The maxim is true: You can always sell as salesman, and many retailers are susceptible to being sold . . . because they want what is impossible: quick action and quick solutions.
A current batch of tasty snake oil comes from fast-talking quick furniture sales guys (guise), brandishing bottles of business (hey, I didn’t use mercantile here) weapons of mask deflection.
They offer delicious quick sales potions and winning motions to bottled up merchants.
All that sweet smelling stuff seems to do the trick on many retailer folk crowding the attractive get-more-sales-quick wagon.
Afterwords when the show is over, the glib and uncuous sales-guys (guise) adjourn to the back of their wagon, clink their glasses and quaff their sicksesses and move on to the next show, their next brew-ha-ha.
The reality is compulsive impatience. Retailers want quick solutions for complex problems. Certainly, times are tough. Even so, solid fundamentals still prevail, and they are providing legitimate value within the context of living better and more comfortably.
These real methods are not snake oil, and they are nutritious, all taking time to establish. Quaffing a real sales elixir during the past few years would have positioned merchants in a better position now than quenching their desperate get-business-now thirst with buckets of tasty SnareBucks frappuccinos.
Adapting to a changing environment is key, and solid change requires adroit planning based on constant research in the form of usable information with a simple method for implementation.
For a macro insight into change leadership, listen to a discussion from (click on link and listen for few seconds until the program begins) World Business Review on the BBC's World Business Review.
Oh, did I mention the forbidden words and concepts, planning and research? Omigod. Not real discipline instead of mercantile tailoring known as seat of the pants management.
The more retailers promote price and gimmicks and their own snake oil, the more they estrange themselves from smart, suspicious consumers.
Our challenge as a caring industry (Is this too warm and fuzzy thinking for you?) is simple: Work collectively to raise the importance of home furnishings over automobiles.
Home Suite Home is the enduring mantra, not Car Sweet Car, which is costly and few of us can really compare the comforts of a vehicle to the real and sustainable comforts of home.
Home-based and themed merchandising and marketing requires extraordinary cooperation, especially from all quarters of the fragmented industry and mostly from the trade associations, market centers and major suppliers. Yes they can.
Knowledge is power and lack of it is powerlessness. Our industry can benefit if its leaders provide a steady stream of information (yikes, that’s research!) and substantive methods to meet the dynamic needs of people wanting to live comfortably and better.
One retailer said he is providing flat screen televisions at nearly cost to stimulate interest. Thanks to the HDTV mandate, millions of people are psyched to seize value.
That’s the best reality programming ever, don’t you think? Put down that snake oil SnareBucks frappuccino and drink up on adaptive planning that meets the needs of your customers and not the fast-talking sales guys (guise).
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