Using Negotiation Secrets to Improve Email Open Rates

The average office worker receives 121 emails a day, according to a recent study. That’s one of the reasons why less than 21 percent of all emails are opened. How can you improve the odds that your emails will be read? Take advantage of the subject line and use no-oriented questions to capture the recipient’s attention and interest. What’s a no-oriented question? Here are a few examples, courtesy of the Black Swan Group. 

• "Have you decided to give up on X?"
• "Why did you decide to walk away from Y?"
• "Did you decide to quit on Z?"

Using "quit", "give up", and "walk away" are especially effective because most Americans don’t like to be associated with quitters. No-oriented questions also provide readers with the illusion of control which is a key negotiation tactic. 

 

Leave a lasting impression for email recipients with a positive closing message and a call to action. Typical positive closing messages could be:

• “Are there reasons why this solution will not work for you?” 
• “How does this sound?” 
• “What’s preventing you from moving forward?” 

Additionally, try using an unfamiliar closing salutation such as ‘Here’s to Advancing Our Partnership” or “Humbly”, instead of Sincerely or Best.

 

Use softening qualifiers to gain additional responses. Instead of stating “that if we don’t solve this problem, our budget will take a major hit,” consider saying “I’m afraid that if we don’t solve the problem, our budget will take a major hit.” Using softening qualifiers such as "I’m sorry” or “I’m afraid,” where they are appropriate, employs tactical empathy to solicit responses. 

And when you do get a response, make sure you know what the next course of action needs to be and relate it as soon as possible.

Hiring a Showroom Manager Is Not Easy

Half of the sales managers hired by the 100 largest manufacturing companies do not last more than three years. For large companies with dedicated HR teams and well-defined recruitment processes, that statistic points to one of two reasons. Either effective sales managers are difficult to hire or the hiring process for sales managers is broken (or maybe this is due to a combination of both). 

 

Most decorative plumbing and hardware showrooms don’t have dedicated HR teams that are responsible for attracting, vetting and retaining best-in-class talent. The hiring process is typically delegated to the owner. If you have a sales team, they need to be managed and that responsibility is typically assigned to the showroom manager. 

 

The key to hiring an effective showroom manager or sales manager involves the following:

 

• Profiling: identifying the characteristics and skill sets the showroom manager needs.
• Selecting: properly vetting candidates and selecting the person who best fits the corporate culture and profile.
• Attracting: making offers that qualified candidates can’t refuse.
• Integrating: Avoid throwing your new manager in the deep end. Help your new manager get off to a strong start.

 

Developing the profile should include an evaluation of a candidate’s ability to learn, grow and adapt to a new position and situations. These abilities are actually more important than experience and skill set.

 

If you hire an entrepreneurial showroom manager to operate a business that is process driven and autocratic in its decision making, you will be mixing oil with water. It just won’t work. The hiring process needs to account for your corporate culture and whether or not the person retained to run your day-to-day operations will fit in that culture.

 

Ed Ryan told DPHA members at a past Conference they should never hire the tallest pygmy. Don’t settle for anyone except the ideal candidate. And the way to ensure that your candidate is ideal is through a rigorous interviewing and vetting process. Remember, you are not the only one doing the evaluating. Your candidate is evaluating your showroom and determining if it is the right fit for them as well. You can’t determine if a candidate is the right fit from just one interview. 

 

The final piece of the successful hiring puzzle is to effectively onboard your new showroom manager. Integrating the new manager into your showroom operations is a multi-tasked effort that needs to include introductions to the entire team, key clients and others in your organization who can help the new manager learn the ropes of the business.

Living Finishes or PVD Finishes?, by Daniel Chinitz (Creative Bath Sales)

What follows is a brief discussion on whether to select Living Finishes or PVD Finishes for your faucets, a conversation we have all had from time to time with our customers ...

 

• Living finishes are uncoated metal - they’re beautiful, like a fine piece of jewelry, but they will uniquely age and change over time. Finish care instructions must be followed!

• PVD (Physical Vapor Deposition) finishes come with a lifetime guarantee against tarnishing. Super-hard and molecularly bonded, PVD is by far the most durable finish available.



• Why select a PVD finish? After all, the most commonly heard objection to PVD is “Living Finishes are more beautiful.” This is true. From a purely artisan point of view, many clients say Living finishes look better when compared to PVD finishes. However, once PVD finishes are installed in the bath or kitchen, there will be no side-by-side comparisons so the PVD finish will look good and remain stable for many, many years. This is not so with Living Finishes!

• Living Finishes constantly change (patina) and require much more care if you want to avoid an uneven or “blotchy” look. When more than one Living finish faucet is installed in the bath or kitchen, they can even look very different from each other! 

