The Definition of Success: Are You Growth-Minded or Fixed-Minded?

How do you define success? One certainty is that if you don’t have a definition, you will never know if you are successful. Success is not only definable, but it is also actionable. There are generally two types of people; those who look forward, are driven and willing to take calculated risks, and those who believe they are victims of their circumstances, that others are responsible for their current condition and do not believe they have the ability or opportunity to change. The latter rarely takes responsibility for whatever life throws at them.

In her best-selling book Mindset: How We Can Learn to Fulfill Our Potential, Columbia University Professor Carol Dweck terms these two groups of people as growth-minded and fixed-minded. Dweck writes, “A growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things that you can cultivate through your efforts. Although people differ – in their initial talents, aptitudes, interests or temperaments ¬¬– everyone can change and grow through application and experience.” In other words, you can succeed if you take control of what you do.

On the other end of the spectrum, fixed-mindsets believe that they are incapable of changing and there is no use in trying because no matter what you do, the result will be the same. Not believing you can be successful is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Think about the people you know who are successful. Do they honestly believe that their success was pre-ordained? They take risks. They have sleepless nights. They always strive for improvement. They believe perfection is an achievable goal. They make mistakes, but strive to learn from them and move on.

Which group are you in? Fixed- or growth-mindset? If you are in the latter, the chances of achieving your dreams are greatly enhanced. If you are in the former, the is no time like the present to change.

Putting Off Until Tomorrow What You Should Be Doing Today.

When you put off something until tomorrow or the next day or the day after that, your decision comes at a cost. Procrastination is present daily in your showroom and most likely in your home. How can you avoid having to pay the piper? University of Pennsylvania professor and best-selling author Adam Grant offers guidance. He points out that research finds that putting something off has little to do with work and everything to do with negative emotions. We put off a task if we are uncomfortable, confused, or bored. While kicking the can down the street may make you feel better at the time, the long-term effect is feeling worse because the task remains undone.

Grant says to avoid procrastinating you don't actually have to work more or improve your time management skills. Instead, you have to change your mindset. Often, we are our own worst enemy and critic. We strive for perfection while knowing that perfection is never an achievable goal. Think about how many times you have started a project and trashed your work because you did not believe it was not good enough. Grant advises to remind yourself that you are human; make plans to close the gap between your work and your expectations.

Timing is another tactic. Research finds that chronic procrastinators are night owls. Your brain cannot function at peak performance without sufficient sleep or if it is not alert. If you tend to stay up late, schedule your most important tasks later in the day when you are more alert.

Additionally, surround yourself with highly productive team members. Grant cited one study that found individuals improved their productivity by 10% when they sat next to someone who was twice as productive as the average person.

Avoiding procrastination is not easy. Recognize that there are always tasks that we don't want to do or that emit negative feelings. Managing and, if possible, eliminating negativity will help you and your team stay focused and ensure deadlines are met.

Post-lockdown, small changes make a big difference: By Stephanie Azran, SH Design-Build

If you’re thinking of changing up your showroom in the next few months due to new social distancing practices, why not take the time to think about leveling up your customer experience? While the primary concern is to keep staff and clients safe over the coming months, this is also an opportunity to refresh the look of the showroom with an eye on the future.

Even though people are beginning to shop in-store again, some people are still hesitant to go out in public and have turned to online shopping. While showrooms have been dealing with this issue for years now and succeeded by improving in-store experience, it’s more important than ever to focus on creating a safe, comfortable environment for clients who may not be ready to shop in high-traffic public spaces.

In order to create showrooms that feel safe, comfortable and clean, we predict that showrooms will move towards designs with open plans, simplicity and overall minimalistic design. With proper organization, display fixtures and a clear merchandising plan, you’ll be amazed at how many products can be on display without cluttering the showroom.

Sensory experiences will also become a focus. The joy of showroom shopping comes from interacting with products, something that may be restricted for the time being. With the sense of touch removed from the experience, it’s time to experiment with sound, scent and vision. Calming music and spa-like scents like eucalyptus and citrus are great starting points.

The visual experience takes a little more effort, but a look that conveys organization, cleanliness and openness (all of which comfort people concerned about social distancing) can be accomplished with color-blocked areas, taller displays arranged along the walls, and low displays that allow for a clear view of the entire showroom.

For now, events may be limited, but the multi-functional areas you use to host classes and cocktails are a powerful tool. If you choose to open by appointment and have to keep people spread out across the showroom, kitchen vignettes and designer tables are good options for design or sales meetings. If you don’t already have these multi-functional areas in your showroom, now is a good time to define those spaces for social distancing reasons, knowing that once things are back to normal, they can become great multi-use spaces.

Things may be stressful right now and not every showroom is thinking about making major changes. Still, even the smallest changes can make a difference to make your clients feel safer and more comfortable, now and in the future.

The Fate of Brick and Mortar Retail.

As the country continues to reopen at varying rates, the news for much of brick and mortar retail is not positive. Coresight Research predicts up to 25,000 brick and mortar stores will close in 2020, a majority of them in malls. Neiman Marcus, J. Crew and J.C. Penney have filed for bankruptcy protection. Pier 1 Imports, GNC, Victoria’s Secret and Papyrus are closing multiple locations.

In this dark cloud, there is a silver lining, predicts past DPHA Conference Workshop leader Bob Phibbs in a recent blog. Malls are in trouble, but they were in trouble before the outbreak of coronavirus, and for good reasons. Phibbs notes that fewer consumers want a cookie cutter retail experience offered by Kay and Zales, Gap, Victoria Secret, Macys and J.C. Penny to name a few. “Shoppers are carrying every mall on their smartphones and have the ability to do anything as most any price point. Forget messaging or selling over the phone, the way forward is click-to-start-video chat.”

