Interior Designers: Don't Leave Money on the Table

VIEWPOINT

Sell more­custom

Don’t Leave on the Table: Sell the Table Too

by David Haseley, vice president, merchandising and marketing, Decorating Den Interiors

ow many times have you heard: “Do you sell anything other than window treatments?” Or, “I really like working with you, so could you help me decorate my entire house?”

Expanding your business beyond window treatments can be a daunting challenge. Having good sources for a range of home furnishings products is only part of the battle.

Product knowledge, receiving and delivering capability, management and marketing methods, and more sales coaching are just some of the additional tools you will need to power growth.

communicate the quality of your products and the value you bring to the design project.

As you add new products to your business, you’ll surely confront new challenges. Did you ever have a question and didn’t know who to ask? It is imperative, especially when new, to have a group of colleagues to serve as mentors and act as a support group. Local competitors certainly won’t mentor you to help you be a better competitor, so you are forced look outside your normal geographic area for such camaraderie.

When exploring potential new relationships with vendors the most important evaluations to make relate to cost and quality.

Cost, of course, is the cornerstone for your profitability. Your goal should be to have the ability to purchase at true wholesale pricing.

A discount to the trade is helpful, but buying at wholesale can give you the best competitive power.

To serve the widest range of client budgets, you should have good, better and best quality options. Of course, you’ll need to be able to explain the features and benefits of each.

That will require some product education on key points to communicate effectively with your client.

Since you already sell window treatments, you know how to discuss the value of custommade without your client actually seeing and touching the finished product. You know how to work from catalogs, sample books and digital media. Selling furniture and case goods is a bit different in that the customization you are selling now relates to a total design scheme specific to your client’s needs. It is essential to 16

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With corporate roots in the shop-at-home drapery business, collectively Decorating Den Interiors owners’ make nearly 40% of their sales in the custom window treatment category. This means that experienced window treatment designers, who already know the ins and outs of this tricky part of the business, can quickly build sales through custom furnishing options.

Marketing for growth Building credibility in your market for your expanded line of home furnishings also can be an uphill climb. Your advertising will need to be more total design driven than single product driven and communicated through the use of room images. Now, you might ask: Where do I get room images if I don’t have any?

Like most of you, Decorating Den Interiors owners’ entry point into many clients’ homes is window treatments, which makes up 39-percent of our business. Once we have the opportunity to discuss window treatments, we also have the opportunity to discuss the many other home furnishings that we carry that will give the client a more completely designed look and pull it all together.

This takes add-on sales well beyond tie-backs, hardware and passementerie.

Your new product categories also can be a powerful marketing tool. It is critical to build special advertising offerings that tell your customer you have more than window treatments, but also will make that phone ring.

An effective merchandising and promotional campaign in cooperation with your new suppliers will help you grow sales, but not at the expense of profits.

A successful business requires consistent, professional looking marketing. You may need to explore web-based marketing tools that can help you design and manage your marketing and lead nurturing. Would you want to spend your time, however, in front of your customer designing and selling or creating ads and email campaigns?

Managing Profitability Maintaining a profitable business is the key to a healthy business. In our 45-years, we have consistently stuck to our original model of providing design services within the context of purchasing at wholesale and selling at retail. Today, we represent some 100 suppliers of window, wall and floor coverings; furniture and case goods, accessories, custom closet systems, and even some bathroom and kitchen furnishings.

Experience has taught us how important it is to understand the importance of managing profits through the leveraging of products when doing complete design schemes. Knowing how to do that and then having the right business management tools can remove uncertainty and costly mistakes. V Editor’s Note: Decorating Den Interiors (decoratingden. com), founded in 1969, began as shop-at-home drapery business. Today it is North America’s largest home furnishings and interior design franchise company with independent design professionals throughout the U.S. and Canada.

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VIEWPOINT

Find the right partners to build your business

Put More Pocket

in Your

by Joanne North, senior vice president, franchise support, Decorating Den Interiors

o you ever wonder how you could have better tools to evaluate the profitability of your business and put more money in your pocket? The answer is three-dimensional: having the right tools is one aspect; knowing how to use them is another; and having regular encouragement to use them is the third.

ing, implementing and monitoring business plans. If you don’t already have someone who supports you in your business planning, I advise remedying that.

As a business coach for our franchise system, when I review an owner’s business plan, I focus on four key questions: Does the plan have a solid advertising component?

How can we work together to improve your closure rate?

Does the average sale need to increase, and if so, how can we work together to make that happen? And, lastly, what are the profit margins for each product category sold?

One of our highly successful Decorating Den Interiors franchise owners is Barbara Elliott of Stone Mountain, GA. She’s a CPA who worked several years in the accounting field and has owned her design business for 17 years. As a featured Leads are a function speaker at our last of marketing. Closure national conference, rate is about selling Barbara shared her skills and having the successful business right products. Imphilosophy. “Start proving your average with the bottom line sale is about evaluprofit you want to ating your client’s have for yourself needs and wants in at the end of the order to have a good year,” she advises. understanding of “Don’t just look at the full potential of your revenue and every project so you then calculate what can up-sell. That, is yours to keep. too, involves product Rather, focus on assortment and selldeveloping a coming skills. Improving prehensive business your margins is a plan that highlights function of getting a marketing plan the best wholesale The one-stop web-based business, customer relationship and marketing management tool designed to generate used by Decorating Den Interiors franchisees optimizes their time and profitability so they pricing and keeping can spend more time with clients. enough appointments your fixed costs under to ultimately lead you control. to more business sales revenue and ultimately profit.”

Using Technology Business plans are something all business owners talk Fixed costs, of course, are really not fixed. They are about, but not all do well. A Decorating Den Interiors choices. However, if you are not monitoring them well, franchise owner receives considerable assistance preparyou cannot make good choices.

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Barbara Elliott advises: “Focus on developing a comprehensive business plan that highlights a marketing plan designed to generate enough appointments to lead to more sales and profits.”

Advertising is one very important choice. You may follow some rule of thumb, such as spending a certain percentage of your revenue goal on marketing. Those expenditures are probably distributed over several media and activities. But, do you know the return on investment (ROI) of your various advertising? As part of our franchise owners’ web-based communication and business management system, we enable our designers to both track their advertising expenses and match them with leads, appointments and sales so they can measure the ROI for each lead-generation activity they do during the year.

ORION

ORNAMENTAL IRON, INC.

Bohemia on Italian There is nothing more lovely than the sparkle of beautiful Bohemia Crystal finials to complete any décor. The line includes 22 crystal finials, offered in a variety of shapes: round, oblong, oval, circular, square… some even have delicate bubbles inside the crystal. They look especially stunning when combined with our Italian Collection, but are also available with our Iron Art and Wood Art Collections.

That same technology is used for ad preparation, direct mail, email campaigns and client communications so that they can fully automate and monitor their prospecting, lead nurturing and client management.

There are other fixed costs to monitor. As Barbara put it: “Be smarter about what you spend.” Are you tracking the gross profit on every job? Overall, do you have the technology for looking at your business at any given time and determining the answers to those questions and others that impact profits?

Maximizing profitability should be your goal regardless of the size of your business. It may take aligning yourself with others for support and help in identifying the right tools. At DDI, we have launched a “To The Trade” program to allow industry professionals to tap into our resources if they are having difficulty finding and managing these tools on their own. V Editor’s Note: Decorating Den Interiors (decoratingden.com), founded in 1969, began as a shop-at-home drapery business. Today it is North America’s largest home furnishings and interior design franchise company with independent design professionals throughout the U.S. and Canada.

sales@ironartbyorion.com | www.ironartbyorion.com | 877.476.6278

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