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?This blog will discuss Kerokan, Cupping and Eagle Claw Rejuvenation.
What a business can learn from an Eagle In a previous article: "What a business can learn from an Octopus", I spoke about the intelligence of the Octopus and drew comparisons between the Octopus and niche manufacturers in North America. I gave specific intelligent tactics that the Octopus use for survival and then compared that to tacts that a manufacturer could use in positioning their product or services. Living here in Florida, its not uncommon to see a Sandhill Crane or a long legged Heron walk around as they hunt for worms or geckos. If you live near large trees or the water it is also normal to hear the squawk of a Hawk. But seeing a Bald Eagle is always a bit more rare. I think most people stop with awe when they see this beautiful bird glide through the air. Aside from being our National Bird, its simply a remarkable animal. But what tactics do the Bald Eagle use for their survival and how can we draw comparisons that can be learned in business? BE AN EAGLE RARE: So we know that Eagles are rare and that its a federal crime to kill a Bald or Golden Eagle. Felony convictions face a maximum of $250,000 and misdemeanor convictions can face up to a $5,000 fine. In business, being unique and serving a specific niche is key to most small businesses's survival. If you are a custom manufacturer of components (for example) is it your lead time, your profiles or what specifically make you rare in your segment? Its important to be as rare as possibly but remember that if you are too rare that extinction could be a prediction. A little competition actually creates more overall awareness for a given product segment. And its the hard times that build the Eagle's character. Its important to serve an industry where you know you're the Eagle rather than the pigeon or even worse a buzzard. A pigeon pecks at the ground for scraps, a buzzard feeds on the dead. Be an Eagle. FEARLESS: Eagles have amazing hunting strategy and can be cunning. Have you ever witnessed a video of an Eagle throwing a goat off a cliff as a killing tactic? If your business is to survive and flourish you must have the courage to be different, to focus on creating value for your clients in every way you can. If you are a sales person you have to accept rejection and understand that you will often get a "no" or face rejection. But what we all do is not life or death, so fear of rejection is silly albeit natural. When Eagles mate they lock talons and copulate while falling to the ground. Its called the spiral of death however, its shows that they love how they live, without fear. Even how Eagles learn to fly is done with a specific flare. Momma Eagles gather an Eaglet on their back and soar high. When they glide to ground they do so gradually and gently so that the Eaglet gets the feeling for their wings as they drop to the ground. Eaglets can be a metaphor for new hires, new ideas or new products. Its important to soar high but be there to catch your eaglets to make sure they don't fall to the ground and die. But flying is a must for growth and ultimate survival so if an Eaglet refuses to fly, the Eagle rips apart the nest and nudges them off the cliff. The Eagle knows when the time is right and so should you. You must know when to launch your Eaglets when YOU feel the time is right no matter how much they cling to the nest. Remember, you've already let your Eaglets get a "feel" for their wings, you've already fed them, nurtured them and when its time for the world, rip apart the nest and nudge them off the cliff if they refuse to fly. And since Eaglets are born and bred to fly. Feel the pride when they soar. AMAZING VISION Eagles pick the highest spot in a terrain and the keep a sharp eye out for their prey. They can spot prey the size of a rabbit from 2 miles away ! But as a human, its not eye site , mental vision is our key. To have mental vision, we must see far into the future of to predict the needs of our clients. We must develop the vision to see what colors will become the new market standards and see the way to developing the business for the market rather than scavenging for the business created by others. Although its impossible to always be the originator of every idea, if you make your business solely on the copying of others by duplicating other's designs , profiles or work you are modeling your business on a different animal (such as the pigeon or the vulture) rather than the Eagle. Its not impossible to create a business solely by copying others however eventually if your competitors find a way to protect their work you may find yourself unable to adapt to becoming an original when you've spent so much time bottom feeding. In other words, you could become extinct.Remember that pigeons peck and fuss about and vultures bottom feed. Eagles soar to new heights and find new prey. Eagles are game changers and pay no mind to pigeons. If your business is always nipping at the competition by price, you may want to ask yourself why you do not believe your product or service is worth the market price and try to find how you can improve upon your quality, service or value proposition. HIGH FLYERS When a storm comes, Eagles use the air current by flying directly towards the storm and the wind lifts them like a rocket as they fly up above the clouds. In business, downturns can happen, markets change, new competition arises. Instead of giving up, laying low or seeking shelter, why not face the challenge like the Eagle. Instead of hunkering down, fly up to get a 10,000 foot view and look for new opportunities that only an Eagle could see by