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Retailing your Furniture Stain Center to Increase Profits

A stain center should be happening place. A place of comfort, a revenue producing area, and provide memories of a positive purchase experience.

Let’s start with a short discussion of negotiation or sales philosophy, and frame the concept of a stain center in terms of your overall ability to sell furniture in your store. Selling anything is a form of negotiation. What does that mean? Negotiation is an exercise in human interaction built on a base of preparation. Simply put, if you understand the predictable behavior of human beings, you can prepare an environment in your store that would cause customers to be more likely to purchase furniture. The good news is that there are only three areas of resistance to a successful furniture sale: Trust, Motivation and Information. If all three of these criteria are in place, your chances of a sale are very high. For example, if you do not trust someone, would you ever buy from them? No way! If you don’t want something, if you lack motivation or intent, would you buy that item? Probably not. And if you don’t have enough information to feel comfortable with the purchase, would you buy it right away? No, you would probably wait until you could do some research, or until you ran into a sales person that, guess what? You trusted! All three of these criteria are interrelated. One works in synergy with the other. Every thing you do in a retail store to create a selling atmosphere relates to these principles of human behavior. In the stores I have visited, many have the first two criteria met, but not the last. The loop is left wide open.

Let’s take a minute to explain how you achieve the first two. How do you develop trust? With a new customer you do that in many ways. Pretend you are that new customer, walking up to your store – what would you see? What you should see is clean windows, a tidy and attractive storefront, and good signage, including a clear indication of store hours. Once inside, you should expect your presence to be acknowledged by a member of the sales team within minutes. Friendly smiles go a long way. The floor should be well stocked, indicating to the consumer that your business is solid, here to stay. Is the store merchandised, either with accessories and samples of finished furniture, or both. The customer-salesperson relationship should be earned by excellent service, not by who greeted them first. Never force a buying prospect to work with someone they do not like. All of these things would cause a consumer to think, hmmm, I would be comfortable buying here. Make shopping at your store a positive experience.

The second criteria, motivation is up to you to determine. Your sales personnel should be well trained in asking open-ended qualifying questions. Closed-ended questions can be answered with a yes or no. Open-ended questions require a personal response. I’ll demonstrate. Pretend I am the sales person. Are you interested in buying a bed? NO. Oh, are you interested in buying kitchen table? NO. Do you want a bookcase? No. How about a desk? NO. Coffee table? NO. NO. A chair – we have some wonderful chairs? No! Then why are you here? Actually, I just came in to see if I could use your phone. You see when there is no motivation; there won’t be a sale. What would it take your sales team to get an answer in the customer’s own words? An open ended question, such as…..What brought you into our store, or what type of furniture are you interested in? When would you need your new furniture? Why do you need a piece of furniture? How did you hear about us? As you may have noticed, open-ended questions start with words like who, when, where, why, what and how. There is a lot more to this technique than you might think. Open ended-questions cause the customer to talk. What do friends do easily? They talk, all the time. So open-ended questions deepen the trust or rapport by framing the consumer in a state of friendship. Open-ended questions have another benefit. With them you will obtain the information necessary to sell the customer something, or as we say in the sales world, close the sale. There is an old saying, you can talk your way out of a sale, but you could never listen your way out of a sale. In several studies, it has been shown that the top sales people in all industries listen 85 to 90% of the time and talk during the balance. In fact the steps of a sale require that you establish rapport, or trust, qualify with open questioning techniques to discover and then close with good information. Remember, information is the third area of resistance.

Your store and your sales personnel should offer all the information necessary to answer the customer’s questions about quality, product lines and wood species. And this is where stain centers fit into your store’s sale future. The biggest piece of information the customer usually needs is this: “How do I get that piece of white furniture to look like what I have in mind. Or in the case where your store offers finishing services, how do I select the right stain to get the look I want?”

According to Tom and Sylvia Thompson of Sonshine Furniture in Denver, “t he finish sale is the very first sale you must make”. And they are so right! Customers do not come in to buy unfinished furniture. They come in to buy a vision of what will end up in their home – they have a picture in their mind and if they believe that result can be achieved, they will buy. If you want to sell more high-profit furniture, you would do well to pay attention to the customer’s vision, and make it easy for them to achieve that dream. The stain is the icing on the cake. I often hear store owners say they don’t want to spend a lot of time selling a can of stain, however research proves that people buy furniture faster once they are assured of the final look. According to Ted Bockweg, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Color Communications Inc., “Color is important. Consumers are not as receptive to buying if they cannot find the colors they want.” Not only will you sell the furniture, you will have the benefit of thousands of dollars in profits from selling the finishes!

