Networking Tips for the Flooring Retailer and Flooring Vendor

When it comes to flooring, there’s not a one-size-fits-all for each customer. There are various options available to suit each customer’s taste, style, needs, and budget. 

Think outside the box and expand your flooring business by reaching out to new customers (consider different types you may have never thought of such as business owners) to increase sales and create a reliable brand people trust.

There are many ways to reach potential customers. Through online marketing, direct mail, and cold calling — you can grow your flooring business as quickly as you want. 

Networking with those in the construction or design industry can lead to multiple jobs and enhance your reputation for creating quality flooring for residential and business customers.

Think about it, homes, businesses, schools, and pretty much every building, new or old, need flooring. The options for networking are endless! Other traditional, potential networking partners for a flooring company include:

• Interior designers
• Building owners
• Home contractors

Flooring vendors can find several networking opportunities by contacts with various retail stores. Big box stores can be lucrative but don’t forget about local stores and local contracting companies either! 

Whether you are a flooring retailer or flooring vendor, here are some tips to help promote your business and products!

1. Build a website for your flooring business that includes business contact information, description of flooring services and installation procedures, types of flooring, customer testimonials, and before and after pictures of recent jobs. 

2. SEO Search engine optimization is a great way to improve your website’s search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your homepage. However, SEO is not an exact science and it’s definitely not a quick process. Many factors influence these rankings. Try writing original content (blogs, articles, etc.) about your products or craft, and post them on your website. Make sure to include keywords that mention flooring or flooring terms in each post. Think of this as a long-term tactic.

3. Take high-quality photographs of your work. Show potential and current customers precisely what you can do with professional-quality images of each job. Show before and after pictures and pictures of different products showcasing different types of flooring and projects. 

3. Utilize LinkedIn. Use your actual photo, complete all the details of your profile, and of course, link to your company page. 

4. Join flooring, contracting, residential, and commercial building associations. Attend networking events that you know home contractors or related organizations may be present. Don’t expect to get a sale–this is a time to get to know others and introduce yourself!

5. Ask for referrals. Satisfied customers can and will provide you with solid leads. Offer them a discount on future jobs, or thank you gift to encourage referrals. 

By successfully networking, you can lay a solid foundation for your flooring business! And while you’re at it, check out VendorPriceBook.com — the ultimate tool for looking up flooring pricing and inventory from your preferred flooring supplier.

Five Ways to Improve Customer Service at your Flooring Business

There’s an old saying in the business world: the customer is always right. Now, we all know that isn’t actually true (especially in specialized industries like flooring), but the idea has become accepted by both businesses and customers across the globe.

The truth of the matter is this: the customer isn’t always right, but your customer service should make them FEEL like they are. Here are a few tips to help you improve your customer service in your flooring showroom.

Give Your Customers Information

There is nothing more irritating to a customer than a sales associate who hovers and follows them around the showroom. Similarly, there is nothing more irritating to an employee than customers who bombard them with a million questions. One way to give everyone the space they need (and avoid terse interactions that make everyone uncomfortable) is to give your customers the important info up front.

Post signs around your store with information about pricing. Fill your website with helpful blogs and easy to find FAQs (these can also boost your ranking on search engines). If your customers can find key info themselves, they’ll feel like that have more power over their sales experience — and that is always a positive.

Set The Mood

When customers don’t feel comfortable with a shopping experience (as they usually don’t when making big purchases like flooring), they tend to want to keep the experience short and sweet. Of course, we know that finding the right flooring takes time — so it’s up to us to make the process as pleasant as possible.

Choose pleasant overhead music to play in your store. Use aromatherapy to create a comfortable and calming environment. These little tricks can ease the stress of shopping and help your customers enjoy the experience a little bit more.

Use Associates Appropriately

A great sales associate is like seasoning in a recipe: they amplify everything that’s great about the experience and take it to the next level. However, it is possible to “over-season” a customer shopping experience, and that can leave a bad taste in their mouth.

Make sure your sales associates are well trained, knowledgeable, and friendly — but also, make sure they know when to let a customer have some space. Remember that good customer service is about giving the customer what they want (not securing a sale), so make sure your sales team knows how to read the situation and respond appropriately.