climbing to that height. The office industry is an example of this. Many office furniture producers became Healthcare furniture producers as the office industry became more competitive in past years. When the storm settled and other Office furniture manufacturers came out from their shelters they noticed that the companies that were thriving the most were the ones that diversified in an intelligent way. These diversified companies are now strong in Office and Health Care. ENDURE At about the age of 30, Eagle's bodies begin to deteriorate due to their age. It has been reported that some Eagles do something completely amazing when they get 30 years old, they retreat to a mountain top and over a 5 month period they rebuild. The eagle knocks its beak on the rocks, plucks out their talons and then all their feathers. When they emerge they are revitalized and can life up to another 30 plus years. Think humans can't do this? I'll never forget back in the 90s when I was visiting Indonesia. I witnessed an Indonesian woman become ill and her friend took her into a room and raked a coin down her back till it was covered in welts. When they emerged from the room, her back was completely red and you could see the raised skin. Although years prior, I lived in Malaysia for nearly a year my Malay / Indonesian was very limited but I do believe they used a word similar to "Kerokan" to describe the technique they were doing with the coin. I deduced that this simply created shock on the largest surface area organ of the body "the skin". And the back is the best place for this technique. Although I had never heard of this before, my mind is always open to learning from others and I could only reason that the damage done to the back is a way to hyper stimulate the immune system into hyper drive. Whether its a technique similar to acupuncture or whether its a placebo, the body's ability to heal itself is unquestioned. So in reality, humans have the power of an eagle. But alas, Western society has taught us to drug up, take antibiotics and after all, aren't we supposed to live the life of a pigeon and not the Eagle? But we can be Eagles !
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Are you a plus or a minus polarity? As humans, we have power; power of thought, power action, power of influence and many unknown powers. One such power I call Purpose Polarity.From very small, our parents unknowingly teach us this power of polarity in the ways they reward our good behavior and punish us for bad behavior. Its through our parents that we find our values and how we handle our daily lives. How we view the world and our participation or power over our surroundings determines so much in the ways of success in personal relationships as well as in matters of career and money.
If a kid steals $10 from his mothers purse to buy candy and she never finds out he or she may realize that dark or negative polarity works. If the kid apologizes they are grounded , candy taken or much worse. So the kid just learned that not only does crime not pay but confessing doesn't pay either. But what if the kid confessed, apologized and then was told to wash the car and they could keep the candy. What if the kid was taught to add value and provide a service and only good things would happen? DARK FORCE / NEGATIVE POLARITY: It is widely known that in this world there are some very bad people. Sometimes these very bad people are in jail but other times they are extremely successful. These negative polarized people seem to be all about themselves and all their actions are to their gain. Ego, lawyer protection, contracts, negotiation; all of these things are required to protect the dark worker with negative polarity. If you see a successful company with a huge legal department you can probably guess that they are negatively polarized. In fact, faceless corporations and public companies often go the way of negative polarity. GREY FORCE / UNDECIDED: Next we have grey polarity. Your masses of people or the majority of people have some grey or a lot of grey. People are often torn on what decision to make and often the amount of money or the gain affects their decision. We've heard before that "everyone has a price". The correct statement is that "most people have a price". There is a small group of people who cannot be bought and their ethics or standards are locked in. LIGHT FORCE / POSITIVE POLARITY: People with positive polarity are ones who are focused on others or the greater good. In general if a person learns that they must add value in order to be paid or they must think about a system of utility. Utility is the measurement of benefit. I'd like to tell you the story of my friend Rod who often visited his grandparents near my house. Rod slipped change and bills from his elderly grandparents . He had told me that they gave him the money however slowly over the summer I started to expect that he was stealing the money. I confronted Rod with this fact and I refused to eat any more. After some time he confessed to his grandparents and he was grounded and I lost my friend for the rest of the summer. My friend Rod was not pleased with me for pushing him to confess and to stop taking the money. Growing up I mowed yards for neighbors and also helped my father in his business. The pay was not great but it was the source of my spending money and also saving for a car when I turned 16. When Rod got in trouble I told my dad about this event and he told me a very valuable lesson. He said "Son, money you make fairly is twice as enjoyable When you think about life, humans or business we should all look at nature to see how animals have adapted for survival. One amazing animal is the Octopus.
