Yes ladies and gents I am telling you to sell sexy! What I don’t mean is to start turning up at people’s houses in bikinis and board shorts, especially not in this weather! No, I am telling you to give your products a great big sexual overhaul in terms of hardware and presentation.

I went to see one of our suppliers today for a general catch up and to see what new products were coming in the near future. I also saw a very funky new door handle on one of their new prototype products which I could quite easily call “sexy”. It was a swept, brushed aluminium door handle, no moving parts, just the grab, on an Irish Oak door frame. It looked the nuts, and the daft thing was that wasn’t what we actually went to go see. And therein lies the point. A door or a window dressed in the right hardware can easily take your eye away from what you’re supposed to be looking at and impress you in a way you didn’t expect.

That is what we need to be doing with our products with the end user. And to be fair, I think a decent number of us are doing that. But I do see some rather plain looking doors and windows still being displayed in showrooms and installed in people’s homes and I do wonder at times that maybe if the company that did work showed the client what was possible out there, perhaps they might have chosen something different. I say this because of the feedback I have from my own customers. I get told quite regularly that the options such as colour, hardware, door designs etc that I show them, have not been demonstrated by other companies they have had out to quote.

It’s time to face facts though, sex sells, and we have to sex up our wares as much as possible. The skeptics will now be reading this and be about ready to click on to another website. But you can’t get away from it, personalisation is here and it is our job to show our end users the potential of the products they intend to buy. Some will do this and some will don’t. The advantage for those who do will start to win extra business as the end user is going to appreciate the extra time spent on designing something all their neighbours are going to be jealous of.

On a more personal note, I love designing doors and windows from scratch. I like the idea of sitting down with a customer and helping them to create an installation that we have never done before and they have never seen before. The client has a great sense of pride about what they are about to buy, and it’s great to see their reactions when it comes round to fitting their creation.

I saw it today with a customer I went to see once we had completed their installation. She was absolutely beaming with pride with what we had installed for her, especially the new front door on her porch. That is a reaction we should all strive for, whether it is a house full of windows and doors, or something much smaller.