Selling to a Material Girl in an Internet World, by Darryl Jones (QuickDrain USA), an Education Committee Member

E-Commerce is still a fast growing and often changing segment. The pressure of Internet retailers on kitchen and bath showrooms has been immense and caused manufacturers and showrooms to review their sales practices. Manufacturers have added MAPP policies and showrooms are starting to charge for their design expertise. We are certainly not the only industry that has had to deal with price-gouging competitors, nor will we be the last. Auto mechanics got a wake up call when Auto Zone and Pep Boys opened and started selling parts directly to the STM (Shade Tree Mechanic, a person that works on their vehicle over the weekend). An STM would take the automobile to a mechanic to diagnose the problem and then purchase the parts from an auto parts retailer. In the DPH industry, kitchen designers took a huge loss when Eagle, Home Depot and Lowes opened their mega superstores. Potential clients would visit an established showroom, but would then take their drawings and purchase cabinets from a cabinet retailer. The market response has been to implement "diagnostic" fees if the car isn't repaired by the mechanic, or a design fee if the potential client wants a copy of the drawings. These two industries are different and yet the same, because initially neither had a perceived value for their services. The Darwinism that comes to mind is that it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but it is the one that is most adaptable to change. We as an Industry will, and must, change.

An earlier article from the Washington Post stated, "A study from researchers at Ohio State University sheds some light on that issue, and also perhaps offers some insight on how Amazon has pulled off such explosive growth in sales and market share. (Point of note: Jeffrey P. Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.) The researchers studied household spending data in 19 states, examining what happened to shoppers' spending on Amazon after their state chose to implement what they call an "Amazon Tax," or legislation that requires Amazon and other e-commerce sites to charge them sales tax.

The effect is significant: When the so-called Amazon Tax was put in place, shoppers spent 8.3 percent less for products on Amazon after the tax went into effect. The researchers described that dip in spending as a permanent decline even though shoppers' total tabs remained essentially unchanged. In other words, shoppers were shelling out the same amount overall on purchases from Amazon, but because a share of that tab was now going to taxes, the shopper was getting less product for their spending and Amazon was pulling in less revenue from that transaction.

What service's do you offer that neither your competitors nor the Internet do? Does your sales force have the knowledge and tools in place to close the sale when the customer is in the showroom? Are you as a team making use of the tools that you have at your disposal (i.e. the DPHA training manuals)? We live in an instant information society and we need to know more about the products we sell than our customers do. Be sure to share in as many round table discussion's as humanly possible. Take charge, take control, and most importantly, never stop trying to learn!