The most obvious thing would be that Octopuses have 8 arms. Actually the arms are four sets of two. Aside from the arms, the Octopus's intelligence and adaptability is what makes it truly a unique animal. Some site that the Octopus has been around for over 400 million years and it has developed quite intelligent tricks to enable its survival. The Octopus can: 1. NICHE: Fit into small spaces just like a business can serve niche parts of a market. Octopuses the size of your fist fit though the neck of a beer bottle and hide out from predators on the ocean floor. This flexibility enables it to get into tight areas free from harm. Example for our Industry: Firstly with so much manufacturing that has gone to Asia simply making custom components is already considered somewhat a niche in the grand scheme of materials. A further niche could be a focus on complex parts that are thicker, sculputural panels, a focus on the closet industry or a focus on refacing. A. Focus complex Parts such as thicker parts. If a company was to focus on this niche it would require them to enhance their CAD abilities and also to invest into a press than would make these deeper parts. B. Sculptural Panels: If a company were to focus on this market they would have to invest into that specific tooling and also focus on building the rep or specification sales arms to succeed. C. Closet Industry: If a company were to focus on this segment they would have to focus on bringing in 3D Laminates that matched the boards being most used in their market. D. Refacing: If a company were focused this market they would need to develop match HPL backed thermofoils or possibly peel and stick backed product which companies like Dackor offer. The point is that it is very difficult to be all things to all people and so its easier to focus on a Niche for not only survival but also to become the best at that niche. If your company attempted to serve all the markets then you wouldnt have the right press for the thicker parts, or the right tooling for the sculptural panels or all the board matches for the Closet Industry or would never quite develop the match system for refacing. In essence you'd probably get a bit accomplished of all the goals but never be the master of one. This dispersing of time and capital makes you vulnerable to the predators of the ocean who are either more focused or have the resources to accomplish all tasks. 2. ADAPTABILITY: When facing adversity many Octopuses change color to conceal themselves in coral or in the sand. They change and adapt just like businesses must change and adapt with market conditions. In fact, Octopus have been known to change colors to mimick lionfish, sea snakes and eels. This means that the Octopus is intelligent enough to have self awareness in order to aspire to be a more dangerous predator when its life is put in danger; Amazing if you think about it. In waters near islands, Octopuses have been known to grab two coconut shells that were bust in half and use them as shields to fend off its competitors of the sea. Example for our Industry: The first thing that comes to mind is the ability for a business to change with the times. Lets suppose that textures are becoming a trend and all your swatch books in the market have yesterday's colors however if you are adaptable you could quickly add the newest textures being offered to change the appearance of your swatch book offering to adapt to the image the market desire. 3. INK: When attacked in open water the Octopus will deploy ink and then disappear to a safer hiding spot. I used to live in Japan for several years and developed a taste for Octopus at the Sushi bar but when the Octopus releases the ink in open water it makes the water taste bad and reduces the desire for larger predators to continue pursuit. Example for our Industry: If you compare the example of the Octopus unleashing ink to make the water taste bad and hence think that the Octopus will taste bad imagine your company focusing on a niche industry while your competitors are spread out too thin. If you were focused on the reface market for example and all of your matches had complimentary HPL matches, you could process HPL back and even peel stick back then it would spoil the water for a would be competitor. A competitor would come in to eat your lunch only to taste the ink in the water and decide not to attack this market due the high barrier of entry you have created. I could apply this example to the Closet Industry, Sculptural Panels, or any other part of the market as well. CONCLUSION: I hope that as I've used the example of the Octopus that you feel inspired to continue on your current path or for some you may, in fact, rethink how you are currently going about things and hopefully this article may inspire in some way. As readers of this blog may know, I am with DACKOR 3D Laminates here in North America. Aside from stocking the laminates and making them available to the market and creating trends, we do a lot of specifications. Sometimes cabinet companies have a misunderstanding of what we do.
