Don't Get Mad Get Customers

There have been some recent statistics claiming that 27% of the population can not afford big ticket purchases at this time. So therefore 73% can afford to buy – if they want it bad enough. The harsh reality is that many of those 7 out of every 10 consumers would rather hand over their hard earned cash (because I suspect that most of those on benefits are among the 27%) for something more desirable than a new carpet.

Unfortunately, the typical carpet advert makes the double glazing and estate agency business look like consummate professionals by comparison. FREE fitting, FREE underlay FREE grippers, FREE doorbars, FREE measuring then massive discounts upon further massive discounts are slashed, carved, hacked, gashed, chopped, ripped and otherwise lacerated from what’s left, to give “Mad” and “Crazy” prices.  I can’t help feeling that the prospect of even considering buying such obviously worthless rubbish from a self-proclaimed lunatic is beyond the pale for many respectable people.

Unless of course they absolutely need one. So that’s what we are left with, those people who can not put off any longer their need to cover up the noisy draughty bare boards, or replace the ugly carpet that the incontinent dog has destroyed. With great dismay they are forced to contemplate the prospect of visiting a cold, poorly lit, crammed warehouse or backstreet shop to look at products, which main selling point seems to be that it’s “cheap”. 

It doesn’t have to be that way.  The best definition of selling is “Creating a desire to own something”. How many carpet adverts, flyers or shop fronts do you see that create a desire?  The only desire many create is the desire to be elsewhere – like lying on a beach playing with their new iPad, or sitting in front of their new 99” plasma tv with a few cans of grog.

Rapidly rising wool prices have not made it any easier. However, there is an argument that wool is a premium product and should be reassuringly expensive. Smartstrand has shown that premium fibres can successfully command higher selling prices – and let’s not forget that higher prices create more turnover and profit. We can be more ambitious than to chase prices tied at the same levels as 20 – 30 years ago.

Theodore Levitt, an economist and lecturer at Harvard Business School once said  – “People don’t buy quarter-inch drills, they buy quarter-inch holes”. Rather than selling carpets perhaps we should think about selling beautiful homes.