Furniture World Articles
All of the Furniture World Magazine Articles that have also been published
online can be found here. Select a year to begin browsing the articles.
Articles published in
2006
Handle Customer Objections As Implied Needs
- 12/11/2006
Apply the principle that every customer objection is an implied need. It’s a principle every professional salesperson should buy into because customers respond positively to it.
Double Your Store Traffic - Part 1
- 12/11/2006
This is the first article in a six-part series on how direct response
marketing techniques can achieve specific, traceable and cost effective results.
How To Start A Furniture Bank That Makes $ense
- 12/8/2006
The Furniture Bank started by Gorin’s Furniture is a charitable effort that meshes well with their core business and is a PR boon as well as a raison d'être. This article shows how they did it and why it was worth the effort.
Finding The Perfect Delivery Index
- 12/7/2006
Most successful furniture retailers carefully track sales metrics, but don’t apply the same level of attention to their warehouse operations. The “Perfect Delivery Index” presented in this article, is an effective management tool that lists key data easily pulled from your daily
paperwork.
Building Personal Clientele
- 12/7/2006
Developing a client base, and keeping it active and up-to-date is the one, key activity that can help our salespeople to earn higher incomes. That’s why it is imperative for retail managers and salespeople to take responsibility for pursuing a one-to-one marketing strategy.
Decorating School Crash Course - Part 1
- 12/7/2006
This six part series will help you to quickly gain and retain valuable and usable design and decorating principles that you can effortlessly communicate to your customers—principles your customers want to know. Part 1 introduces the series and provides rules for putting on simple and sensational design seminars to help build a loyal and educated customer base.
Fine Art Of The Retail Sales Presentation
- 12/7/2006
Your sales performance is what sets you apart from lesser salespeople and from the clerks sitting in other furniture stores up and down the block. Cathy Finney looks at ways to fine tune a sales presentation to meet the specific needs of different types of customers.
Define Your Retail DNA
- 12/7/2006
Harnessing brand power for positive results requires sound strategic thinking. Brand strategy affects everything a store does, and defining yours is worth the time invested. This is the second article in a series by Martin Roberts of GRID2.
Discover Your Retail DNA
- 10/2/2006
A new series by Martin Roberts of GRID2 explains how your store can stand for something your customers can identify with and just as easily identify. In that respect, you can be more like the power-brand lifestyle stores, Crate& Barrel, Pottery Barn, and Restoration Hardware.
Close Sales Using Design Technology - Part 3
- 10/2/2006
The last two articles in this series looked at creating Techno Presentations in MS Word and Powerpoint. The discussion now turns to how to work with customers to
furnish their rooms and takes a look at a more sophisticated online design tool.
Valuing vs. Evaluating Your Employees
- 10/2/2006
Dr. Peter Marino looks at research that shows a huge gap between what retail owners and managers think is most important to employees, and what employees say is most important to them.
Highly Accurate Inventory
- 10/2/2006
Checklist of policies and procedures that will help you to get accurate inventory counts, reduce theft and boost employee productivity.
Sales Behaviors: How Do You Stack Up?
- 10/2/2006
Survey of how well retail sales associates greet and engage customers sheds light on the need for improvement. Compare your performance with other furniture retailers and the retail sector in general.
Home Furniture Boosts Taffic
- 10/2/2006
Canadian Editor Janet Holt-Johnstone looks at how retail giant Home Furniture boosts traffic with cross marketing and innovative advertising.
Are You Preparing Frog Soup?
- 10/2/2006
Small, inconvenient problems can add up. Store owners who were “just fine” yesterday, may end up being frog soup tomorrow. The frog soup story provides an insight that many FURNITURE WORLD readers will find both amusing and disturbing.
15 Ways To Boost Customer Service - Part 2
- 10/2/2006
This installment looks at specific behaviors sales and customer service associates need to exhibit if they are to provide a high degree of customer service.
Make Your Competitors Irrelevant -Part 2
- 9/26/2006
A continuation of Larry Mullins’ excellent article on Blue Ocean innovations. In this issue, he details a Blue Ocean plan for a shop-at-home program.
Retail Profile: They Hug Customers, Don’t They?
- 9/6/2006
A three-store Ethan Allen franchise achieves dramatic growth rates by providing a high level of customer service and focusing on having fun. After their recent acquisition of an under-performing store in Annapolis, MD, they doubled the monthly comp sales in only five months with the same staff of designers.
Seven Step Program To Cut Delivery Costs
- 8/8/2006
Higher fuel prices, the new truck engine specifications, and the changeover to ultra-low-sulphur diesel fuel (ULSD) will certainly affect your delivery cost structure this year. Here are seven ways to keep overall costs in check and get better control over your delivery operations.
Close Sales Using Design Technology - Part 2
- 8/8/2006
The second in a series of articles
that show how to create design and product presentations that impress customers and close sales. This month you can learn how to create Techno-Presentations for your customers in PowerPoint.