SPECIFICATION As you may be aware, before a condo, apartment or hotel breaks ground, the designers choose colors and come up with a general design to be bid on. Designers are contracted either by the Architectural firm or directly by the owners. This is a critical point because if they specify an offshore producer.... or a veneer, for example, and your company's strength is membrane pressing doors then something could be specified that your company does not have a comparable advantage in. Just like HPL, Solid Surface and other architectural products, Dackor gets our colors specified and we do our best to also value engineer the project. We explain how important melamine matches are however ultimately this is a decision for the ultimate customer, the owner of the project. WHY DO DESIGNERS WORK WITH MATERIAL SUPPLERS? It is commonly known that Designers work with material suppliers rather than cabinet makers. I have suspected that the reason is that its viewed that for the Designer to work with the subs on a project that it is interfering with the bidding process. Often cabinet companies get exclusive materials and the price of their final work reflects that. By specifying the material, multiple people can bid on the project. This is the first theory. The second theory is that GCs do large projects and may owe funds to one supplier and so interfering with subs and specifying them may affect the cash flow of a project. In summary, its an industry conclusion that designers like to specify materials and then empower the GC to work with whom they choose. So if we are specifying 3D Laminates and you like working with our product segment we are doing you a service. We are lining up a project to fall into your wheel house and better assure that you get the project. CHANGING SPECS Dackor is not in the business of going to existing projects and trying to convince them to switch colors. Since our main customer is those with membrane or vacuum presses, we would never disrupt their business by trying to convince a color to be switched to ours. It is our goal to support and to further enhance the business of the door pressing community. MISUNDERSTANDINGS If you are a cabinet company who has previously done work for a General Contractor and then you see a Dackor specified laminate, it may seem that we are disrupting your business. This is inaccurate because the project could have been specified in an off shore cabinet color or a surfacing product which your factory is not equipped to produce. From your perspective, the GC is your customer and the wishes of the owner or the designer seem irrelevant however they are the ultimate customer who is paying for the cabinets. Also GCs use a wide variety of cabinet vendors and just having the spec be initially in a 3D Laminate gives your company a leg up to assure that its you who gets that project. RECOMMENDING CABINET COMPANIES Dackor is independent and does not favor any company over the other however if you own a membrane press its you who we want to impress, who we want to develop a relationship with. Its important to see our role in the process and to see value in us being out specifying 3D Laminates. Why not get closer to us to find out about other opportunities and to utilize us as an extension of your sales efforts. In addition, we can custom match colors and bring in colors to enable you to win projects that would normally go to another technology or go to another producer. OTHER INDUSTRIES THAT SPECIFY We are all aware that HPL producers such as Wilsonart, Formica and Laminart specify their laminates as well as countertop companies like Corian, Cambria and Silestone. In these markets it is quite common for items to be specified and there are such an abundance of companies who can process these materials. Please note that as a membrane or vacuum presser that you are in a unique group and although you are used to controlling the supply of these materials that it is not out of line or unordinary for us to specify our laminates prior to the GC being name and certainly before the Cabinet company is named. By the time you are called to bid the project we may have had a year prior into the specification process. Be sure to reach out to us and to work closely with us so that we can work towards mutual benefit. Ultimately we want to work more closely with you and to develop a closer relationship. CONCLUSION Dackor gets involved very early on in projects to specify our laminates. Projects specified in Dackor have been long before you have been involved in that project and before the GC has even been awarded the projects. If your company brings to us a project after the fact then we will refer to you and not even communicate with the Designer or owner for that matter. We understand very clearly the protocol and operate in that manner. We hope that you embrace us, become a customer to us and that we can feed each other business and grow together. In this 3D Laminate Blog I try to write articles that are specific to the 3D Laminate Industry however from time to time I do write about Sales, Specification and other tops. Often I do research and this is the best way to obtain data. I came across an amazing article on sales reps and rather than recreate the wheel I'd like to cite an article by Zorian Roten berg