Get Social

In today’s world, social media is an invaluable form of marketing. The right viral tweet or five-star Yelp review can really help your business — and a one-star review can do incredible damage.

Make sure you are active on your business’s social media pages. This might mean posting about sales or new floor that’s arrived in the store, or it might mean responding to reviewers who gave you poor reviews (however, when you respond to those reviewers ALWAYS remain professional). If you are engaging with your audience online, you will have a clearer idea of what they want and expect from your business.

Ask for Feedback

Finally, let’s go back to our old adage, “The customer is always right.” One great way to provide customer service is to lean into that belief and simply ask your customers for their feedback. Ask them to take a survey about your store online. Make it easy for them to contact you with questions or comments, and respond to these messages promptly. Simply giving your customers a voice will make them feel like you care — and that’s something everyone appreciates.

Ultimately, the customer service experience is about making your customers feel valuable. If you prove that you value their time, their personal space, and their opinions, they are sure to value your product all the more.

Bonus Tip: Expedite the Process

The VendorPriceBook Mobile app is coming soon and purchase ordering is now available!

The system you know and love is getting an upgrade. Now with VendorPriceBook, you will be able to use our mobile app right on the showroom floor. No more running around, leafing through pages or searching spreadsheets for (potentially outdated) pricing and inventory levels. NO MORE MAKING YOUR CUSTOMERS WAIT LONGER THAN THEY SHOULD. Stay tuned for news on our upcoming mobile app release.

5 Simple Ways to Grow Your Flooring Business on Social Media

In the late ‘90s and early 2000s, social media was pure entertainment. It was a place for kids to connect with their peers, for fans of TV shows to speculate on future episodes together. These things still take place on social media sites today, but these platforms also have one other major purpose…

Today, social media is an opportunity to promote your business.

If you use social media properly, you can have countless people all over the world checking out your flooring business. But how do you do it? Here are a few easy tips to help you grow your business.

Choose Your Platforms Carefully

First things first: if you’re going to promote your flooring business on social media, you need to choose the right platform. There are a lot of social media sites out there, from Facebook and Twitter to Reddit and Quora. It might be tempting to take a “shotgun approach” and use every single platform to promote your company, but trust us — that’s not the way to go.

Instead, take a little time to review your customer demographics. How old is your average customer? Are they handy DIY-ers? Do they want a specific aesthetic from their home decor? The answers to these questions will help you determine which social media platforms are most likely to catch their eye. Find those platforms, and focus your energy on boosting your business there.

Choose the right social media platform

Turn Instagram into Your Portfolio

Flooring is a visual industry. Your customers work with you because they want beautiful flooring in their space, and they know you can deliver. But how do they know? It’s likely they saw samples of your work — and now, you can show off your projects whenever you want. 

Instagram is a great platform for a flooring business because it gives you the opportunity to present your work to all your followers in real-time. Your feed becomes an ever-updating portfolio, and potential customers can quickly and easily see just what you can do.

Use Stories to Show Off Your Personality

Sometimes, customers will work with a company simply because they like them (and they do good work). You and your team probably have a good time on the job site, so why not show off your professionalism and personality all while creating some online content?

Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok are all social media sites that allow users to create “stories,” or short videos for their followers. With these stories, you can introduce clients to your team, show off flooring jobs in progress, and generally charm viewers with your sparkling personality! This way, they’ll remember you when it’s time to do their flooring.

Keep Your Feed Current

We’ve all seen “dead” sites or profiles before. These are websites or social media pages that have gone dark, where no one has posted in months or even years. When this happens, users tend to think that something’s gone wrong for the person or the company behind the page. They may even imagine that you’ve gone out of business!

We understand that posting online isn’t second nature for everyone (especially not when you have a big flooring project underway). But keeping your social media feed up to date with regular content will help keep your company at the top of your client’s minds — and that’s good for your bottom line!

Engage with Your Followers

Finally, it’s highly important that you remember the reason social media was founded in the first place: to connect with people.

If someone comments on your Instagram post saying that your flooring looks great, comment back and thank them! If you write a Medium guest blog on types of flooring that are best for DIY projects, answer people’s questions in the comments. These small moments where you connect with a follower, reader, or viewer not only make you seem more personable (aka easy to work with should they need some flooring done), but they can also help you close a deal with a potential customer that’s on the fence.