Time Management For Retail Sales Professionals
- 8/8/2006
If your salespeople just try to do their best everyday, but feel that they don’t have control over their schedule or their UP’S, then you need to read this article. Cathy Finney presents ways to stop wasting time and instead, plan each day for sales success.
15 Ways To Boost Your Customer Service Competence
- 8/1/2006
All associates involved in customer service are your “ambassadors”. They can make a sale; break a sale; bring customers back or drive them away. Here are the results of a new study that can help you to boost your customer service efforts.
Driving Sales: Consumer Finance Programs - Part 4
- 6/9/2006
This series continues its discussion of financing sources with a look at in-house financing. Strategies and best practices are presented to help you to create additional and larger sales while boosting margins.
Compensation Strategies For Top Performance - Part 2
- 6/9/2006
The second part of this series provides practical advice on how to craft a compensation system that does not reward workers for performance beyond their control or reward them for results they have nothing to do with.
Beat Back Electricity Hikes With Efficient Lighting
- 6/9/2006
Monte Lee looks at ways to reduce your lighting and electricity costs without sacrificing the quality of your displays. Rates, government regulations and cost saving opportunities are discussed.
Thinking About Building A New Warehouse?
- 6/9/2006
With about 2,100 decisions to make when creating a new warehouse facility, you need to concentrate on areas where mistakes or omissions are most likely to occur.
Close Sales By Using Design Technology
- 6/8/2006
The first in a series of articles that will show how to create design and product presentations that will impress customers and close sales. This one looks at creating e-mail Techno-Presentations in MS Word.
Get Those Profitable Be-Backs Back!
- 6/6/2006
If you are like most furniture retailers, Be-Back customers are closed at a 60% rate, while first-time customers close at far below 20%. Joe Capillo looks at ways to concentrate your efforts on getting Be-Backs back!
Compensation Strategies For Rewarding Top Performance
- 4/17/2006
The compensation methods used by furniture retailers are often ineffective or create a high comfort level for non-performers. Some workers are penalized for performance beyond their control, while others are rewarded for results they have nothing to do with.
Big Box Invasion Ad Strategies - Part 3
- 4/17/2006
This is the final installment in a three part series on advertising and event planning. It tells how the management of Hineline Furniture, a 30,000 sq. ft. showroom with a limited ad budget in a small community, planned and executed a promotion that exceeded their wildest expectations.
Let's Talk About Trash
- 4/17/2006
It may be time for you to take a close look at how you handle the processing, disposal and recycling of trash and packaging materials such as corrugated, old mattresses and furniture.
Display Ideas For 2006
- 4/17/2006
Great display ideas from the Trends 2006 display, created by designers Pierre D’Anjou and Andrè Caron.
Downside Of Experienced Salespeople
- 4/17/2006
Salespeople have a hard time changing their thinking, let alone their behavior. This has caused more underperformance in retail furniture stores than any other factor except understaffing. So what’s a manager to do?
Sales Ah-Ha’s
- 4/17/2006
Insights, advice, and practical information that can turn your retail sales Uh,Oh’s, “Oh, No’s,” into “Ah Ha's!” and even “Eureka moments!”
How Long Will It Last?
- 4/17/2006
A purchase that lasts a long time, but fails to meet your customer’s other needs can become a lasting headache.
Being Held Hostage By Your Repair People?
- 4/17/2006
Store owners are losing control of their repair departments. Easily fixable imported goods are going to clearance or being written off as junk. It’s a problem that negatively impacts profitability and customer satisfaction.
Lean Logistics - Part 3
- 2/14/2006
Lean benefits with compressed cycle time and increased inventory velocity can be had by any firm that is willing to take a serious look at what they do (from a sourcing and logistics standpoint) and how they do it. This installment looks at lean international logistics and value stream mapping.
Focus On Indonesia
- 2/14/2006
Top 10 furniture exporter has advantages in natural resources and labor, but faces major challenges in 2006.
Driving Sales: Customer Financing - Part 2
- 2/14/2006
This series continues with a discussion of the kinds of programs and relationships retailers can expect to develop with finance companies. Important issues such as customer contact protocol, customer control, and program customization are discussed.
"Let Me Think About It!"
- 2/14/2006
Is there anything you can do when your customer says, “let me think about it” and asks for your card?
Warehouse/ Delivery Survey Results For 2006
- 2/14/2006
FURNITURE WORLD readers were asked to identify their most pressing retail operations /inventory management/ warehouse and delivery challenges for 2006. This article offers tools and tips retailers can use to achieve performance improvement in these areas.
Retail Profile: They Hug Customers, Don’t They?
- 2/14/2006
A three-store Ethan Allen franchise achieves dramatic growth rates by providing a high level of customer service. After their recent acquisition of an under-performing store in Annapolis, MD, they doubled the monthly comp sales in only five months with the same staff of designers.