HOW TO HIRE SALES REPS When you are hiring new sales reps, what traits are you looking for? I use the 5 below which have worked for me time and time again. And an in-person interview is your best way to test for these top 5 and below I will also share with you how to spot them. So here they are: 1) Conscientiousness This research on sales rep performance published by the American Psychological Association way back in 1993 found that the most predictive indicator of sales rep success is “conscientiousness.” Conscientiousness simply means achievement and dependability. We also can refer to it as “hard work until you get it done,” also known as “GSD” (i.e. Get S**t Done, implying that getting things done comes with a goal and the dependability to achieve it). Candidates who are conscientious are goal-oriented, hardworking, persistent, and have high expectations for themselves – exactly what you want in a sales rep. When you find a candidate that fits this description, you can count on them to not only set goals, but also to set a high bar for themselves and make a great effort to reach that bar. They’ll be able to work autonomously. Conscientious sales reps do really well with data transparency – when they have access to their own sales performance data, they can track and adjust their efforts in real time. Testing for Conscientiousness: But when it comes to interviewing candidates for your sales team, how do you gauge conscientiousness? Ask them to tell you about a time they set difficult goals. What did they do to stretch themselves and achieve these goals? Let them walk you through the process and purpose. If they can show they’re goal-oriented and results-driven, they will likely put in a lot of effort and do well on your sales team. 2) CoachabilityWhile hard work and conscientiousness is important, the most successful sales candidates will find a healthy balance between that self-starter attitude and an ability to turn coaching into results. Mark Roberge, HubSpot’s top Sales Executive, ran an experiment where he looked for specific attributes during sales interviews and measured over time which of these attributes actually correlated with success. He collected over 1,000 interviews and hired more than 60 people before doing his first analysis. What he found was that Coachability was the #1 predictor of sales success at HubSpot. Testing for Coachability: One of the best exercises to test for coachability in an interview is to run a roleplay. Ask them to sell something simple to you, like their phone or the table. Spend a few minutes pretending to be a prospect while they deliver an elevator pitch and answer some of your questions. Then, ask them to reflect on the roleplay: what did they do well and what did they not do well? Candidates who are open about and unafraid of their weaknesses tend to be the most open to coaching. Next, tell them what to do differently next time. Do they get defensive or stressed, or do they receive feedback well? It’s a great sign if they take notes on your response. Then, have them do the roleplay again and see how well they apply your feedback. So, what does this mean for you as a sales leader? You need to hire coachable reps and then dedicate time to actually coaching them. Well-coached sales teams consistently outperform the competition and improve forecasting accuracy. Moreover, your reps want to be coached because they want to develop their professional skills. It may be a serious time commitment, but prioritizing coaching has proven significant, long-term benefits. 3) IntelligenceIn order to be coachable and smart about sales, a rep must be intelligent. Sales is a data-driven field, so successful reps can analyze sales data and make smart decisions based on their analysis. Testing for Intelligence: Good indicators of intelligence include your candidate’s academic and workplace experience and achievements, including GPA – but remember, those can be arbitrary. I’ve found that a great question to ask in an interview is: “In five minutes, could you explain something to me that is complicated but you know well?” It can be a hobby, something technical… anything they want. Their response will tell you not only how well they can comprehend complex subjects, but also how well they can articulate them to someone who doesn’t know much about the subjects. To succeed in sales, your candidate will need to explain your product, technology, and ideology to people who are mostly unfamiliar. That question will show you how naturally this comes to them – and it’s a sneaky way of gauging intelligence. 4) Prior successThis is critical because you want someone who has shown a track record of achievement. It doesn’t matter in which area – and even someone graduating from college can show that either in academics or at sports or hobbies. Testing for Prior Success: This is easy – just look at the resume. Or look at their academics and grades if the candidate is fresh out of college. It’s easy to see. Also, Inc. magazine published an article recently called, “The Only Interview Question That Matters.” The question was: What single project or task would you consider your most significant accomplishment in your career to date? Even more important than the question itself is the follow-up questions you can ask, like “Walk me through the plan, how you managed it, and its measured success,” “What were some of the biggest mistakes you made?”, “Give an example of how you managed and influenced others,” and “What would you do differently if you could do it again?” It’s amazing how much insight you can gain about a candidate by spending 5 minutes asking questions about their #1 accomplishment. 