Phibbs does not believe the worst is over for retail. The pandemic will change brick and mortar retailing and shopping forever. Consumers will make an effort to visit your showroom because they want to see and touch faucets, hardware, countertops, vanities, accessories, finishes, floor and wallcoverings, sinks, and so on. Every product that a showroom sells can be acquired online. What can’t be acquired is the experience that your showroom delivers. And therein lies opportunity.

Re-opened showrooms will be best served by investing in team members. Showroom sales professionals must ask the right questions to determine why a stranger decided to make an effort to leave the comfort of their couch to visit the showroom. No one who makes the effort to visit your showroom is really interested in picking up their new toilet curbside. Phibbs believes that you need to adopt a merchandise mentality, focusing on how to raise margins, improve conversion rates and sales volume. Showrooms need to move beyond having to sanitize after every consumer visit, which is necessary right now. Creating strong customer relationships is what’s important and comes from adopting a merchant mentality, Phibbs claims.

Video meetings with consumers are not going to end once it is safe to return to whatever the “new normal” looks like. Showrooms will have to embrace new technologies to stay connected to their consumers. You can’t rely on field of dreams marketing where you rely on your built showroom to attract consumers. You will need to be available virtually at all times.

Consumers working from home for the last three months have, out of necessity, had to go online to work, shop and buy groceries. That behavior is not going to change. Showrooms have adapted by using new technology to reach customers and staff and must continually use technology to connect with customers.

The demise of iconic brands such as Neiman Marcus, Victoria Secret et.al. is because they attempted to standardize the customer experience and failed to invest in their teams. In showroom speak, they hired people whose skill set did not extend past their ability to take orders. An expensive and valuable lesson.

MrSteam Shows How Top Showrooms are Selling Steam.

MrSteam products offer a practical home wellness solution that fits with any design. We asked some of the powerhouse showroom sales teams to discover how they successfully sell steam, and these are our top three takeaways:

1.     Health and Wellness: Wellness is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. Yes, steam showers are a wonderful way to relax, but there are dozens of proven health and wellness benefits, from respiratory care to skin care, too. Discover more on the Steam Therapy blog.

2.     Designer Friendly: MrSteam products are sleek and discreet, making them a great fit to incorporate for any individual style. SteamHeads come in a variety of finishes, including multiple designer metal finishes as well as black or white glass. The linear steamhead is even more subtle, offering a low-profile design that sets flush with the wall.

3.     High-tech Simplicity: To make things simple for both you and your client, MrSteam offers pricing and installation information that’s easy to find and share online. Use the free Virtual Spa feature to build the perfect steam shower match, with inputs for dimensions, controls, upgrades and accessories in one place.

Watch these sales stars share their tips and more at the video below.

WATCH NOW

Common Website Mistakes to Avoid.

Location, Location, Location
All search is local. In both the real and online world, consumers visit the central places that provide goods and services that they need, making these decisions to minimize travel distance. That’s why it is extremely important to include your physical location on your website on every page. Where you are located is part of your brand because people search by location. Your customers are no different from you. There is a maximum distance that homeowners in your service territory will travel to buy a new kitchen or bath.

Showcase the Best
Avoid the temptation to showcase your latest projects. Instead post examples of your best work. Website visitors don’t care if you did the project last week or five years ago. Showcase projects that reflect your brand and serve to differentiate your skill sets from competitors whose competency is limited to taking orders.

Speed Wins
Website visitors don’t have the patience to wait for pages to load. You can check your website’s speed on Google’s PageSpeed platform. You want a score from 90-100. If your speed is 50 or lower, speak to your web master or other expert to determine what needs to be done to load pages more quickly.

Less is Better
What do you want your web site to do? For many, it is to provide reasons for potential customers to come to your showroom. As Robb Best explains, when you give customers too many choices their brains shut down and people walk away because the brain does not have the capacity to process multiple inputs. That’s why Robb recommends offering customers a choice of A or B instead of A-F. The same thinking should apply to your website. Carefully curate images to provide a representation of projects and styles. One or two contemporary, transitional, traditional, eclectic or other types of projects that reflect your best work should be featured, not multiple images of the same type of project.

Look Through the Lens of Your Prospective Client
What do prospective clients who visit your website want and need to see? Marcus Sheriden advised DPHA members to answer the questions that your clients and prospects ask most often. These might include: How much does a new bath cost? Why is there a vast range of prices for different products? How long does a renovation take? What should I expect from the showroom? Are you providing information that clients can use to make their customer journey easier, or does the focus of your website tout how wonderful your showroom is?

Making Your Website More Effective
Every week DPHA produces a blog that you can use as your own. We recommend that you select the images that reflect your brand instead of the generic images that accompany the blog. Blogging weekly will increase your search engine optimization, and many showrooms that blog regularly show up on first pages of Google searches without having to pay for ad words or incur other costs.

Are You Ready to Add Talkies to Your Product Pages? Thoughts from Fellow Jeffrey Valles.

Lately vendors and showrooms have been speeding around gathering as many images as we can for our websites. Quality is not really a factor, as any image is better than having the customer search for a specific item and see “No Image Available.”

Your customers hate it, you hate it, and most of all, Google ignores it. So, you chase any image you can and make the product web page complete. Voila, all are now happy. My page looks every bit as good as Amazon and my competition. Congratulations, you have leveled the playing field. Job well done.

