Page 46 - Lighting Magazine March 2020

on the mark
Mark Okun is a Sales Success Consultant for Bravo Business Media and President of MOC Performance Group with over 40 yearsí experience in sales, marketing, and business management within the furniture, lighting, and decorative plumbing industries. He is a monthly contributor to enLIGHTenment Magazine and conducts sales training programs, webinars, workshops and market seminars for retailers, sales representative agencies, and manufacturers. Contact Mark Okun via email at mark@bravobusiness media.com or call 800-425-5139 ext. 626.
further will impact a showroom’s future success or, worse, accelerate its demise. Directing or re- directing available resources to an omnichannel effort will make big moves toward future success. Ignoring these changes in the buyer’s journey and not modifying sales and marketing activities to match the times we are in puts your company at risk. Not being an immediately available and viable option for today’s buyer will jeopardize your showroom’s existence.
What resources are needed? Time, money and, the most critical, human resource. We are still people, and the social interaction we have with clients, whether face-to-face or through digital connections, becomes the transforma- tive factor melding sales and marketing in omnichannel.
Having a living website with a digital catalog and a functioning shopping cart is the minimum tech ante to get into the omnichannel game. Still, there is another vital resource to consider: the people on the team. The blended 2020 “smar- keting” team is the foundation that creates and shares superb content. That content is then used across all communication channels to attract and engage with clients. The information is congru- ent in detail, expresses that the person posting is an expert and focused on the end-user.
Showroom size will dictate how the team is built and who the players are. Yet, no matter the size of your business, in my opinion, there is no option other than committing to making this systemic change. Let’s not forget these activities are not only about creating content for your blog and social posts; it is about having an engage- ment process that is the same for digital and conventional shoppers.
It is incomprehensible to think that a client could walk into a brick-and-mortar showroom and not be engaged by a sales professional. At the same time, it is routine to ignore potential customers when they walk into our various types of digital showrooms.
Finding ways to engage clients is the first and highest hurdle to leap. Knowing if you are win- ning at the omnichannel game goes beyond the familiar vanity metrics of likes and shares. Having the correct parameters in place will be the guide indicating results or needed tweaks to polish the process. I have narrowed down the many metrics available to a few that can be employed quickly.
metricS
Any time there is a need to change the actions and behavior of staff, clearly defined performance expectations must be communicated. Begin by incorporating base level indices that will get you in the omnichannel game. We covered the need for a full-court press on content creation, which should result in an increase of inbound clients and the growth of your defined network.
One of the mandatory metrics of omnichannel is the number of relationships being created and maintained on social platforms. Building relation- ships with online prospects increases the number of warm leads that turn into clients for both the bricks and clicks.
The next metric that requires recording and measuring is “New Client Acquisition.” How many of these warm leads are converted to brick and mortar or digital sales?
The last metric is exclusive online revenue; this requires both a wishlist and shopping cart. You will want to measure two different types of sales. The first is online sales activity by clients who have visited the showroom, but made a purchase from you online; the second is the client who has never been to the showroom and made a purchase. While there are a host of additional ways to mea- sure successful omnichannel implementation, a showroom just beginning to dip in their digital toe will find these a good start.
the time to Start iS now
With greater than 94 percent of all consumers starting their shopping online, they are signifi- cantly impacted by referral and recommendation and not static image ads. We must not only market to our prospects wherever they are, but we must also be able to interact and sell to them whenever and wherever they are. Utilizing an omnichannel methodology will increase the number of selling opportunities available to you.
The secret sauce to bricks-and-clicks success is to obtain the digital omnichannel tools needed, educate your sales force on the skills of online engagement and content creation, plus meld the sales and marketing silos to redirect their focus to inbound methods.
In closing, I contemplate this question: How long can an independent showroom in any indus- try survive without a bricks-and-clicks plan?
As always, happy selling!  www.enlightenmentmag.com
42 enLIGHTenment Magazine | March 2020