recyclebank. "If you embrace failure, you say, 'I'm going to shut this down and I'm going to use it for my next company.' You wasted your time if you didn't learn anything from it."

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis

Current Travel Warnings

Travel Warnings are issued when long-term, protracted conditions that make a country dangerous or unstable lead the State Department to recommend that Americans avoid or consider the risk of travel to that country. A Travel Warning is also issued when the U.S. Government's ability to assist American citizens is constrained due to the closure of an embassy or consulate or because of a drawdown of its staff. The countries listed below meet those criteria.

Afghanistan 01/29/2013
El Salvador 01/23/2013
Algeria 01/19/2013
Mali 01/18/2013
Niger 01/16/2013
Kenya 01/14/2013
Libya 01/02/2013
Haiti 12/28/2012
Central African Republic 12/28/2012
Somalia 12/26/2012
Nigeria 12/21/2012
Israel, the West Bank and Gaza 12/20/2012
Iran 12/07/2012
Mauritania 11/30/2012
Eritrea 11/29/2012
Congo, Democratic Republic of the 11/21/2012
Chad 11/21/2012
Honduras 11/21/2012
Mexico 11/20/2012
Yemen 11/19/2012
Saudi Arabia 11/19/2012
Cote d'Ivoire 11/16/2012
Burundi 11/08/2012
Tunisia 10/19/2012
Colombia 10/03/2012
Pakistan 09/19/2012
Lebanon 09/17/2012
Sudan 09/15/2012
Korea, Democratic People's Republic of 09/11/2012
Republic of South Sudan 09/10/2012
Guinea 09/07/2012
Syria 08/28/2012
Iraq 08/09/2012
Philippines 06/14/2012

Source: U S dept of State

Sometimes the Solution is so Easy

Little Known February Holidays

Real holidays you can use in your business for promotion and fun!

 *1 Serpent Day
 *3 National Men's Grooming Day
 *5 Disaster Day
 *6 Lame Duck Day
 *6 Give a Compliment Day
 *7 Charles Dickens Day
 *8 Fly a Kite Day
 *9 Toothache Day
 *10 Umbrella Day
 *11 Don't Cry Over Spilled Milk Day
 *11 National Investor Day
 *12 National Plum Pudding Day
 *14 Ferris Wheel Day
 *15 National Gum Drop Day
 *16 Favor a Grouch Day
 *18 National Battery Day
 *20 Harry Potter Day
 *21 National Sticky Bun Day
 *22 Be Humble Day
 *23 Intl Dog Biscut Day
 *24 National Tortilla Chip Day
 *26 National Pistachio Day
 *27 Intl Polar Bear Day
 *28 Public Sleeping Day