Mattress imaging and recommendation system provider XSensor recently held a webinar offering customer experience secrets that can help retailers boost profits without the pain of slow foot traffic.
Clint Walling, business development manager for XSensor, led the discussion and started off by explaining that the first principle retailers need to understand about business success is leverage.
“In business, it does take hard work,” he says. “There’s no doubt it does. But the fundamental pivotal piece of business success is that you have to utilize and leverage your resources to get an all-out max return. And this especially holds true when retailers begin leveraging customer experience.”
He says that when they do this, they start seeing increased conversion rates, higher average tickets, more attachment sales and fewer returns. This also helps the customer experience, because the retailer gains confidence, which can lead to lower employee turnover costs and increases customer satisfaction.
He also explained how XSensor’s Reveal pressure imaging system played a part in this for the company’s retail partners.
“Doing some research one day I came across this case study where a retailer was getting massive results — and that’s when the epiphany hit me,” he says. “He was getting great results now because he was focusing on one area at a time instead of pulling multiple levers at one time. Checking in with others, I found that when retailers implement the Reveal system into their sales process they start seeing results simultaneously. And what truly blew me away is this was happening in as little as five minutes and with a simple process and tool that an 11-year-old could use.”
He continues by saying the only way to grow your business during this economic climate is to focus on customer experience, and he offers an example of one retailer who was able to implement the Reveal system and take his closing rate from 30% to 60% and then all the way to 80% in just one year.
Walling then shared three secrets to great customer service:
- Use science and technology to gain the trust and credibility of your customers. If you never realized that doctors are the greatest salesman in the world, think about it. They almost effortlessly and quickly gain the trust and authority of their patients. And when they provide solutions we rarely question them.
“We do have to agree that it’s an uphill battle when we’re trying to build trust in authority with our clients,” Walling says. “Here’s a prime example: You have to build trust when you’re giving a product recommendation. When you recommend a product, you see all the different layers in your head and how they conform perfectly for the great sleep solution that you’re going to provide to that customer. But you know what they see? A big white rectangle. And we realized this challenge to build trust and authority only gets harder — because we have maybe 20-25 minutes, and just one chance to build, influence, persuade and help our clients out.” - Increase your closing rates by utilizing a persuasion-style approach. Mattress salesmen still unfortunately get compared to used car salesmen by some consumers. Walling says XSensor encourages its clients to switch to a persuasion approach, that the key differentiator persuasion approach still tries to get them to make a decision.
“What we change is the focus on the client versus yourself,” he says. “And when you do that, a huge transformation happens. You take that RSA from a product pusher to become a trusted ally. When you implement the Reveal system, sales happen naturally and effortlessly, you’re focusing on the customer’s needs and wants.
He went on to explain how one client’s lowest-performing RSA is now closing 14 out of 16 sales because of Reveal. If he was closing 50% and had an average ticket of $800 at a 50% margin each month, that’s $1,800 in gross profit.
“But when the Reveal system was implemented, it now grows to 14 out of 16, indicating a 75% increase,” Welling explains. “That RSA now contributed $9,600 in additional gross profit to the store and $600 turns into six figures in a year. But most importantly, that’s just with one RSA.”
- The marketing hack your competition doesn’t know about and how to leverage that to your advantage. Welling says that the harsh reality in the mattress industry is that what many retailers say they want they don’t actually do in practice.
“It’s actually one of the biggest paradoxes our industry has,” he says. “At any given time only 3% of your market is actually in buying mode. Yet we often neglect the 97%. Look at the ads around the web. Our industry always focuses our marketing efforts on sales and promotions. That leaves the industry with a problem that Reveal can solve. One retailer after implementing the Reveal system has increased his average sale price on just mattresses by 17%, for his pillow business by 500%, and power base sales are up 250%. - To sum up the power of Reveal, Welling ended the conversation by saying:
“Let’s say you might be doing $500,000 in revenue, that 50% gross margin, which means your gross profit dollars arr $250,000. By implementing the Reveal system and getting small, small returns — let’s say 5% in your gross margins — you can grow that tremendously to $69,000. That’s a 28% compounded return. But look what happens over a three-year period: It’s almost $280,000 that you would add to your bottom line. When you go to 7.5%, it’s $328,000. And then 10% comes out to $458,000. Taking that 5% growth over a three-year period that’s an 11.9x return on your investment. And it’s only going to get better as you’ll be able to grow.”
For more information about XSensor, visit xsensor.com.
