October 24/31, 2016: Volume 31, Number 10 By Mike Nichols We’ve all seen it. A great sports team is exposed and gets beat by 50 points. You may have experienced this with your own college alma mater or high school. Have you ever wondered what the coach does at the first practice after such an embarrassing defeat? Typically, the coach encourages the team to go back to basics, the fundamentals of blocking and tackling. As...
Read MoreMarch 14/21, 2016; Volume 30, Number 19 By Adam Strizzi We hear it all too often in the professional cleaning industry: A building manager has a new floor covering installed (invariably carpeting right off the lobby floor), which after a couple of months looks just as bad as the carpet he recently replaced. Carpet cleaning technicians are brought in after about the third month and they tell the building manager that some of the spots in...
Read MoreJan 4/11; Volume 30/Number 14 By Steve Damerow You can’t successfully sell product if your sales team doesn’t know and appreciate its attributes—and this requires a significant amount of time, effort and training for both the dealer and salesperson alike. The key to training salespeople and installers about the competitive advantages of multiple products is getting and keeping their attention, appealing to “what’s in it for them” through rewards and making the process fun and...
Read MoreJan 18/25; Volume 30/Number 15 By Alan Cross Four months after KCS Commercial Systems (KCS) acquired Dancik International, I am reflecting on the events that unfolded after the deal was closed. More than anything else, I am looking forward to a bright future for the business. We had a very clear strategy and plan that had to be executed from the first day post acquisition. In addition, we had a number of key objectives and...
Read MoreJan 18/25; Volume 30/Number 15 By Fred Levine Floor covering retailers and manufacturers spend the better part of their days focusing on one thing: maximizing profitability. There are two components of this: increasing revenue and decreasing expenses. Most companies focus on growing the bottom line by increasing sales, particularly in a robust economy. But what if there was an expense leak that was negatively impacting the bottom line? Surely this would be rectified—provided the company...
Read MoreJan 18/25; Volume 30/Number 15 By Chris Coltran A common complaint I hear from flooring retailers is losing a sale because their client found the same product for less at a competitor down the street or on the Internet. Continuing education for your salespeople is the best way to keep them from losing a sale. Teaching them how to qualify, present products, overcome objections, set up a measure and ask for the order are critical...
Read MoreJan 18/25; Volume 30/Number 15 By Bridgette Kelly Each year the wool industry faces the challenge of promoting its many impressive and superior benefits to an audience that includes retailers, designers, architects and your everyday, ordinary consumers. Wool is my world but I would be the first to admit it’s not a straightforward sell, and perhaps therein lies the crux of the issue. Some retailers totally understand the story of wool and others don’t. The...
Read MoreSeptember 14/21; Volume 30/Number 7 By Louis Wisdom Seldom should a customer be left alone in the showroom to “just look.” She will see very little product and you will know nothing of her needs. How many times have you heard a customer say, “Thanks for your time, but I want to keep looking,” after only seeing a mere fraction of your selection? What’s worse is you know nothing about what she is looking for...
Read MoreOctober 27/November 3, 2014; Volume 28/Number 10 By Julian Dossche (Editor’s note: Julian Dossche is the senior manager, Global Business Development, at USFloors. Dossche recently relocated to the Jing’an District in Shanghai, China, to run the company’s Asian business. He has agreed to pen a quarterly column for FCNews on his perspective of doing business in China, his experiences and where opportunities may lie.) In my last column I briefly discussed the importance of the Chinese...
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