Tips, tricks, news & other wisdom from the team at Inspire.
Last week I mentioned a statistic Iâd heard, suggesting that 85% of the kitchens sold in the UK each year are sold by the big brands â Wren, Magnet, B&Q, etc.
And I had some interesting feedback, with several people forthright in their views as to why the independentsâ market share is so small.
However, thereâs a second part to this story, which is even more interesting.
The other day I was talking to someone about kitchens.
No surprise there.
What was surprising were a couple of stats that came out of his mouth:
Give or take, there are a million kitchens sold in the UK every year.
Of those one million kitchens, 850,000 of them are sold by the big chains, like Wren and B&Q.
I have it on good authority that these stats are accurate. But, even if theyâre a rough estimate, at 85%, thatâs pretty shocking!
In this industry, âsalesâ 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 hereâs the reality: however good you are at designing kitchens, bedrooms or bathrooms, if you canât sell them (or you donât have people on your team who can), youâre 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 thatâs seen millions of people spend time at home, with heading outside not near as much appealing this time around.
And itâs definitely true â 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 weâve so eagerly been awaiting - Lockdown 3.đ
But this lockdown is different â 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 hasnât waited around for anyone, has it?!
Christmas is almost upon us, with Lockdown 2.0 nearly a distant memory and weâve had the busiest end to any year we can remember, which is great.
Weâve got huge plans for next year, which means that weâve 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 weâve done this year, and we thought weâd take this opportunity to introduce her.
A few weeks ago, I gave some commentary about why â for kitchen retailers â 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 thereâs never been a better opportunity to access your target customer, engage with them and plant seeds thatâll lead to sales in months to come.
The question now is âHow?â
I donât mean to brag, but when I look at a kitchen website, I can tell who designed it in under 10 seconds flat.
(Thatâs about the same the time it takes to make a first impression, btw.)
I wonât know who exactly put it together, but what I can immediately work out, is whether itâs 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 lockdownâs not the same as the last one: the world hasnât stopped turning, and people are doing their best to get on with life.
But regardless, our freedoms are temporarily reduced, and â just like last time â weâve got some additional time at our disposal.
The question is: How are you going to use your lockdown this time?
Itâs happening again.
After a few months of relative calm from the media, weâre 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, youâll 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.
Iâm in Denmark this week, working with the Radio ABC Group, helping many of their local advertisers to create the right marketing message.
Itâs 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 doesnât mean anything to you, but if youâre a football fan, thereâs a chance youâve 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 solutionâŠ
We had a question in a month ago from a really decent guy who runs a kitchen design company with his wife.
Sheâs an expert designer, with two decades of experience, loads of integrity, and a steady stream of glowing testimonials.
But they have a problem:
Theyâre losing business to ârespectedâ 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 weâll take at least some credit for!).
It just so happened that in both calls, the same question came up:
âAt what point do you follow up with a prospect after theyâve given you their data?â
Thatâs where the similarities ended because their responses were wildly different.
Drop us an email. Weâll be delighted to help.