Now what is next? I suggest it is time to add videos.

As a product description without an image is a shallow story, a product image and description without a complimenting video is passé.

SnapChat videos and Instagram stories are grabbing people’s primary attention and TikTok’s unique users have almost doubled in the last six months[1]. All are adding simple click to buy capabilities. Video is now the norm and we all have new work to do.

Take a moment to see how the world wide web has changed during the last few years. Amazon’s go-to-market strategy of selling everything possible and delivering it to you as fast as they are able is an amazing feat. Google’s algorithm promotes websites that continually offer new products that are supported by best in class content.

These two companies have dictated how we build our individual websites. We mimic Amazon's product page and enter all the data that Google is searching for. If it works for Amazon, let’s do it. If this is what Google is looking for, let’s give it to them. And with all that hard work, we all look the same. The Internet is a huge place full of potential and to succeed in winning a luxury market we need to be unique. Frustrated? Yep! Confused? I found this roundup from a16z quite helpful in better understanding what is working.

Imagine a client is looking for a specific product. They visit several websites and find similar product pages. The product looks the same on each site. The descriptions are similar, and the pricing and delivery times are comparable. Take a moment and search for a product you sell and see what you find.

What can a vendor or distributor do to break this tie? Add short, focused video stories to each product page. Each product does not require an individual video. Just a quick story of the many things that make your brand unique.

Start by making ten 15 to 30 second videos that celebrate what your brand does well and what makes you unique. Then take these videos and partner them with products on your website product pages. These videos will also play nicely on Facebook, Instagram and SnapChat. Distributors and vendors can share them to tell why they work together and expand each other’s video libraries.

Do not overthink or overdo these videos. Yes, you can bring in a crack crew with a talented director and spend a lot of money to create fine contact. You can also enlist your team to tell honest, authentic stories about your products, about your service and about your strong brand history. These can be recorded on a smartphone.

While the big companies are taking the time to plan each step, you can have 10 videos ready to go live in weeks. Then 20 in a few more weeks. Once you learn how to do this, you will be surprised how easy they are to craft and how effective they will be. Simple stories about styles you love, customer service stories you are proud to share and quick chats with clients.

The Internet has grown past text and images and is asking you for video stories about who you are. I think you know the script. It’s all in your head.

[1] Emarketer, US Consumers Are Flocking to TikTok

When the Crystal Ball is On the Fritz.

Our crystal balls are on the fritz. We don’t know what is going to happen. We can’t predict how many of our customers are going to return to our showrooms once we become fully operational. We’re not sure of the impact of the economic fallout from this crisis will have on our business. All of this uncertainty causes anxiety and stress. There’s no guide, standard operating procedures or even experiences that showroom owners can turn to for direction. We know of some owners that have had to take pay cuts, furlough great team members and be the bearer of bad news. Plus, working from home is not easy, especially if your role also includes home schooling and being proactive so your kids don’t bounce off the walls.

At a time like this, it’s easy to be stressed out, but don’t let it happen. Rich Fernandez is the CEO of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute that specializes in mindfulness and emotional intelligence programs. He advises that the most important leadership decision you can make during this crisis is self-compassion. It’s not about being soft or letting things go. It is about empathy and not beating yourself up for everything that is not perfect.

DPHA started the year with a bang. There was lots of positive energy. Making a prediction about what will come next is nearly impossible. However, that will not deter DPHA from staying true to its mission of being the source for education, connection and elevation. We continue to help members keep their fingers on the pulse of what’s happen through our newly established webinar program and in our weekly e-newsletter, Connections. Fernandez advises not to lose site of the big picture even though the pursuit of your team’s and business goals may have been temporarily put on hold.

Think positively and recognize that your team needs you now more than ever. They need guidance and want to be reassured that they continue to contribute meaningfully. Focus on small victories that you and your team can celebrate.

Additionally, remember to take care of yourself. In addition to eating healthier and getting enough sleep, make time to exercise. Note author Dan Pink offers guidance to motivate yourself. Don’t state that you need to exercise. Rather, state that you get to exercise. When you need or have to do something, it’s being forced upon you. When you get to exercise, it is your choice.

Lend an Ear.

Listening is an art form and there is a sound argument that listening is as important, if not more important, than presentation abilities. In a recent interview, co-founder and CEO of the private equity firm Blackstone Group, Steve Schwartzman, was asked what it takes to be a really good leader. He responded, “to be a leader you have to be a really good listener. You need to understand what goes on around you.”

One of the keys to becoming a more effective listener and a really good leader is to actually care about what someone else has to say. This is accomplished by recognizing both the verbal and nonverbal cues the person speaking to you is trying to convey. Not only do you need to carefully listen to the words someone is saying, but you must also be aware of tone of voice, facial expressions and body language. Next, you need to have the ability and the desire to process information received. Finally, you need to respond appropriately to validate that you understood what the information conveyed.

Validation takes many forms. One is to nod, signifying that you understand. Another is to paraphrase what you heard and obtain affirmation that your understanding is accurate. You need to be fully present and in the moment with the person who is speaking.

To be fully present, look through the lens of the person who is speaking. Where are they coming from and why? What problems are they trying to solve. What guidance are they looking for? When you look through the speaker’s lens, they will appreciate your effort to really understand what is important to them.

Another key is being focused. To demonstrate to your customers and clients that you are listening to them actively and are in tune with their needs and desires, consider taking notes during these conversations. On one side of a piece of paper write general notes about what customers are looking for, and on the right hand side jot down the most valuable pieces of information conveyed that may relate to style, budget, concerns, etc.

