KBB - January/February 2011 - (Page 13)

Letter to the Editor To the Editor: In response to the letter to the editor from Mr. Strauss (December 2010 issue of K+BB, page 10): In 2007, CompanionCabinet Software started a multi-year study of how kitchens are sold and commissioned by top cabinet dealers. We interviewed more than 100 top-performing kitchen designers and more than 500 typical salespeople/designers, recorded more than 1,700 hours of phone calls, and combined that with dozens of metrics, collected over the past 10 years, around quoting effectiveness, closing ratios, lead generation, sales volume and more. We publish our ndings freely on The Dealer’s Voice and the Cabinet Dealer Resource Center for all to learn. Since Mr. Strauss is clearly an expert in dealer operations, managing high-producing sales teams and the effective use of design fees nationwide, we’d like to invite him to do a guest post on The Dealer’s Voice, where he can share all the data he has so meticulously collected on this topic. We understand cabinet designers value their time and creativity and that our ndings challenge the industry norm in some markets. All we are suggesting is by not charging a fee for design, combined with some other key sales techniques unique to the cabinet industry, kitchen designers can easily increase their closing rates and overall sales production. After all, we think Mr. Strauss would agree that winning the deal is a much better payday than just getting a fee for a design. As for our software, Mr. Strauss doesn’t need to install Aurora anywhere because it runs entirely on the web. Unfortunately, we don’t allow prospects to keep trying Aurora inde nitely because our sales process encourages them to come to a decision in a reasonable amount of time, to expect to be treated professionally and to extend that same courtesy back to their salesperson. If Mr. Strauss would like to learn how to have a similar sales process in which he and the team can easily avoid situations like the one in his letter, please have him download the 4M sales process guides on our resource center (or he can take one of our sales training classes for CEU credits with the NKBA). Furthermore, our Aurora trial is free and he can show it to as many people as he likes—even other software companies! That’s because even if another software company did copy Aurora, they’d be hard pressed to replicate our reputation and knowledge of dealer operations. We won’t even charge him a fee. Lisa Furby Marketing, CompanionCabinet Software Have an opinion on this and other kitchen and bath industry issues you’d like to share? Email K+BB at aliao@kbbonline.com. Circle No. 8 http://www.watcomfg.com http://www.watcomfg.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of KBB - January/February 2011

KBB - January/February 2011
Contents
Online Contents
Online News
Editorial
Letter to the Editor
Focus
Trends
Products
Design
Abroad
Practice
Editorial Index
Ad Index
Favorites

KBB - January/February 2011