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News
Speakers examine caring, loyalty issues
Tom Edmonds -- Furniture Today, 2/25/2005 7:16:00 AM
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Two featured speakers at the Furniture Marketing Group's symposium here hit on some common themes of key importance to retailers.
Rebecca Maddox, a consultant with MaddoxSmye, talked about the unique challenges and opportunities of marketing to women, the primary target for any group of home furnishings retailers.
Joel Strack, from the Disney Institute, conducted a three-hour workshop on The Disney Approach to Loyalty, another major concern for retailers whose customers frequently do not make purchases for years at a time.
Both Maddox and Strack stressed the critical value of person-to-person interaction with customers and caring about their happiness.
Maddox suggested FMG retailers re-evaluate the traditional sales approach of rapport building, qualify, demonstrate and close. Instead, she said good salespeople care. "I don't know if you can teach caring about customers, but that's what needs to happen," she said. "The best salespeople care more about their customers than they do about filling up their wallets."
To work effectively with women, who influence or control more than 90% of home furnishings purchases, Maddox urged salespeople to "slow it down." Instead of qualifying, spend much more time on building rapport, she said, and give the customer control of the conversation with questions like, "How can I be most helpful to you today?"
Retailers would do well to make sure their sales staff is not a men's club, she said, adding, "A store is very uncomfortable for a woman if it's too skewed toward men." She also encouraged retailers to use the Internet and e-mail for marketing, since women are researching extensively online. Most importantly, Maddox said, "The whole process has got to be about me, the customer, not about you."
At Disney theme parks, loyalty is imperative for both employee retention and guest satisfaction, Strack said. The high-end vacation destinations keep families coming back again and again, with a single customer estimated to be worth about $50,000 over a lifetime.
Loyalty, according to Strack, results from forging connections between a company's identity, values and relationships. "The greater the connection, the greater the loyalty," he said, adding that employees should be viewed as customers too.
Disney's goal is to attract guests, get them to stay as long as possible, return often and tell others about the fun they had. It has been very successful at all those things, he said, with many returning year after year.
"When you're connected with that loyalty piece, people become so enthralled that they want to own a piece of you," Strack said, describing how people paid $100 to have their names on walkway bricks at the Magic Kingdom.
He said Disney cast members try to ensure that guests leave happy. A retailer compared the image of a cast member waving goodbye to that of a sweaty delivery crew grunting as they drop off furniture at a customer's home.
"Can you control that?" Strack asked. "Can you find a balance between grunting and pixie dust?"
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