Most people engaged in conversations are focused more on what they are going to say next than they are about listening to what another person has to say. It's hard to stay focused if you are the person in a conversation that does most of the talking. Another reason for your mind losing interest is that you editorialize the points that the person is trying to make. This prevents you from fully focusing on what is being said. Pay attention to what makes you lose interest, and then shift your focus back to what the person is trying to say.

Emotions can also prevent you from listening. Have you ever noticed when someone becomes highly emotional that they don't hear a word you are saying? When someone vents, we often let him or her finish before responding. That's not always the best way to demonstrate that you have heard what they are trying to say. To help better understand the root of the person's anger or point, ask questions. Asking someone what makes them most angry or what they are most worried about forces the other person to focus on the incidents that caused an emotional response. It also demonstrates that you have listened to them and are concerned for their particular predicament.

Becoming a better listener makes you a better communicator. The customer who is talking to you realizes that you care about what they have to say, and when you demonstrate that you care, you establish trust. People will purchase from those whom they trust.

The Case of the Scratched Part, A Whodunit for the Ages: Thoughts from Fellow Jeffrey Valles.

When we talk of customer experience it is mostly related to the time when we are face-to-face with our customers, when we have a bit of control over the situation. But what happens if a situation arises when we are not by our client’s side? This is the moment of truth. The moment that we can show off our customer service and remove all that FRICTION.

For example, a large remodel is wrapping up right on time for the homeowners to host their daughter’s wedding. The plumber is trimming out the master bathroom. They open a box that contains a large part with a mysterious deep scratch and needs to be replaced. However, the product is handcrafted with a 6 to 8 week lead time. The clock is ticking, and time is not on anyone’s side. 

The plumber calls the showroom and is asked how it happened. Who did it? Not, let me call the vendor and see how fast we can get a replacement. DPH showrooms want to play Sherlock Holmes and find out who is guilty in “The Case of the Scratched Part”. Finally, after some very raucous back-and-forth, the showroom calls the vendor and they also want to know how such horrible disrespect for their handcrafted and lovingly packaged product occurred. Everyone is in lynch mode. All this accomplishes is increased FRICTION, damaging both the showroom and vendor brands.

All the plumber wants to do is get the part and get off the job. All the builder wants to do is wrap up the build and turn the home back to its owners. And all the homeowners want is to resettle in their abode and prepare for the big event. Does it really matter who is guilty? Is it worth the time to find out who damaged a $200 part? What about a $1000 part, which is more likely with a custom ordered piece? Let’s not lose sight of the reason we open our doors every day and why our customers choose us.

The word-of-mouth damage that the plumber, builder and homeowner can inflict on the vendor and showroom is substantial. But the benefit they can do is tremendous, if they know you’re there to help make it right. Why not eat the part and use this as a PR win? Look like a hero!

May I propose a new process for a field-damaged part:

• When a call comes into the showroom, the first step is to properly identify the problem, agree on what is needed and understand the timeline.
• When the showroom explains the situation to the vendor, the vendor investigates when the product can be made or assists in locating it and gives a firm ETA.
• The showroom informs the plumber with the part information and makes any other follow up calls as deemed necessary to the parties affected.
• The vendor delivers the part as promised.

Simple...Right? Decrease FRICTION, increase TRUST.

According to Narvar’s 2018 Consumer Returns Report, 89% of repeat customers who have a good return experience are likely to buy again. Offering a pleasant return experience can potentially improve your retention rate and increase revenue!

A few decades back, management was charged to make every company division a profit center. In fact, for quite some time, one plumbing manufacturer’s replacement parts sales were contributing a very high percentage to its bottom line. In a spreadsheet world I can understand that, but it does not help to build trust in the brand. PR, good or bad, does not show up as a black-and-white number in a spreadsheet but it does strongly influence the sales numbers.

Save your teams huge aggravation and gain a lot of positive word-of-mouth trust. Please repeal the process to investigate and punish the perpetrator in “The Case of the Scratched Part”.

Is Your Sales Team Ready for a Video Showroom Specification Visit? Thoughts from Jeffrey

As of today, a significant percentage of your good clients will be leery about visiting a showroom. Add in the fact that many homeowners, the money on the job, will share the same uneasiness, and you have as much as 50% of your good clients with jobs in queue that might not want to visit your showroom. What about the clients that do come into your showroom? You will likely only be able to allow a certain number of people in your showroom at one time to keep them a minimum of 6 feet from each other. What will you do?

Some showrooms have turned toward online, un-guided, virtual showroom tours. I think this is an easy proposed solution, but not a luxury answer. They can often be difficult to navigate on a desktop or tablet. It reminds me of jumping to warp speed in the Starship Enterprise when you move from room to room. Then, if you find the right room, viewing specific products is difficult. Today, there is a better solution.

Before the pandemic, Design Within Reach had added an in-showroom video option to its online chat tool. While a showroom sales associate is digitally chatting with a client, they can switch to a video chat mode and walk the client through the showroom and show them the actual products they are discussing. Not exactly the same as being there, but a very good way to keep the virtual visit in the hands of a capable salesperson and leveraging a well-curated showroom. Listen here for more information in DWR’s virtual video enabled chats.

My suggestion is to train your sales team how to use tablets with a video meeting app, Zoom, FaceTime, Ring Central, there are many options. This will take practice and, as with any new sales tool, some team members will dive right in and succeed, some will fight it every way and others just will not be able to add this emerging, essential sales technique to their toolbox.

