You’re Selling What?

February 4, 2009

It’s the same story over and over. And who ended up taking the big loss on this job, and thousands like it?
You did, pal.
Walk-in traffic isn’t what it used to be, when some shops thought about hiring a half-timer just to replace the hinges on the door. Customers still keep poking their heads in, though, looking for something to put in kitchens and bathrooms, among other places.
For many of them, it’s also akin to leaving Main Street America and stepping into a town market of Azerbaijan. They see materials tagged with names they don’t know, edges they can’t identify, and – if they’re lucky – a few finished countertops that might fit their needs.
In short, they’ve just walked into a place to possibly plunk down thousands of dollars for something they really don’t know a lot about. And they’re going to hide the basic feelings of being plain stupid and scared.
I don’t blame them in the least. I’d be scared, too.
Don’t think that’s the case? I’ll take a page from Tom McNall, who often suggests in his column that readers go on a homework assignment. (I’ll also assume that most of my readers here are hard-working males toiling away daily in the stone trade, to make this simple.)
Ready? Go to your local Bed, Bath and Beyond. Start the clock; you have one hour to buy:
• A full set of cookery for a standard single-family-house kitchen.
• A complete set of bedding (including bedcover), with a second set of complementing-color sheets.
• Two sets, with the ability to mix and match colors of bath towels for a master bath, full bath and half-bath.
The selection in that store is tremendous; you can get anything you want. And it’s even odds that it won’t take a full hour before you’re totally befuddled or just throwing stuff in the shopping cart to get the whole thing over with.
And you’re thinking: Wouldn’t it be easier to just go to the local Target or Wal-Mart, where all this stuff I really don’t understand is included in one or two shrink-wrap packages?
Isn’t this where we came in with the guy walking into the local fabricator?
There’s a fair amount of truth in the notion that consumers are more-educated about stone, thanks mainly to the Internet. It’s also a gross mistake to believe someone can get a decent prep on materials, finishes and the punchlist of fabrication and installation details.
Put yourself in a rookie customer’s frame of mind sometime, and start Googling away on the Web. Not quite 15 minutes on the keyboard will show you why customers come in with a sheaf of printouts that always fails to mask the eventual deer-in-the-headlights stare.
Maybe they’ll find a stone they like, only to see a different-looking stone with the same name on another Website. They’ll get a full spiel on grades of stone, only to see a completely different scale a few clicks down the line. Guarantee? Warranty? How many times do you need to seal granite in a year? What’s the ASTM number thingie mean on this site?
Then they find someplace on the Web or in some office that makes it so easy. You just pick from a square or a slab sitting there, swipe the credit card, and countertops get delivered and installed. Some companies spend a lot of money and time on this process to get it right. Others don’t, and the rants about stone begin over the fence and all over Gardenweb.com.
Good customers require plenty of care and feeding right at the start. It’s something we all think we’re doing fine; good intentions and reality, though, are often two different things.
So here’s another homework assignment. Walk out your front door, stop, and temporarily lose all your hard-gained knowledge about stone. (This is different than losing your mind, which seems to happen in my office on a daily basis.)
Turn around and walk back in the door. Sure, the sign above it says “stone,” but what’s being sold here? Is someone asking if I need help, or are they probing (in a nice way) with questions to find out what I really don’t know, and what I really want? Are there samples, pictures or even a photocopied list of all the products offered? Is the whole setup welcoming, overwhelming or intimidating?
One of the better fabricators I’ve met in the trade did this annually after attending trade shows, and often tore up half his showroom to show off new products and improve the experience. That’s likely too radical for most folks in the trade, but it refined his approach to customers – a group of people that continued to grow annually.
His story didn’t have a punchline. It had a nice, big fat one in black ink on the annual profit statement, and that’s always better than a laugh.
Emerson Schwartzkopf can be reached at emerson@stonebusiness.net. His blog can also be found at stonebusinesseditor.wordpress.com.

Clarification

In the January 2009 Stone Business Fabricator Focus (“Corporate Thinking, Custom Success), images on pages 20 and 30 were provided by a third-party source. Both are actually product shots of concrete countertops from Hollow Rock Designs Inc. of Grand Portage, Minn.