What is RetailDeck?
RetailDeck was created to solve some of the problems that appliance dealers face in running their stores. Put simply, the purpose of RetailDeck is to make your life easier. You want your life made easier, right? Lets take a look at some of the problems that you face as an appliance dealer. Note: in a sneaky, underhanded, and blatantly self promoting move, we will only look at problems that you face, and that RetailDeck solves.
Problem 1: The fruits of your buying group's labors
As an appliance dealer, you belong to a buying group. If you are not running a chain of stores the size of, say, Lowes, Home Depot or Sears, and you don't belong to a buying group of one sort or another, you can rest assured that you are making a big mistake. Stop reading right now and go join Mega Group USA, NECO, United Stores, Nationwide, AVB / BrandSource, MARTA, NATM, or the like, RIGHT NOW!
Now, as a member of a buying group, you have a team of people working for you. Tirelessly. These guys (and gals) are out there day and night negotiating you the best deals on everything. They negotiate large buys to get you the best prices. They negotiate for money to fund rebate programs. They establish consumer finance programs. However, all of this work creates one major problem: there is so much great deal making going on that there is no way that you can keep up with it all!
Lets take a look at just one of the things that buying groups do on your behalf: They negotiate rebates. Lets take NECO as an example. As I write this article, NECO (a buying group in the Northeast) has no fewer than 32 rebates that are available exclusively to its members. These rebates are not penny ante. I pulled up one of the rebate forms at random, and I see a list of about ten models, each of which has a rebate on it of more than $50. Four of these models have rebates of over $200. On average, this one rebate, effectively, cuts the price of the applicable models by 20%.
Clearly, you need to take advantage of these rebates to get traffic into your stores and close sales. When your competitors are selling an appliance at $799, and you are selling it at $599 (after a mail in rebate of $200, of course) based on nothing else, where do you think consumers are going to go? Where would you go?
In a sense, your buying groups are doing there job too well. They are simply negotiating so many rebates that there is no way that a human can keep up with all of the special offers. Lets be realistic, in our NECO example, there are 32 rebates running. By virtue of the fact that I have some fancy software that tracks these things, I can authoritatively tell you that, at the time this article was written, these rebates applied to some 1,736 models. I don't care if you are superman, there is no way that you can keep track of which 1,736 models currently have rebates running on them and which ones don't. Remember, these rebates expire and new ones come out, on average, once per month. Also, remember, that these are just group specific rebates. Aside from these (and in addition to) are all of the rebates run by the government (ala energy star) and by the manufacturers direct.
RetailDeck makes it easy to find out about rebates. Take a look at the main search screen of RetailDeck looks like:
Do you see that some items are hi lighted in green? These are items that are currently the subject of a rebate. See those items hi lighted in red? Those are items that were the subject of a rebate recently, that has now expired. Lets double click on the first item, an ABB1921DEQ which is also one of the items hi lighted in green. We get a screen that looks something like this:
Notice that nice section on the right, Rebates. All of the rebates for this particular item are listed here. We quickly see that there is a $30 cash rebate for this item. To get the rebate form to hand a customer, we would simply click the link and print out the form. Does it get any simpler?
Note: what is true for rebates is true for other things, such as financing codes, etc. Note that handy section under rebates called, oddly enough, Consumer Finance? RetailDeck makes this easy too.
Problem 2: Price Tags
This one is easy. In your store, you should have price tags on every item.
When creating these tags, you have a wide variety of options:
-
You can hand write tags
-
You can use Microsoft Word (or a similar word processor) to create price tags
-
You can use a price tag creation program that is not specific to appliances
-
You can use RetailDeck
Lets dispense with the easy one first. You can hand write tags. Yes, it is quick. Yes it is cheap. It does not look professional. If you walked into a Lowes, would you see any hand written price tags? I don't think so. Don't think about this one too hard. Just accept this line of reasoning: Lowes would never, ever, hand write a tag. If they ever had to, they would, but then they would go back and make a professional tag for shortly there after. You want to be like Lowes. Therefore, you will not hand write any more tags. By the way, trust me on the "You want to be like Lowes" bit. Think for a second about what the original owners of Lowes do. That's right, whatever the heck they feel like. This is what you want to do.