Managing a video showroom visit is not that different from a pre-COVID-19 tour. 

1. Get to know the client and gain a solid understanding of the job and clients style taste.
2. Take them, via your tablet, to see the product you would like to start off the selection process or products they have mentioned. Then follow your regular sales process.

What you may have a harder time showing with this tool is taking in a view of the complete showroom. This impression helps customers understand the totality of your brand’s offering and the opportunity to discover what might be new and exciting for their job. This view is even more important for the designer’s client. Their client does not work with you often and these topics of excellent product curation and your steady stream of new product additions must be worked into your sales associates’ presentations. Each sales associate will have to develop poignant comments on these brand defining issues while also reminding all how you will be with them every step of their building process.

To start, each sales associate should have a tablet and complete Bluetooth headset to limit the background noise for both the client and associate. The right tools will lead to better results. Please, do not be frugal here.

The #1 rule is to take your time. While working with clients in a busy showroom, there are many distractions. In a virtual guided tour, they will only see what the salesperson presents. Instead of seeing 40 faucets, they will see one, two or three products at a time. Each possible product must be presented respectfully and on the client’s timetable. The client must dictate the pace. If they want to see another 5 faucets, so be it. If they are ready to move on to toilets, so be it. They do not know your showroom layout and will ask to go where they are interested in next, which may cause a lot of back and forth for the associate. In the beginning, this will be a frustrating sales process. Over time a good sales associate will implement digital video visits with ease. For now, they must listen, learn and remain patient.

This is the time to practice. It will be difficult for even the best sales associate to listen to the clients, comment effectively, continually point the tablet’s camera at the appropriate products and take notes. The only way to learn how to juggle all this is with practice. More prep time may be needed before the meeting in order to make the meeting more effective and efficient. Consider sending out a pre-visit questionnaire to better understand your client’s needs so that you can pre-select what you want to show them.

Separate your sales team into pairs. Send one from each team and their tablet to a separate work area outside of the showroom. They will play the client. The team member remaining in the showroom will ring them up on their tablet and start the showroom tour. Make sure you have at least three pairs practicing at the same time. It is important the associates not only learn to use the digital video tool, but also understand how to dance around people while digitally interacting with their clients.

Keep it simple at first, working on a powder room or a front door specification. Once they finish with the first round, get all the teams together and go over the trials. Do not rush this. Sharing everyone's experience will help others learn what works and what does not. Now switch roles and restart. This is going to take time and will require patience from everyone, including managers and owners.

Then comes the showroom visit follow up. This will consist of emailing wrap-up notes and, hopefully, a job quote. And, if the client requests actually seeing the noted product samples in person, delivering those showroom samples. Yes, in this new world you will have to live with a showroom that is missing popular products. That will be difficult for some of us perfect showroom people. You will get over it, and sharing samples will be an important part of building a deeper trusting relationship with your good professional accounts. You might have to double-up on more popular products to make sure you do not disappoint a customer.

For the time being, you will only be able to allow a limited number of people into your showroom at any time. Showroom traffic will be governed by your locality’s pandemic guidelines and customer comfort. This will make digital video call specification sessions a significant part of your business. This was coming for quite some time and COVID-19 has pushed us into adding virtual meetings to all our sales repertoires, NOW.

Initially these calls will be a pain and very frustrating for both your sales team and customers. As all sides orchestrate more calls, they will improve the dance and your team will take pride in being the best. Once this happens your strong brand will increase its stature in your market. There will be a silver, video lining.

Articles of interest:

• https://businessofhome.com/articles/how-is-retail-faring-in-the-covid-economy
• https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/style/shopping-will-shopping-ever-be-the-same.html?referringSource=articleShare
• https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/books/bookstores-reopening-coronavirus.html?referringSource=articleShare

The Top 10 Metrics That Matter Most For Your Business In Today’s Economy

In today’s data-driven economy, marketers and entrepreneurs alike are constantly trying to capture and decipher data to understand their target audience’s behavior, determine buying patterns, and maximize marketing ROI.

Many experts claim that marketers and entrepreneurs should be tracking many different metrics and KPIs, resulting in an overwhelming list.

However, we are willing to bet that most of the metrics on your list are vanity metrics and won’t REALLY provide your business much insight or value.

If gaining market share and propelling profit in today’s economy is a goal for your business, then this article is for you. In this article, we will review the top 10 metrics that matter most for your business.
1. Website Traffic

Let’s say your website gets around 1,100 visitors per month. That’s great and all, but do you know which pages they visit? Where are your visitors spending the most time on your website? What exact words are they reading on each page? Where are they clicking and what are they clicking on? This is where a heat map comes in handy.

A heat map records (via a video) cursor clicks and all mouse movements, and it also shows you the “scroll depth” of all visitors, which tells you the overall effectiveness of your website design. See the screenshot below, which looks like a weather map. The yellow and red spots are where your visitors are scrolling and clicking most. 

A heat map gives you an idea of what draws people’s attention when they are on your site so you can “read their minds” and understand their thought processes. This image is a 30-day sample for the homepage of a client. However, you can run heat-map reports for individual pages on your site. For example, you may want to know how a landing page is performing for a particular advertising campaign, how web visitors from specific keywords or zip codes are doing, and so on. 2. Audience BehaviorThe screenshot below shows a comprehensive dashboard with key metrics, which include the following:

• Average time spent on site
• Bounce rate (which is how many visitors DO NOT visit a second page on your website)
• % of mobile users (knowing this is critical for businesses with an unfriendly mobile site)
• Top pages viewed on your website
• Total number of inquiries (phone calls, form fill-outs, live chats, and wishlist submissions)

The dashboard shows some important metrics about how your marketing information is leading to sales opportunities at your company, which most analytics tools do not include. Most “dashboards” focus solely on marketing metrics and overlook what matters most: attributing sales opportunities and revenue from all of the activity you are getting on your site.