With these tips, your social media profile can become more than just a way to entertain yourself in your down time. Instead, it can be an asset to your business!

Of course, the easiest way to streamline your flooring business so it’s poised for success, is through investing in technology that will create efficient communication between suppliers and retailers. VendorPriceBook.com aims to solve that bottleneck that retailers have when it comes to looking up pricing and inventory for their clients. VendorPriceBook takes the paper out of the conventional pricebooks, as well as unorganized computer files, so everything is seamlessly conducted online and pricing and inventory is available at your fingertips, instantly.

VendorPriceBook is the efficient way to communicate between vendors and retailers in the flooring industry

These Flooring Trends Might Surprise You

Styles come and go, and then come back again and that’s just the case for clothes–home design trends also experience shifts. Pastel pink tiles of the 90s. Checkered board floors of the 50s. Each decade seems to have its own signature look when it comes to flooring and interior designs. As flooring manufacturers, vendors and retailers, it’s important to stay on top of consumer trends because tastes do change, and that in turn affects supply and demand.

With the pandemic allowing more people to stay and lounge around in their homes, many people are looking to renovate. Flooring is a great first step to that process. Let’s take a look at what trends we think will stick out through 2021.

Hardwood: always a classic choice, hardwood can be elegant and modern at the same time. This year, you might want to take notice of cool color tones, wide planks, and environmentally friendly finishes. Source: The Flooring Girl.

Antimicrobial: health and safety are at top-of-mind now more than ever. “Antimicrobial” or “antibacterial” types of floors are those that are finished or with technology (i.e. Microban) which help inhibit the growth of bacteria.

Terracotta Tiles: social media is going crazy over these! These give a space a rustic, earthy charm if we do say so ourselves and they are less expensive than other ceramics. They can be as basic or as ornate as a home remodeler pleases–check out all the varieties here and you’ll see why they’re growing in popularity!

terracotta tiles

If you want to visualize yourself as a renovator and understand the decisions they have to make before buying flooring, check out this video:

While there may be some debate on which flooring styles may ultimately takeover and be the next big trend, there’s one thing that will always ring true for consumers looking to renovate–they don’t want to wait around for pricing. With a long laundry list of items to buy and things to fix, a home renovator needs to know what flooring is in stock and what the cost is. As a retailer, a customer on the showroom floor will expect quick answers and paper pricebooks won’t cut it.

VendorPriceBook streamlines communication between vendors and retailers so looking up pricing and inventory can be made on-the-spot using a mobile device or computer. To learn more or to start your free trial, please go to VendorPriceBook.com.

How Not having Streamlined Communication Can Wreak Havoc on a B2B Business

The B2B (Business-to-Business) world is steadily growing every year. In the past, B2B construction businesses relied heavily on in-person collaboration through trade shows and conferences. With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, a shift towards digital collaboration pushed many B2B businesses out of their comfort zones. This gave the B2B world more incentive than ever to pivot to using digital platforms. Furthermore, the pandemic exposed problems that can occur when a business does not have streamlined communication within these digital platforms.

Imagine this scenario: a home supply store wants to buy flooring from a supplier. They will likely want to shop around and be able to instantly gain answers about pricing and inventory levels. While trade shows might have worked as a one-stop-shop in the past, the COVID-19 pandemic brought these to a halt. Now it’s on the home supply store to start researching flooring prices, and these are often kept in a paper price book, requiring another salesman’s time and effort on the other end of the transaction.

The Problem with Relying on Paper

Oftentimes, B2B buyers need answers fast and want to be able to quickly compare pricing between competitors. Forrester analyst Stephen Casey noted that B2B buyers who are put in immediate contact with a live salesperson (which is necessary when prices are kept in a paper/PDF price book) could be put off by that experience. Instead, buyers want to do their own element of shopping around and becoming informed on their own before being put on the spot. Creating digital elements to a company website that include company pricing and other frequently updated information can make B2B buyers feel more in control of the experience. Furthermore, it would save both companies time and resources in the long-run, since the supply company needs to staff someone to flip through the book and look up prices for each inquiry.