5) PassionHire candidates that have passion for sales. And I suggest that you look for someone passionate about your company’s mission, too. Testing for Passion for Selling: Ask your candidate why they want to go into sales. Ask them what books they’ve read about sales, which sales blogs they read regularly, and what excites them about sales. People tend to succeed doing things they really like, so a passion of sales can be a good indicator of success. Testing for Passion for Your Company: You also want sales reps who are passionate about working at your company. It is really important to be clear up front about your company’s mission, culture and purpose You can gauge their passion and selling savvy by what questions they ask you when given the chance. Are they well-thought-out, difficult questions? That can give you a clue into whether they will maintain high interest in your organization over time. Ultimately, the candidate that will succeed on your sales team will passionately engage with you on this subject. These 5 characteristics of successful sales candidates might surprise some of you. What about years of sales experience or industry knowledge? Think about it: those traits can all be learned, but none of them are inherent. The most successful sales reps have high potential because they possess the 5 characteristics I’ve listed. Those are far stronger at the core than something that can be easily learned. Sometimes it is tempting to hire a candidate that looks fantastic on paper with tons of experience even if they didn’t pass the 5 tests above. But the cost of turnover is high and you don’t want to screw it up. Hire the most dependable, goal-oriented, coachable, intelligent, and passionate people and you are guaranteed to build a world-class sales force. If you are big organization and you’ve hired a lot of reps, I’d love to hear if you try these so let me know how these traits correlate to performance (especially Productivity Per Rep – PPR) of your most successful reps. For example, you can run a few simple regression analyses to correlate the sought after traits (which can be tracked during and after the interview) with performance of your reps. A number of companies including Hubspot have run such analyses and many of us agree on most of these 5 as strong and consistent predictors of success in inside sales. Some of my most popular posts in this blog have been based upon sales and marketing. In this article I'd like to explain how some companies impede their sales by putting too many constrictions on their success.
THEORY OF CONDITIONAL SUCCESS In life too many people place conditional limits on their success. An example would be to say something like "Whenever I get a promotion, I'm going to start coming in to work early" or "Whenever I sell all the dead stock of this ugly maple I'll bring in a new maple". With conditional success we put limits on succeeding and tie them to things that are completely unrelated or in some cases they are even conflicting to the success. As you can see above, it may be a good idea to start coming in early in order to get the promotion now. Or in the case of the dead stock, the fact that one item is not selling has no correlation over whether or not the new maple will or will not sell. WE ARE VEHICLES FOR THE DELIVERY OF DESIGN Think of me or yourself as a vehicle to deliver a color or design. The market itself may or may not accept a new color or texture however the less restrictions we put on that discovery the better. Some restrictions can be things such as: "I dont' like this color but its up to you". If you think of about it, your like or dislike of a color should never be forced on a client. Imagine if you sold cars at BMW and someone who liked blue cars came in and test drove a new 7 series and you commented "Its a nice car, too bad its blue". Taste in color is a personal opinion and its also about awareness. Because you are unaware of how to use a color in interior design yourself does not mean its impossible to make it look good. The consumer knows better what they want. "I have too much inventory". The market itself does not care if you are carrying too much inventory of dead items. Imagine if you have too much dead stock of green or Sanibel maple and so you use this as an excuse not to bring in new items. The market itself may have demand for particular colors however the market itself has no care over how much dead inventory you or I have of non selling colors. Not bringing in new colors because of having too many old colors is a version of conditional success. Its like saying "I will start selling more new colors whenever I get rid of the old colors that are not selling" One has nothing to do with the other. I am not suggesting that you over extend yourself but its important to identify if we