• For a more even look, faucet wax should be applied to Living Finishes ASAP after installation. Plumbers usually have chemicals on their hands, which transfers directly to the uncoated metal of Living Finishes during the installation process. This will affect the patina process where the faucet has been touched. Additionally, faucet wax should be reapplied on a regular basis. Living finishes are a commitment that must be explained and understood during the sales process.

• On the other hand, PVD requires little care. It is like an inexpensive insurance - pay a little more now for the faucet, but you are covered with a lifetime guarantee against tarnishing.



• Another common complaint from homeowners is “no one told me what will happen to my Living Finish!” Let’s be sure to continue to educate clients on the differences so they know exactly what they are buying. Otherwise, we increase our chances for a finish complaint and subsequent loss of good will.

What Drives Customers to Love Your Brand

Experiences matter because people value experiences more than they do products, concluded a survey of 5,000 consumers around the world conducted by Momentum (an experiential marketing agency). What consumers expect from experiences is changing from their expectations only five years ago. Consumers in 2014 wanted brands to deliver experiences that provided them with something useful, that made their lives easier and delivered a healthy dose of happiness. Today, those experiential requirements remain, but consumer priorities are changing, according to the latest Momentum survey.

 

Consumers today desire experiences that provide connection. The need for connection stems from societal trends that result from the lack of transparencies in institutions. Trust is fleeting, caused by events such as Facebook’s privacy challenges, dysfunctional government and a rise in hate, which all contribute to a feeling of disconnection. As a result, people retreat to their self-made Twitter bubbles that are responsible for the rapid rise in loneliness. 83 percent of people believe that brands should eliminate stress and anxiety. Today’s consumer wants to be connected. They want experiences that enhance their lives. They want brands to deliver experiences that are inspirational. 

 

The opportunities for decorative plumbing and hardware showrooms include:

• Inspiring customers in an age of distrust.
• Connecting customers in a world of division.
• Helping customers to find meaning or purpose.

 

If 83 percent of all consumers want brands to eliminate stress and anxiety, what better way to capitalize on the demand than to tout the health and wellness benefits of creating an in-home spa? Showrooms can inspire customers by giving back to the community or holding charitable events around world toilet day (November 19 as designated by the United Nations) to provide toilets and improve sanitation to the 2.4 billion people that currently live without access to a water closet. You can inspire your customers by partnering with a design school and holding a competition to create new vignettes in your showroom. You can connect customers by offering design and renovation seminars. You can help your customers find meaning or purpose through joint community outreach. The sky is the limit. Brainstorm with your team to better connect with your customers and your community. Share your thoughts and connect with your DPHA community on our Facebook page and our LinkedIn Group.

Email Mistakes To Avoid

By the end of this year, there will be an estimated 5.6 billion email accounts. That helps explain why email is the dominate medium for marketing and communicating. Think about how many useless emails you receive daily. It’s likely to be about the same number as the people you are trying to influence receive. How do you stand out in a cacophony of claptrap? Avoid these common email mistakes identified by Hubspot.

• Only use "reply all" if your response affects more than 70 percent of those receiving the same email. If only a few people need to see your response in a chain, hit "reply" and use CC to send your message to appropriate parties.

• Forgetting to proofread and sending emails with grammatical or spelling mistakes makes you look unprofessional and unintelligent. If you use Microsoft Word, use the review feature to catch typos and punctuation errors. 

• Inaccurate or misleading subject lines create mistrust. How many times have you received an email from someone asking for a reorder when you never ordered from that company previously? Take advantage of the subject line to capture someone's attention. A couple of examples: “Here are three ideas to make your life easier.” “Here is your exclusive offer (if it is exclusive).” The best subject lines are creative, interest-provoking and informative.

• Not addressing the email to the person’s name or properly formatting your message are other mistakes to avoid. A 2018 study found that nearly 50 percent of all emails are opened on mobile devices. If you don’t enjoy reading long emails on your phone, most likely the recipients of your email will not enjoy reading long emails on their phones either. Use short paragraphs and bullet points, links and lists, advises Hubspot. 

• Avoid the temptation to send emails after normal business hours and on weekends because they could be interpreted to mean that you are understaffed, inefficient or desperate.

• Failing to provide a complete signature foregoes valuable real estate. Include your name, title, contact information, recent industry honors (if you have them, e.g. DPHA award winner), and a headshot photo.

• Failing to have a call to action implies to the recipient they don’t have to respond. Even if you have been turned down before by someone you are trying to reach, you can ask where you can learn more about their organization or project.

• Using nonstandard or creative fonts makes an email more difficult to read. Stick with the tried and true.

• Failing to take advantage of email shortcuts available from Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail.

• Being impatient. If you don’t receive an immediate response or even a reply the following day, avoid the temptation to send another email. Use 10 days as a rule of thumb for following up on your email.