Your stain center should be the activity focal point of your store. It’s the logical place to close a sale, and it’s a place for customers to gather and for cross sales to occur. Have you ever opened a can of stain for a customer demo only to suddenly find a crowd gathered around you watching? A synergy begins, customers may even start selling each other, telling others about their successful staining experiences.

Space is at a premium in many of your stores, but your goal is to increase sales. A stain center is revenue producing space and good merchandising of this area will increase sales. You want a friendly environment that the consumer is attracted to and will linger in so you can bring the furniture sale to closure. I remember my first experience in a bookstore (long before Starbucks ever existed) that had a kiosk where you could sit and browse through the books. There were comfortable chairs, a fire place was lit, there was the smell and taste of great coffee and a jar of cookies to snack on. Your stain center could provide a similar experience, what Walt Disney called “five sensing”, engaging as many of the customer’s sensory perceptions as possible: sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste.

A good stain center will also save time. The customer will be able initiate the sale, making it easy for your sales people! And those of you with bottlenecked finish rooms would improve your sales volume if consumers were more comfortable with their own ability to finish furniture themselves. These objectives can be achieved whether your store is large or small.

The following is a checklist of ideas to help you set up a sales-generating stain center.

• Make the display a silent salesperson. An attractive display instills confidence in the buyer. It should be a user friendly, self-explanatory, hands-on presentation; a place where they can occupy themselves while waiting for a sales person. The display itself should be an attractive piece. We order ours in birch from Arthur Brown complete with moldings. They look beautiful enough to put in a home!
• Don’t set up your stain center at your sales counter! I have seen sales counters so crowded with stains, POP’s and sundries that customers barely had room to get their little credit cards out. If you want to keep your customers attention on the purchase, keep distractions down to a low roar. Ideally, your stain center should be fairly near your sales counter, so that sales personnel can easily answer questions and move to the sales register.
• The stain display should be visible from the front entrance. The first 200-300 square feet of floor space is the first and last impression. Have lots of color and interest in this area. Finished pieces, tables with small items stacked on them, some finished, some not – accessories if you carry them. Your stain center should be located close to this zone. As a welcoming and naturally colorful space, your customers will be immediately drawn to it as a safe and interesting place. Having your stain center located here also helps your sales people in their initial approach – it becomes a “collection area” with lots of neutral conversation starters to talk about. If your stain center is toward the back, move it!
• Color Merchandising: Make sure your color boards are openly displayed and within reach, not hidden away in drawers. The first thing customer’s focus in on is color. Effective, in-store color presentations are critical to closing the sale. Effective color merchandising enables you to be perceived as the color authority to the consumer. According to Ted Brockweg, vice president of sales and marketing for Color Communications Inc. “A lot of customers are not receptive to buying until they find the color they want.” The availability of good color merchandising tools is critical to what the consumer walks out the door with. Make it easy for customers to select their finishes. Make sure your sample blocks are visible at eye level. Keep brochures in stock and readily available. If you are using the General Finishes display racks for Prelude, Country Colors, Kids Colors, Antique Wax, EF Country Milk Paints, EF Glaze Effects and EF water base finishes, group them together so they provide a strong presence of color. You will be amazed how customers just naturally gravitate to the color blocks. And the color blocks themselves should be large enough for the customer to make an easy evaluation. A major trend in color merchandising is the “bigger is better” theory. Companies are now offering bigger color samples as a more effective visual aid. Also, make sure your POP blocks are relational to the cans of stain! In other words, put the sample blocks near the cans of stain they represent. If you have ever noticed, as soon as the customer finds a color they like, the first thing there eyes do is start scanning your cans of stain to see if the color they like is in stock. Don’t make the stain selection any harder than it has to be. The stain blocks are also important because customers can touch, feel and carry the stain blocks to self-engage themselves into the sale. Because today’s world is so virtual, consumers are more touch prone.
• Provide a sitting area for customers to discuss decisions, with niiiice comfy chairs. Blend a couple of upholstered pieces and a few interesting finished end tables and a coffee table to show how well they work together. All of your display furniture should say cool, custom, upscale, exciting or wow!
• Market your stain center throughout the store. Set up a mini-display near the front door with a sign telling the customer to “visit the stain center for more information”. Put on empty cans of finish and display samples videos. This will tell the customer that the information they are seeking is somewhere in the store.
• Create engagement. Communication experts say if you can get the consumer to engage, start touching and using whatever it is you have to offer, they will buy more readily. Provide a waist-height table and stools. Leave out cans of stains marked “sample”, plastic gloves, foam brushes, aprons and sample blocks of scrap wood for customers to try stains themselves. Set up a sign inviting the consumer to play.
