>Customer's regularly tell me: 'the other salesman just didn't seem interested'.This is a problem for our industry, and is caused by two things. The first is the basic wage. While a basic wage gives the cushion incase the salesman has a bad week, it breeds low motivation. I'm only paid on what I sell, totally [...]
>Every month, more and more marketing materials gets released telling us how much money our customers can save by putting in energy efficient windows. The problem is, every time we get this new material, the numbers are all different!I've had materials telling me customers can save £180, £200, £461, £600 or even £800 a year [...]
>I've been looking into Apple's new device, the iPad, and I want one terribly! However, for about £500, I'm going to need to use it a lot to get my money's worth. So I was wondering how I could use it for work purposes. Firstly, we are going to start using a new IT package [...]
>The double glazing industry has long had different approaches as to how sales reps should dress.Some, like ourselves still wear suits. We get a lot of positive comments about the way we dress when we go into a customers house, especially the older generation. Comments like: "it's so nice to see young men dressed so [...]
>Dan Elson left me this comment last night:"Customer retention is the key here everyone. Keep retaining your customers and keep selling more and more to them."0% of your customers account for 80% off your sales...so why do companies focus so much on acquiring new customers?Yes you always need knew customers but surely reading the above [...]
>With the internet making huge inrodes into the way the double glazing industry works and operates, lots of companies are making big investements into their websites and other online services. Personally I think this is good business sense. It allows customers to do their homework and check into different companies and their products and services. [...]
>It seems one of our main manufacturers has resorted to last gasp tactics. For weeks now one of our competitors has started going down the road of sweeping their quotes just to try and get the business in. Example: I recently quoted a job which involved lots of triple glazed leaded/bevelled units (10 in total), [...]
>It seems to me that there is going to be a lot more scrutiny of the WER scheme to come. The big question going around is how reliable and accurate are the methods that are used to calculate all the facts and figures needed to judge how efficient a window actaully is. The last thing [...]
>I don't know if it's just me, but some of the sales gimmicks going around over the past 12-18 months have been getting slowly more rediculous.Recently, Coral have been advertising 'Free' 42" HD TV's if you place an order with them. Doesn't seem to rediculous you may think, if the customer buys a conservatory the [...]
>WER's have done well for the window industry. I know there is an argument about how we actually come to get accurate values to come up with an eventual rating, but that aside, it's given the customer something quantifiable. Just like white goods have the same energy scaling, customers instantly recognise it. But how many [...]
>RCG touched on this in his last post. The best salesmen are the ones who get paid on what they sell. It forces sales staff to work harder and better. By not allowing sales staff to rest back knowing they will still get a monthly wage it breeds a hungrier workforce. This is exactly the [...]
>It is so important to mould yourself differently around every type of customer. An area where salesmen sometimes fall down is not knowing how to adapt to different personalities and attitudes of customers.Major example: the more 'well-to-do' type of customer requires a calmer, smarter spoken (pronouncing your T's etc!) approach. You have to show that [...]
>There are not many things that wind me up, but when people say to me 'there's nothing to your job, you've got it easy', it pushes my buttons!I understand that this is not a physical job, but it's all the other attributes that make it hard work. If you’re self employed, you find that most [...]
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