• Using email is a way not to communicate. There are times and situations where you should call or meet face-to-face instead of sending an email. Examples include multiple back-and-forth emails with no resolution or consensus. If you need to write more than 3 paragraphs, a call may be more effective and less time consuming.

• Failing to get to the point immediately. Tell the recipient why you are writing and what you want to them to do upfront.

Your Competitive Advantage: Curation

Robb Best related at a recent DPHA Conference that the human brain is only capable of choosing between two options. If you present too many options, customers’ brains will shut down and refuse to make a decision. That’s why 30 percent of all people who come to the showroom will walk out, because they have been given too much information. That’s why, Robb claims, a wall of faucets is one of the worst ways to display products, because a faucet wall causes sensory overload. 

 

Sensory overload is a compelling reason for a customer to buy from a brick-and-mortar showroom versus purchasing on the Internet. If you searched for a farmhouse sink on Houzz.com, you would have more than 77,000 choices. How can anyone confidently make a decision when there are more than 77,000 options? And therein lies a brick-and-mortar showroom’s competitive advantage. Curation is a competitive advantage not available online. Showroom sales professionals and showrooms can appeal to a customer’s five senses and have the opportunity to determine the best option (not the least expensive) for each client. 

 

Every time a customer crosses a showroom’s threshold, they do so for a reason. They have made an effort to leave the comfort of their phone, computer or home to seek guidance from a professional who should know more than they do. Steve Jobs famously said, “A lot of times people don’t know what they want, until you show it to them.” That’s a primary reason why customers come to a showroom - so you can show them what they want. 

 

The same logic applies to the designers and the trades. Imagine the impact you can have by curating the best option for a new project that makes the designer look like a superstar and saves them time. What are you doing to promote your curation advantage?

Improve Your Memory

University of Pennsylvania professor and best-selling author Adam Grant offered guidance for improving memory skills.  Grant claims that memory is a learned skill, but most of us don’t use the right techniques to improve it.

What Does Not Work

• Cramming
• Re-reading
• Highlighting

What Does Work

• Taking time to rest your mind, and consolidate and store information
• Quizzing yourself on the information you want to retain or engaging in another active exercise
• Explaining what you want to remember 

Grant explained that after students listened to a story and took a test of how much they remembered an hour after hearing the story, recall increased by 10 to 30 percent for those who were randomly assigned to sit and do nothing in a dark, quiet room a few minutes after hearing the story.  The reason is that your brain needs rest and space in order to consolidate and store information. The same experiment was conducted with stroke victims and others with neurological injuries.  Those who had time to rest and consolidate improved recall from 7 percent to 79 percent. 

Taking practice tests with information that you want to retain is the best technique to improve memory. By practicing, your brain knowns where to retrieve that information and it will also identify where your gaps in memory exist. 

Telling others the information that you want to retain is another powerful technique to improve memory skills.  Grant referenced a recent experiment where people learned about sound waves.  At the end of the lesson, participants were randomly assigned to teach what they learned using notes or without notes. Those who winged it did better, because the best way to learn something is to teach it - not because explaining it helps you understand it, but the act of retrieving it helps you to remember, Grant said.

RIP Customer Loyalty

That almost 90 percent of all customers will shop around is one of the stirring findings in Mark Schaefer’s book, Marketing Rebellion.  His conclusion is reinforced by a recent study by Meaningful Brands that found 77 percent of all brands could disappear tomorrow and no one would care.  The same study found that 90 percent of consumers want brands to deliver content, but 58 percent believe that the content that brands currently deliver is irrelevant. Most consumers are not impressed by the content that brands produce.  

Consumers want brands to provide relevant, personal content and to engage with them meaningfully. It’s the reason why Marcus Sheridan advised DPHA members to answer the questions that consumers ask most often on their web sites.  It’s the reason why DPHA developed smart buying guides for members to use to answer those questions.  It’s the reason why DPHA developed a new series of blogs that members can use as their own to help provide meaningful content that helps your customers make better, more informed and trusted buying decisions.

Here’s an exercise: Go to your web site.  How much of the content is about your showroom and the products that you offer and how much is about what customers can expect if they buy from you or reasons why customers should buy from you.  Honestly put, no one cares about a showroom, how long it has been in business, how many products it features or believe aphorisms such as "we offer the best customer service in the industry."  As Schaefer points out, “Stop selling.  Start helping.” 

Most customers don’t want to have a relationship with a showroom if they are not remodeling their baths or kitchen.  When they decide to improve their home, what content are you providing to make their decisions easier and less stressful?  How are you making designers’ and trade professionals’ lives easier? The content you provide to your customers should be of equal quality to the products you feature in your showroom. The content should elicit a response from your customers to the effect of “thank you for sending this to me. It really made the decision- making process easier.”