• Create an “idea book” with pictures of finished furniture, either from magazines or of furniture that has been finished by previous customers. Provide an idea book in your stain center. Constantly photo the pieces that are finished and provide them on copies with staining instructions. For an example, go to http://www.buyunfinishedfurniture.com/Idea%20Book/ideabook.htm. There are two file formats (Word and PDF) you can print out and use in your stain center. Because you are around furniture and the staining process all the time, you have a good idea of what the finished outcome is like. However, most of your customers don’t and very few people are good at articulating a mental picture. They sure do buy from emotion when they can see, touch or feel what they want! Customers will buy more readily if you help their “vision” along. Collect pictures from magazines and previous customers. If you work on this, you will have a nice collection after a year’s time.
• Start a “wall of fame” of previous customers. Gather pictures of the pieces they finish and hang them in your stain center. Put the extras in your display book. When you sell the furniture, tell them that they have to send you a picture when it is completed. When you do your customer service follow-up call, remind them again that you need a picture. If you send a thank you note, enclose a self addressed stamped envelope so they can just drop it in the mail to you. You will be amazed at the number of people who will make their purchase after looking at some of these photos.
• Food always works! Have a jar of cookies out and provide complimentary coffee/tea/hot chocolate/water. This is so important. I remember a time when the hotel shuttle van driver who picked me up at the airport offered me bottled water. Such a simple thing. (And you can ask customers to keep the food and beverages in the stain center area)!!! Get that fifth sense going. Studies show that customers do linger longer.
• Keep a reference library of staining books and videos.
• Sundries should also be sold near the stain center, with signs explaining their use. With today’s high customer service standards, consumers resent having to get in their car and drive to another store just in order to get the right sand paper or a 3M sanding pad. Keep your sundries neatly organized and easily identifiable. You really don’t want personnel to have to spend a lot of time selling a $.50 foam brush, so set up your displays in self-serve fashion.
• Keep your shelves well stocked and faced. Nothing, I repeat, nothing looks worse than empty shelves. You will lose the trust of the consumer. Keep them full and when stock is low, ‘face” the shelves by pulling the cans forward with labels neatly aligned. And dust the tops of the cans. 3 years of dust is a dead give away to anybody.
• Lead by example. Display trend boards with pages of magazines (House beautiful, El Décor, Better Homes and Gardens, etc.). Mount on foam board with spray glue. Add sample paint chips. Or Put a few small pieces of finished furniture near the displays. Small tables, bread boxes or accent pieces are ideal. People learn and act 83% visually - relying on visual input – don’t miss this important aspect of human behavior. They buy what they can see, not what is going to be. Lead your sales by example throughout the store.
• Play an in-store demo of the “water base finishing” video in your stain center continuously throughout the day using a small combination monitor/VCR player. This video has been designed with 3 purposes in mind: to assist sales personnel in the selling process, to convince consumers they can finish their new furniture themselves and to reduce risk. This video is the best insurance policy stores can have to increase customer success rates! Topics include preparation, what supplies are needed, application, two-toning and specialty finishes such as crackle, faux marble, antique wood graining, and leather technique. There are two versions; a short in-store demo video and a longer one for consumer purchase. Encourage customers to watch the video as part of the sale process, or use it as a “silent salesperon”. If you are busy on the floor with one customer, send the second customer over to watch the video for a few minutes until you can free yourself up to wait on them. A note of caution: be sure to purchase a telelvision/VCR unit with an automatic rewind function. Keep the volume low or you’ll find yourself reciting the video in your sleep. Put a small note on the VCR telling customers to feel free to turn up the volume. Better yet, purchase a unit with a motion sensor, so that it turns on automatically when the customer walks up and turns off when they leave.

To recap, when overcoming the 3 areas of resistance to buying, trust, motivation and information, stain centers are very much part of the information process. They are also part of the service experience. If I were to shop in your store, I would want a positive, comfortable environment that would invite me to linger, perhaps have a place where I could sit and browse through an idea book and wait for a sales person. I would have the opportunity to watch a short, interesting video presentation, knowing that I could purchase one to help me when I got home. The stain center would be set up so clearly that I would easily be able to pick out the stain I wanted, and offer me information that would give me the confidence finish a piece myself. It would be a reason that I would want to come to your store and recommend it to friends.

Your benefit is that you will sell more furniture faster and increase repeat business. If you want assistance with setting up your stain center, contact General Finishes at 800-783-6050. There are resource manuals available complete with color pictures and a friendly sales staff waiting to serve. Arthur Brown has the specifications for the book cases that hold the racks – and can build them for you. Contact Arthur Brown at 631-243-5594.

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