You can use Microsoft Word (or another word processor) to create price tags. They will look pretty good, if you lay them out right. The question is this: why would you want to do it this way? There are tons of software packages out there that are designed to make it easy to create price tags. Use one of them. Look, its like this: lets say you need to get a big stainless steel DCS stove into the back of a delivery truck. You could rig up a block and takle, lasso the box, and hoist it up. But this is not nearly as slick, cool, and effeciant as using a lift gate.
You can use a price tag creation program that is not specific to appliances. However, you will have to enter a lot of information in yourself, by hand. Take a look at the sample tag (above, right). Notice it has dimensions, feature benefit information and more on it. Do you want to have to find and type all this information in for every price tag you create? I don't think so.
You can use RetailDeck . Trust me, this is what you want to do. It has features designed specifically to make your life easy when creating price tags (see the tutorials). Think of it this way: if nothing else, RetailDeck will at least be as good at creating price tags as any of there other methods listed here. Plus, with RetailDeck you get many of your other problems solved.
Problem 3: Product Knowledge
Mrs. Pita (no, that's not her real name) is a hip, trendy, mid thirties soccer mom who has a problem. Her fridge is on the fritz. She thinks it is time for a new one. She is watching TV one night and sees an add for Amana. In between Joey's bath and Suzy's bed time story she pops on to her computer and surfs over to Amana's web site. In no time flat, she knows what she wants. She wants an Amana East Reach (TM) Refrigerator, in white. You know, an ABB1921DEQ. She scribbles down the model number and sticks it in her purse.
The next day, after drooping Joey off at day care and Suzy off at school, Mrs. Pita drivers over to your store, walks in and strikes up a conversation with Biff, your newest salesman. He has been on the job for about two weeks and is just getting up to speed. The conversation starts something like this:
PITA: I am looking at a new fridge, do you have an ABB1921DEQ?
Now, the question is, where does this conversation go from here? If you have RetailDeck it goes something like this:
PITA: I am looking at a new fridge, do you have an ABB1921DEQ?
BIFF: Great. You have come to the right place. Lets go back over to the computer and I can answer your questions.
Biff and Pita walk over to the computer, conveniently located right on the sales floor.
BIFF: What was that model number again?
PITA: An A B B 1921 D E Q
BIFF: Great, just one second, yeah, the Easy Reach (TM) (Biff, ever the gentleman, respects the Amana corporation's trade marks like his own children), in white?
PITA: Yeah, that's the one, do you have any?
BIFF: We don't have any on the floor right now, but we just ordered two, and they will be in next week.
BIFF: You know, you picked a great model, Amana makes good stuff.
BIFF: You also picked a great time to buy that particular model, it has a $30 rebate on it.
BIFF: Plus, you can take this model home today and pay nothing, for a year.
PITA: We have, obviously, an older fridge that this one would replace, will the ABB1921DEQ fit in the same space?
BIFF: Probably, that model is a standard width that will replace most non-side by side refrigerators out there.
BIFF: Let me print out a detailed dimension diagram. You can take it home and use it to measure to make sure.
Biff clicks on the "Dimension Diagram" link on the Item Details Page (see above) for the fridge. The printer spits out a detailed dimension diagram. Pita sticks it in her purse.
This scenario (sorry for the cheesy names!) should make one thing clear: Having good, up to date, extensive, product data at your finger tips makes your sales staff look more professional and helps you move product. Consumers expect that you know everything there is to know about every model out there. Trust me, you don't. However, with RetailDeck you might as well. Because you can access the contents of complete spec books, plus rebates, consumer finance info, and dimension drawings right on the computer, you have all the info needed to close the deal quickly.
Ask yourself these two important questions: Can your sales people handle this situation as well as Biff? More importantly, how much training did it take to get Biff to the point where he could handle himself this well? Did you have to teach him all about the various product lineups of Amana, GE, Magic Chef, Frigidaire, Maytag, etc. ? No! All you had to do was teach him how to use RetailDeck
Let me share something else with you: the do it yourself (DIY) stores, otherwise known as the Big Boxes (Lowes, Home Depot, etc.) are stealing your business. They are doing it (in large part) by increasing their close rates. They are improving their close rates by using their information technology infrastructure to their advantage. Do you really think Lowes is going to send every sales "associate" to classes to memorize the product lineups? Hell no! They invest in some clever software (suspiciously like RetailDeck) and teach their sales men (and women) how to use it. You need to do the same thing to stay competitive!
In short: Knowledge is power: GET SOME, use RetailDeck