Avoid Losing 90 Percent of Your Referrals

Here’s a few amazing statistics from the Luxury Institute: 

• Most luxury brands lose 80 to 90 percent of their customers in a given year.  
• Luxury brands are hard pressed to retain 50 percent of their most loyal customers. 
• Less than 15 percent of luxury customers claim to have a relationship with a sales professional.

Let’s translate the loss of up to 90 percent of luxury customers in a given year to decorative plumbing and hardware.  It’s not a hard stretch to state that most showrooms have the potential to lose up to 80 to 90 percent of the referrals from existing customers in a given year if they fail to deliver an experience that luxury consumers expect from a high-end showroom.  The Luxury Institute points out that there is tremendous upside opportunity for high-end retail.  Customers who have a true relationship with a sales professional typically will buy double from that brand and will remain loyal to that brand for a longer period of time.  

As 2018 DPHA Conference Workshop Leader Bob Phibbs (The Retail Doctor) points out, you can’t sell luxury products without first selling yourself.  There’s a reason why someone makes an effort to visit a showroom and it’s not to determine how big a discount is being offered them.  The reason why 90 percent of the customers don’t return or provide a referral is because the sales professional failed to develop a meaningful relationship with them. Phibbs offers a four-step strategy to avoid that outcome.

1. One-size-fits all approaches do not work. Showroom customers are similar to showroom products.  They stand out from the crowd.  They have stronger personalities and are more self-assured.  A customized approach is required for each customer.
2. Determine the personality type and craft stories that resonate with your customer's world views.  Don’t dawdle on "Driver" types.  Get to the point quickly because they can recognize best-in-class products easily.  Provide data and information to "Analytics" (explain why PVD will last a lifetime, ceramic disk cartridges won’t leak, etc.).  "Expressive" customers will be more attracted to original designs as opposed to knock-offs.  "Amiables" want to know what are the best-selling products and which high-end customers and celebrities have purchased them.
3. Learn to deal with smart phones.  During the sales process, there’s a better than 50 percent chance your customers will use their smart phone.  How have you trained your team to deal with that?
4. Look for tells. Notice the cars that customers drive when they pull up to the showroom. What does wearing a Rolex watch signify? Check out clothing and accessories as well.  Regardless of the budget someone might state, what they are wearing and drive may be a more important indicator of budget potential. Luxury consumers want to interact with sale professionals that understand and can speak to the luxury mindset.  That’s why selling through the sales professional’s wallet will never establish relationships that result in referral or repeat business.    

The Case for Conflict In A Family Business

"These are the best of times; these are the worst of times."  Dickens iconic introduction to A Tale of Two Cities resonates frequently in family businesses.  Most business leaders confront the best and worst of times, and how both ends of the spectrum are dealt with determines, more often than not, success or failure.  In family businesses, conflict is ratcheted up several notches and we’ve all seen in the decorative plumbing and hardware business that family conflict can destroy personal and professional relationships.  That’s one of the reasons most family businesses do not survive to the third generation.

Josh Baron teaches a class in family business conflict at Columbia Business School. He relates to his students that both too much and too little conflict have equally adverse effects on a family business and personal relationships resulting in limited growth, poor decision making, competitive disadvantages and in the worst case the sale, split or demise of the company.  

Baron views conflict in a family business as having an internal and external face. The external face represents too much conflict, evidenced by emotional outbursts. The internal face represents too little conflict, where emotions seethe beneath the surface.  “An iceberg of emotions where the surface is pleasant enough but the danger lies beneath,” writes Baron.  Internal conflict is more often the case in family businesses because of a simple desire not to rock the boat.  Family members want to celebrate holidays, weddings and other milestones together.  They want to protect relationships and avoid sowing the seeds of destruction down the road, claims Rosen.

However, there is a healthy middle ground between the two extremes that enables family members to discuss difficult issues and resolve them without causing irreparable damage to family and business relationships. Rosen offers a roadmap to finding a happy medium.  He suggests answering the following three questions:

1.  Are we better together than we are apart and are you satisfied with the general direction of the business?
2. Is there an elephant in the room no one is talking about?  Are critical issues being discussed and acted upon?
3. Are we aligned on the big issues and can we enjoy each other’s company most of the time?

Baron uses Sierra Nevada beer as an example of reaching a happy medium. The company brands its family relationship on its can with the following:  FAMILY OWNED, OPERATED & ARGUED OVER.  

Baron’s point is that most people want to avoid conflict, especially so in a family business. However, some conflict is healthy because it provides opportunities to clear the air, discuss the issues and problems that need to be addressed, and develop solutions that are in the best interests of everyone.