Tips, tricks, news & other wisdom from the team at Inspire.
In this industry, ‘sales’ is still too often seen as a dirty word, with Designers preferring just to deliver the best designs they can and hope for the best.
But here’s the reality: however good you are at designing kitchens, bedrooms or bathrooms, if you can’t sell them (or you don’t have people on your team who can), you’re never going to achieve all the success you could.
And now, in this current climate, being able to sell is more important than ever.
I recently suggested that Lockdown 3 played into the hands of Home Specialists, thanks to a perfect storm that’s seen millions of people spend time at home, with heading outside not near as much appealing this time around.
And it’s definitely true – even more media is being consumed. Our clients are seeing more ads delivered, more clicks, and more conversations; all driven by this strange situation we again find ourselves in.
But the truth is, that the impact of the pandemic extends far beyond a few months cooped up at home.
So, here we are with the blockbuster threequel we’ve so eagerly been awaiting - Lockdown 3.🙄
But this lockdown is different – the end is in sight. With the confirmation of yet another vaccine to add to the arsenal, we know that life will be a lot better and a lot closer to the normality we all crave, sooner rather than later.
In the meantime, opportunity awaits.
Well, December hasn’t waited around for anyone, has it?!
Christmas is almost upon us, with Lockdown 2.0 nearly a distant memory and we’ve had the busiest end to any year we can remember, which is great.
We’ve got huge plans for next year, which means that we’ve needed to knuckle down and put a lot of the foundations in place this quarter.
Thankfully for us, one of our newer members of the team has been a vital and integral part of everything we’ve done this year, and we thought we’d take this opportunity to introduce her.
A few weeks ago, I gave some commentary about why – for kitchen retailers – now presents the opportunity of a generation to capitalise.
Most of your competitors are still sitting on their hands, waiting to see what next year will bring. That, teamed with the fact that the population continue to spend more time at home than ever before, means there’s never been a better opportunity to access your target customer, engage with them and plant seeds that’ll lead to sales in months to come.
The question now is ‘How?’
I don’t mean to brag, but when I look at a kitchen website, I can tell who designed it in under 10 seconds flat.
(That’s about the same the time it takes to make a first impression, btw.)
I won’t know who exactly put it together, but what I can immediately work out, is whether it’s been created by a Website Designer … or a Website Developer.
So here we are, living through Lockdown 2.0 - the national event as welcome as, well, a cough in an elevator.
Granted, this lockdown’s not the same as the last one: the world hasn’t stopped turning, and people are doing their best to get on with life.
But regardless, our freedoms are temporarily reduced, and – just like last time – we’ve got some additional time at our disposal.
The question is: How are you going to use your lockdown this time?
It’s happening again.
After a few months of relative calm from the media, we’re back in the place where lockdown is upon us, and bad news is being propagated on a daily basis.
And if you read my recent comments, you’ll know just how vital it is not to get bogged down in the hysteria.
What history tells us, quite plainly, is that fortune favours the brave in times of recession and economic uncertainty.
I’m in Denmark this week, working with the Radio ABC Group, helping many of their local advertisers to create the right marketing message.
It’s become a bit of an annual thing, and when I was here last year, the other main presenter was a guy called Thomas Gronnemark.
The name probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but if you’re a football fan, there’s a chance you’ve read something about him.
Here's a question you've probably asked yourself on many an occasion:
In a world full of media spin, fake news, rogue traders, scams and spam, how do you get your prospects to TRUST you?
It's a vital question.
You see, trust is perhaps the most vital commodity in 21st-century commerce. And in the KBB world where there's big money at stake, it's even more critical.
There's no one answer to the question, but one thing that's definitely a part of the solution…
We had a question in a month ago from a really decent guy who runs a kitchen design company with his wife.
She’s an expert designer, with two decades of experience, loads of integrity, and a steady stream of glowing testimonials.
But they have a problem:
They’re losing business to ‘respected’ companies in their local market, promising the world, but delivering precious little.
I had back-to-back client calls with two kitchen retailers last Thursday.
Both smart and switched on, and both getting some great marketing out of the door (which we’ll take at least some credit for!).
It just so happened that in both calls, the same question came up:
“At what point do you follow up with a prospect after they’ve given you their data?”
That’s where the similarities ended because their responses were wildly different.
Drop us an email. We’ll be delighted to help.