Perhaps one of the most important on this list is the number of inquiries, which refers to the number of calls, form fill-outs, and chats initiated from your website. Are you currently tracking these from your website?! 

After reviewing the number of inquiries, your team should then export this list into a spreadsheet for each of our customers. This way, every inquiry acts as a ‘line item’ on a spreadsheet/CRM. (See screenshot below.) This way, you’ll be able to accurately create an ‘inquiry pie’ so that you can calculate cost-per-lead, per channel via the web (i.e., CPL).If your company isn’t running more efficiently and transparently with this granular-level reporting each month, then there is likely something happening on a MUCH larger scale. 

3. What is The “Source” For Each Inquiry? “Source” indicates how a visitor found and arrived on your website. In most cases, this is a Google (or search engine) search or a live ad that you’ve placed on Google through the Google AdWords platform. The third type is “direct” in Column F, which means a visitor typed in your website domain directly into the search bar on their browser. This also means the visitor didn’t visit any other source before landing on your site (i.e., they already knew of you).

At this point, just know every visitor on your website can be put into a pile. After you put every visitor into their appropriate “pile,” you can then see what source is bringing you the most inquiries (because you’re tracking calls, forms, live chats, wishlist submissions, and so on) and what business development initiatives are bringing in clients, and at what cost per each acquired! 

4. Average Time Spent on SiteThe average time on site refers to all visitors. In this case, approximately 1,100 visitors spent an average of one minute and 14 seconds on your site. Obviously, the more time spent on your site, the better. This is a good indication that your visitors are actually reading and engaging with your content and that your website design is effectively giving visitors what they want.

However, if you’re looking to yield a 3:1, 5:1, 10:1+ return on investment form the online channel, the number of inquiries you’ve received from the 1,100 web visitors who reached your site is much more impactful than knowing how much time they spent on your site.
5. Bounce Rate

This refers to how many people “bounce” off your site. This typically means that visitors only visit one page after landing on your site and then leave. This also means that they don’t click on any other pages.

Don’t let this metric fool you. If a website is providing people what they’re looking for, a high bounce rate isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, you can only prove this to be the case if you are tracking every inquiry that comes from the site, especially phone calls. 
6. % of Mobile Users

This means out of all the visitors that land on your site, 43 percent (in this example) is the portion that accesses your site using a mobile device. This metric is important if your website design isn’t “responsive”, or displaying optimally on all devices and if you are running paid advertising that shows for mobile searches and bringing ideal buyers back to a non-mobile-friendly website. Other than that, it is always a good idea to maximize the mobile experience on your website for visitors. Your website performance...

                        

7. Top ChannelsThe top channel is displayed as a pie chart, which shows the top sources or channels that visitors used to find your site. In the example below, the bulk of the traffic came from a paid source, such as a live ad campaign like Google AdWords, Bing ads, Houzz Ads, or other directory sites. Organic traffic makes up approximately 15 percent of the total website traffic in this example. We also see several direct searches, some social media, and a referral. A referral might be visitors who come in from a third-party directory or review site, for example.                           You can also click on “Top Pages Viewed” to see which pages your visitors viewed and spent the most time on. One thing to keep in mind is this metric captures the total page views. This means that one visitor may visit a page five times. This is why the number of page views is often higher than the number of visitors. Finally, if your contact page has many views in comparison to how many people have inquired, then you may want to look at optimizing that page because just visiting the contact page alone shows a high intent to buy or reach out to your company to get questions answered.

8. Cost Per Lead (CPL)For those doing paid advertising, this is one metric that you probably aren’t tracking as well and as accurately as you should be... YET! The cost per lead (CPL) is what it essentially costs your business to attract leads from your website. The CPL is calculated by taking your total advertising spend and dividing it by total inquiries, minus duplicates, spam, and solicitation. This number can fluctuate depending on the season, ad budget, market share, and so on. So, don’t panic if this number is higher or lower at various times.

                   

9. Top Keywords

Keywords are the most powerful thing to reference when creating content like blogs, videos, e-newsletter copy, press releases, or Google ad campaigns. This list shows the top 10 keywords that brought visitors from Google to this company’s website. To reference an earlier portion of this post; you may want to look at heatmaps from visitors to your site from just these words.

By understanding your high-performing keywords you can further optimize your advertising copy, website content, and messaging during your follow-up efforts as well as what to do during the sales process that will generate revenue faster and in a more systematic fashion! 

Again, this list can fluctuate due to seasonality, inventory availability, and other market trends. So, it is important to monitor this list periodically and ensure that your mix of keywords makes sense to what it is that you want to transact on the most at your business. 
10. Zip Codes Website Visitors & People Clicking Ads Come From Finally, here is a chart that shows the distribution of calls. The green block indicates the number of people who called from an ad (that never even visited your website). The blue indicates they called after clicking on one of your ads, visiting your site, and then decided to reach out. 

 

If you found any of the information contained in this blog post beneficial, or if you would like a complementary video analysis to learn more about how your company is positioned in today’s economy, please reach out to John Gosselin and he’ll work with his award-winning team take action on getting your company the best game-plan for “winning” more business, gaining more market-share and being more high-tech and high-tech on the internet immediately!

John’s email is John@EarnMoreDoLess.com and his phone number is (781) 780-2110.