Chatbots and Virtual Assistants

Chatbots are becoming increasingly useful for this very purpose. These are bots that can pop up once a buyer has been browsing a site for a certain number of minutes. By proactively offering pricing, these chatbots can give the buyer the answers the home supply store needs in a timely manner without having to communicate with a real person. Better yet, once the chatbot has been programmed to do this, it frees up more time for the workers on the supplier end, allowing them to be more efficient. These bots can also be updated to include the most up-to-date pricing.

Implementing Social Media

Social media can also help streamline communication and boost sales–but only when it is being used efficiently. In a study conducted last year out of Sweden’s University West, researchers examined how social media could be effectively implemented in B2B construction businesses. The primary use of social media should be to distribute product information. Beyond that, its usage seemed to help B2B businesses immensely when there was managerial involvement to promote consistency and follow-through. In the example of the home supply store and the flooring supplier, having a presence on social media to show off available products and encourage engagement could help the flooring supplier make more contacts. The home supply store could easily connect with the flooring supplier and receive pricing information, or the flooring supplier could even post this information proactively on social media.

Streamlined B2B communication is VITAL

Working Towards a Better Future for the B2B Industry

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been increased interest in how B2B businesses can better integrate digitally. Last year, a study out of Finland examined B2B construction companies in the eCommerce world. This study worked to identify what factors drove quality when it came to an emerging online presence for B2B businesses, and currently, there is even more research trying to look into what makes a B2B business an online success. As many aspects of the world have been forced to pivot to a digital space, B2B businesses must find ways to adapt as well. By streamlining communication to proactively offer more of the pricing and inventory online, B2B businesses can set themselves up for success in this new sphere.

VendorPriceBook is a web-based and online app that vendors and retailers in the flooring industry use to connect on-the-spot. Try out VendorPriceBook for free at vendorpricebook.com.

Is your Flooring Business Being Efficient?

A business is a multi-faceted animal that has multiple systems and processes in place to make it work. At a high-level, managerial standpoint, it is crucial to take step back to see if the systems in place are not just merely chugging along, but actually working efficiently.

When it comes to the flooring industry, it is no different. From the moment a new home owner walks onto a retailer’s showroom floor, there’s an entire workflow that is built to support that single customer. Think about it—in order to serve that one customer, a retailer must have already have a relationship with their vendors that supply them with stone, wood, carpet, vinyl, tile, laminate—they send them samples and when a customer orders, the retailer in turn may have to order a wholesale order.

So the eager customer comes to a flooring retailer—they finally chose a piece they like, but they need to ask the sales person two things—price, and availability. Easy enough, right? Unfortunately, for many flooring companies, this is not a seamless process, even in today’s age. Why is that?

Flooring prices and inventory can and will vary. This is just part of business—any business, really. So what is next for the sales person? Typically, they’ll politely tell the customer to hang tight while they hurry over to the back to look for the price and availability. They’ll either look through a shelf filled with pricebooks or login to their computer and search for a PDF or Excel spreadsheet from a particular supplier. Meanwhile, the customer out front is (hopefully) patiently waiting, while wondering what is taking so long.

Don’t make customers wait!

The sales rep takes a moment to make sure he got the right information. FINALLY, he locates the item number and unfortunately, the item has been discontinued. After the 10 minutes elapses, he walks back to the front to deliver the disappointing news.

Why is this process so disjointed and archaic? The flooring industry has not had technology in place that connects a vast network of retailers and vendors allowing them to communicate on-the-fly, sharing real-time flooring pricing and inventory…until now.

VendorPriceBook was developed by someone who felt the pain of not being able to make this system work efficiently. He was tired at how unorganized and slow the process of looking up pricing was, so he decided to change that. VendorPriceBook is a web-based and online app that vendors and retailers in the flooring industry use to connect instantaneously.

Benefits:

• Mobile app—offer pricing right on the showroom floor
• Up-to-date pricing
• Offering Vendors an eco-friendly and practical way to quickly provide up-to-date pricing.
• Maximize productivity
• Retailers can now use this system and avoid the process of searching through hundreds of pages to find prices.
• Strictly confidential

It’s 2021 and it’s time for your business to step in line with technology so you can save time, money and start being efficient. Try out VendorPriceBook for free at vendorpricebook.com