are in fact putting limitations on ourselves and then examine it. THEORY OF FALSE CORRELATION The theory of false correlation is where we draw conclusions based upon seemingly correlated facts however in truth there is no direct correlation. Imagine if you are a component producer who has been around since the 90s and most of your colors are HPL matches. I could show you a new Tafisa match and you could bring it into your stock and have no sales. You may say "This color doesnt sell" however thats a false conclusion because it could be a top 10 seller for me. A more accurate statement would be "I dont currently have many customers who use Tafisa board and most of my clients are refacers" That would be an accurate conclusion and therefore explain the poor sales results for that color. So by creating false correlations we operate business based upon false data and then make decisions based upon false data. Clarity and understanding of the market is key. BAD POLLING RESULTS Sometimes I have spoken to door producers and I've heard them say "Well I just put the door out on my counter display and we will see if the market likes it". Does this accurately depict their entire customer base or just the refacers who pick up the doors themselves personally? Its clearly a selected demographic of just their counter sales and not of their entire sales. Its quite possible that their cabinet customers who are decision makers may not pick up their doors personally and may have them delivered. So the sampling is skewed. Dont feel bad about poor polling though.... Whenever you watch or read the news listen to their poor poll results. They will draw conclusions about public schools based upon a poll they did in Manhattan. Not exactly a national sampling to draw any type of consensus. POOR LIMITATION OF SUPPLIERS Another thing I will commonly see is when a company may buy all their laminate from one company. When I ask them about this they say "Well we like so and so sales rep" or "Their freight costs less" or "We like to consolidate our suppliers". Although when we are the company exclusively supplying them it seems great but at what expense? The overall success of our customers is the most important factor and laminate should not be purchased the same way that you buy boxes. Each laminate supplier will have a list of top 10 sellers and the reality is that sticking to just one supplier can hurt your sales over all. There is definitely some merit in focusing on 2 or 3 suppliers to get purchasing power or to demand more service and to diversify however sticking to one supplier will only limit your growth except in rare circumstances. LIMITATION OF SAMPLES Another thing one can do to limit sales is to having too few sample chains. If you ever find that you do not have enough sample or literature and you are selected which interested buyers do or do not get samples then this can cause a severe limitation in sales. Its an example of a way we can stand in our own way to selling more. PREMATURE DELETION OF COLORS FROM STOCK Another example of how we can hurt ourselves is by premature deletion of colors from the stock line up. Imagine if a laminate, board or door company takes on a new color and it can take 6 months to a year to first create awareness by distribute the samples and then the market itself must be timed properly for that shade of color. Tastes change and imagine if a board company releases a color too soon, takes 6 months to get samples out, distributors dont take the color into their line and then the color is deleted before it becomes relative. Its difficult to do however the timing of colors is critical and that is to have the right color be released at the right time to create relevance. If a board company discontinues an item, under most cases this will kill the 3DL sales. NOT ENOUGH SALES REPRESENTATION Most component, laminate and furniture producers in this industry do not have enough sales representation. The problem with this is that it means that our sales become limited to a core group of customers or based upon existing demand. I often notice that if we have a duplicate to another film company or in many cases they have a duplicate to ours that suddenly our sales will grow. Logic would suggest that if I were the only one to have this color that I should get all the sales but its quite the contrary. The market movement of more people promoting colors creates a larger over all market. By not having enough sales representation we limit our sales to only the existing demand and no new fresh business is created or discovered. CONCLUSION In conclusion, the key for us all is to step out of the way of ourselves in order to let the market and the colors do the work. By eliminating conditional success, holding our opinions to ourselves, diversifying supply, distributing adequate samples and being patient and consistent we can better discover if a color has potential or not. |
Design Life blogColor inspiration from around the world, backstories on design inspiration and informative articles about marketing, membrane pressing and personal development. Author Mark Viers delivers fresh content that will help you and your business grow and thrive. Categories
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