BLANCO Offers Food Safe Solutions that More Easily Maintain Hygiene in the Kitchen.

Kitchen sinks and faucets are on the front lines of keeping a home clean and safe – used continuously for food preparation, hand and dish washing. Food safe and easy-to-clean surfaces that reduce bacterial growth as well as hands free solutions for faucets will help future-proof kitchen design by adding features that enhance wellness while still looking contemporary as well as beautiful.

BLANCO’s patented SILGRANIT kitchen sink material has benefited from over 35 years of manufacturing and continuous development. BLANCO’s proprietary Hygienic Plus surface acts as a shield against dirt and bacteria while reducing bacterial growth by up to 98%. SILGRANIT doesn’t require harsh chemicals to keep clean – just soap and water or baking soda, since the hydrophobic surface pushes away dirt and water, so it easily drains away.

The SOLENTA semi-pro faucet collection offers superb quality with innovative design elements. Engineered with a solid brass body and a flexible, high-quality hose encased in stainless steel makes this faucet both durable and easy to clean. The SOLENTA Senso provides the ultimate hands-free experience by combining reliable materials with a sophisticated start-stop technology.

Supporting your Team Working from Home

It is an entirely different world than it was two months ago. There are obvious benefits to having team members work from home. You are helping to ensure their safety and providing opportunities for team members to care for their families. Working from home saves time and resources by avoiding the need to commute. On the downside, it is more difficult to communicate effectively or efficiently. It’s more difficult to provide direction, which is stressful for both team members and managers. Plus, there is a sense of loneliness that can zap productivity and enthusiasm. You can eliminate the adverse effects of working from home by taking a few simple steps:

• Check in regularly
• Establish ground rules
• Put team members in the best position to be successful
• Establish work-life boundaries

Check-In Regularly

When the team is in the office or onsite, regular face-to-face interaction occurs naturally. From weekly team meetings to unscheduled drop-ins, being face-to-face in the same space lends itself to person-to-person interaction. Working from home can make team members feel isolated, which is why it is important to establish regularly scheduled and some impromptu check-ins with the team. Doing so recognizes and acknowledges the efforts put forth by each member of your team and how those efforts contribute to team goals. “Out of sight, out of mind” is a challenge most managers must address. Checking in regularly says to your team that they are included and appreciated. Regular check-ins also tell team members that you are available for them and that their questions and concerns will be addressed.

Establish Ground Rules

How often do you expect them to communicate and in what way? Try using a variety of tools to connect with your team. Email and texts are fine, but using video tools such as Zoom, Slack, Google Hangouts, Basecamp, etc. provides richer, more personal connections.

Put Team Members in the Best Position to Succeed

Encourage your team to create dedicated workspaces in their home if possible. These spaces may be a spare bedroom, the dining room table, or any other space in the home that is furthest away from distractions. Consider offering to equip your team with the office supplies they need and assist with IT infrastructure if necessary. Creating a designated space in the home sends a message to other family members, even though young children may not fully respect mom’s office time.

Establish Work-Life Boundaries

When your team members commute from the office, there is a natural transition from work to home. Encourage your team members to replicate that transition from home. At the end of the day, shut down the computer and move to another room, or even relocate to a different part of the same room to replicate the transition from the workday to private time. Additionally, if you issue emails after hours, unless a reply is needed immediately, include in the subject line, immediate response is not necessary.

It’s challenging to maintain the same corporate culture when team members are separated from one another. With a dedicate effort of regularly checking in with team members, providing the tools they need to succeed and encouraging disconnecting at the end of the work day, you can help keep your team energized and motivated.

Tips for Improving Your Communication Skills

What most DPHA members lack the most is connection and time. We don’t have enough time to do the things we want and often are pressured by deadlines to hit send before we want to or should. Harvard University’s Director of the Writing Center Jane Rosenzweig offers some guidance to improve your communication capabilities.

The first line of an email or any correspondence should state the reason for the email. When you lead with the main point of the correspondence, you are telling the reader exactly what they need to do or expect. You save time and add connection. Determine the background information that supports your message and don’t add additional copy.

Don’t do this:

Budgeting for a bath is generally complicated and difficult to pin down because the number decisions that need to be made. We understand that homeowners in Shaker Heights, OH don’t have unlimited budgets most of the time, and there are always compromises and concessions. We encourage our clients to think strategically about what is most important in their new dream bath. Consider the pros and cons of upping your budget for the items you most want. What we encourage our clients to do is to create idea boards on social media sites such as Pinterest and Houzz that enable our designers to prepare realistic budget recommendations based on style, preferences and space.

Do this:

We recommend that anyone who wants a dream bath create idea boards on social media sites such as Pinterest and Houzz that enable talented designers to develop realistic budgets based on style, preferences and space.

Rosenzweig also advises transforming descriptive topic sentences into topic sentences that make claims.

Descriptive Topic Statement:

I met with the Goldbergs on Tuesday to discuss their new kitchen.

Claim Topic Sentence:

After meeting with the Goldbergs on Tuesday to discuss their new bath, we need to revise their budget to ensure that they have realistic expectations.

The claim sentence is a call to action because something occurred at that meeting that requires a response or additional action.

When you begin an email with a claim, you tell the reader what to expect and focus the rest of the email on what needs to happen and why. Make a habit of writing claim-based topic sentences to reduce editing time.

Identify the people who should be acting when you communicate.

Consider changing this:

We made the decision to shut the showroom in light of global pandemic because we are not considered an essential business.

To this:

Jane Doe, president of Doe Designs decided to shut down the showroom in light of global pandemic because we are not considered an essential business.

In the first sentence, “We” is not identified, while in the second sentence the president of the company made the decision to close the showroom. Closing the showroom is a big deal. Determine if you want to identify the person who actually made the decision or if you want to keep the decision maker anonymous.

How to Avoid Opening Dangerous Emails.

If these times were not challenging already, DPHA’s IT gurus recently sent out excellent advice advising us to be on the lookout for hacker emails with dangerous malware and viruses. Here’s how to spot dangerous emails:


• Look closely at the e-mail address to make sure it’s spelled correctly.
• Hover over any links in the e-mail (but DON’T CLICK) to see the ACTUAL website you’ll be directed to. If there’s a mismatched or suspicious URL, delete the e-mail immediately.
• Watch for poor grammar and spelling errors.
• Never download an attachment unless you know who sent it and what it is.
• When in doubt, call the person who supposedly sent the e-mail on the phone to verify it’s legitimate.

Wise Words to Make A Positive Difference

If there is one thing the business world forgets it is this: people have what they need, but seldom what they actually want. World renowned author, blogger and marketer Seth Godin offered words of wisdom to help businesses navigate the COVID-19 storm in a recent podcast. “Just because you have the money to interrupt somebody (through an unsolicited email, robocall, etc.) does not mean that they want to hear from you.” Instead, Godin believes what most people want is a helping hand, especially at a time when they are curled up underneath their desks. If you offer to help someone instead of trying to sell them something, you’ll achieve a much greater return.

“When a society is hit by a crisis,” claims Godin, “you can do one of three things: react, respond or initiate. Reacting means an adverse reaction to an external input such as news or medicine, for example. Responding means that you respond to an external signal to make it better and initiating means helping even if nobody asked you to.” DPHA members can initiate by reaching out to clients to let them that they are available to the community if they are having problems in their home, offering guidance to address the most common home repairs and to discuss how homeowners can make their confinement more enjoyable. Godin asks, “At the end of the day, have you only checked emails and read everything you can on Facebook? Or did you make a contribution? Because the money will take care of itself if you are a good citizen? Ask yourself, how can you use your expertise to make a contribution to your local community and your clients?

This is a time to be rational. “The trick is to stay resilient. I do that by keeping a level head. If you think and act rationally, you are more able to acknowledge that you are wrong.” Godin challenges others to teach him why he is wrong. He wants to be able to change his mind. He recommends this mindset to everyone because, “It gives you direction and helps you evolve. In other words, it feels like a compass, which is way more useful than a map.”

Who Are You partnering With?

There’s a hush all over the business world, giving us an opportunity to look at places we can get better ourselves and our businesses and discover new avenues to success.

Let’s all agree; you want to market your luxury business to the top interior designers, architects, builders and stylish homeowners in your market. So, what road do you take? Do you wade into social media on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok? How about joining the digital marketing world and improve your website to best in class and set up your digital ad spend on Google? Or do you meet with the local luxury showrooms that do not directly compete with you to work out ways you can build your brands together, focusing on keeping these wealthy folks from traveling to the major design centers and making them understand that their own luxury community has what they desire.

Where else do you go to share your brand’s captivating stories? Do we dive into the local social-digital worlds, or meet our wealthy and stylish clients in their world? What are the popular fine restaurants, elegant home-furnishings store and art galleries that always hosts the packed open houses? If any of these are lacking a beautiful bathroom and equally elegant entry door hardware, there is an opportunity to meet your targeted customer. Working with businesses that also target your market can increase both brands' reach. Might the gallery want to hang a few pieces in your showroom? At your next event, does that restaurant offer a catering service? Does the fine furniture store have some pieces that would look great in your showroom? When you create a cool bathroom, all involved can plaster it all over Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. It’s all a circle.

Take a moment and list the trade showrooms in your market that your designers, architects and builders rely on. Then add the retail businesses that cater to the well-to-do. Restaurants, surface showrooms, clothing stores, elegant spas and auto dealerships. One of the finest bathrooms I have ever seen was the men’s room in an Audi dealership. Black steampunk fixtures highlighted a well-thought-out promo piece. It stuck in my mind.

Another, mostly forgotten product placement opportunity is fine salons and day spas. They are a beehive of pampering and style: if the bathrooms are not a point of conversation, you should make them so.

Think creatively and barter with these companies to help them improve their store’s customer experience. These are businesses that thrive on people who want the best, and we all know what a few carefully chosen cabinet knobs can do for a kitchen. Form a luxury service community; us against them. Help these local partners in luxury products and service set up elegant bathrooms and place your brand’s logo tastefully on the mirror and on the inside of the door. Visitors will not miss it.

All brick and mortar businesses are under attack from competition, the new generations‘ changing tastes and now this virus. So why not work together? You are stronger going into a battle with allies. Put your business in the best possible position to succeed by leveraging you and your newfound local partners’ strong brands. Why Not?

Finally: We are in a completely unknown business environment and speaking with people in your local market that target your key customers can be a very good thing. You will likely discover their fears are similar to yours, and by working together you will all emerge better prepared to kick ass when we are allowed to build beautiful buildings.

For the time being, please talk to many…while staying at least 6 feet away.

P.S. Vendors, At Phylrich we considered these installations a display and priced it as aggressively as possible. It was my mentor Alfred R. Dubin’s idea and he was 100% correct. From Beverly Hills to the upper east side of New York City, Phylrich had beautiful working displays in some of the most expensive real estate in North America. It paid off handsomely.