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Ultimate Agenda Revealed at High Point Recently
The following is the text from Mr. Lawhon's seminar given April 15th, 2005 at the Furniture Market in High Point, North Carolina.
If you prefer, print the Seminar Text to read at your leisure.
John F. Lawhon Introduces the SRI™ Ultimate Agenda and companion Management Missives
First, the bad news.
The number one reason that a salesperson fails, quits, or gets released is due to the fact that the job did not live up to the expectations that they had on the day they were hired. They have many ways to express this dissatisfaction. Bitching is the most common.
“You wouldn’t believe what they make us do in this company. I get paid when I sell something. I don’t get paid for doing anything else.
This is also the number one cause of internal theft. When salespeople believe they are being cheated, it justifies theft. It is the law of cause and effect.
More bad news.
NHFA recently released these figures: When a new trainee fails, quits, or gets released within a few months it has cost your company about $7,000 that doesn’t show up as a line item expense on your balance sheet. This doesn’t include any money they were paid or any money spent hiring and training them – not to mention, the thousands of dollars in lost sales income that led to their failure. The total cost will be in excess of $20,000. But that’s peanuts when the average salesperson is selling about 15% of their prospective customers in the showroom.
When I was in business this cost was $6,500, so it’s gone up. The average number of prospective customers sold was closer to 25%, so that’s going down.
The law of cause and effect guarantees you that these things will continue to get worse on an ongoing basis unless the causes are found and eliminated. All other efforts have proved to cause them to be getting worse.
So, what action can we take? Let’s look at the facts.
Fact: All problems are effects for which there was a cause.
Fact: Any effort to improve on the effect only causes it to worsen.
Fact: The only solution to any problem requires that its cause be eliminated.
What is the number one problem in the retail furniture business?The salespeople are selling about 15% of the prospective customers that shop their showrooms and about 85% are leaving without buying.
Fact: In all business, marketing precedes production. If you can’t get it sold it does not matter whether you can get it produced. Harvard Professor, 1957.
Fact: Over 96% of all new business start-ups have failed within ten years.
Fact: Over 96% of all new franchises sold are succeeding.
What could possibly cause the incredible disparity in success and failure especially when these two facts are considered?Almost all people starting a new business have had some experience in that business, yet 96% fail.
Almost all those buying a franchise have had no experience in that business, yet over 96% succeed.
Fact: The average retail furniture salesperson is selling about 15% of the prospective customers that shop their showrooms.
Fact: One-out-of-1000 salespeople in those showrooms is selling almost 100% – with very few selling in-between.
Fact: The very same factors that cause success or failure in business cause success or failure in selling.
With a franchise, there is a complete set of plans that fully define every single thing that must be done routinely: how it must be done; when it must be done; and why it must be done.
The person who buys the franchise agrees to comply with all fo the rules, policies and procedures as defined with the franchise.
The sellers of the franchise then inspect the operation on an ongoing basis, often and intermittently, when they are least expected.
Even the least insignificant things not being done right, done when they were supposed to be done or not done at all are on the check list. They are reviewed with the management and owners. If steps to correct the matter are recommended and not taken, the owner loses the franchise which includes what was paid for the franchise.
How much is a franchise worth?Why would one person pay 30 million dollars for a McDonald’s® franchise when one could be bought in another location for one million dollars?
Predictable results.
Each one can expect about the same percentage of return on their investment, based on the demographics of its location.
The SRI™ Ultimate Agenda™ and SRI™ Management Missives™ have done something that has never been done before. The SRI™ Ultimate Agenda™ has fully defined the daily working routine for the retail salesperson. What they must know, why they must know it, with a simple plan that when followed routinely, will not only cause them to be gaining the essential specialized knowledge needed to succeed, but gaining it on an ongoing basis. And they won’t even realize it is happening until they can look back and see that it has.
The SRI™ Ultimate Agenda™ has fully defined the skills needed to sell home furniture with professional competence. A simple plan that when followed routinely will cause these productive selling skills to be perfected into productive selling habits that are causing more and more of their prospective customer contacts to be sold on an ever-increasing basis.
At this point, we have had enough people in enough different types and sizes of retail home furnishings companies spend three days of total indoctrination, without a single objection to what was presented and learned. They agreed, one and all, that The SRI™ Ultimate Agenda™ had fully defined the job of the retail furniture salesperson.
The SRI™ Management Missives™ had completely defined the job of hiring, training and managing of retail furniture salespeople.
At the completion of the three-day SRI™ Retail Management & Sales Education Seminar, they agreed that the job of all employees had been defined and in fact, it now included all of the elements required for a successful franchise.
The amazing thing about a franchise is the fact that it requires owners, manager, salespeople and all other employees to follow daily working routines that keep them engaged in productive activities during all working hours.
Incredibly, every single thing they are required to be learning and doing are only those things that will be in their own best interest.
They immediately discover that this causes what they know and do to be in the best interest of the customer which includes prospective customers, lookers and browsers, satisfied customers, unsatisfied customers and even dissatisfied customers.
Examine it closely and you see that it is the same effect caused when the disciplines of a McDonald’s® franchise are maintained.
What about cost?
How much is it worth?
Where do you start?
Attend the new three-day SRI™ Retail Management Seminar and Workshop. You will leave with all of the rules, policies and procedures needed to run a retail furniture business systematically.
Most of the owners and managers of most of the major retail furniture companies in the U. S. And Canada have attended earlier seminars and workshops. And the SRI™ employee handbooks continue to be the most widely used in the industry. These have been updated prior to every seminar. If you have not attended one of the seminars within the last five years, you will find the workbook doubled in content with new and added developments.
But now, when you attend your next SRI™ three-day seminar and workshop you will find that you are taken all the way through both the SRI™ Ultimate Agenda and the SRI™ Management Missives™.
The next SRI™ three-day seminar and workshop will be in Tulsa, Oklahoma August 14th, 15th and 16th. The fee will be $1,500 for the first person attending from a company and $750 for additional persons attending from that company.
The ultimate end of all business is determined by the willingness of those at the top to hold themselves accountable.
As an industry, I think that it is safe to say that we do a pretty good job of holding ourselves accountable for every piece of inventory that comes in and goes out.
As a rule, I think we do an even better job of holding ourselves accountable for every dollar that comes in or goes out. If we didn’t we would go under in a very short period of time.
But, as an industry, it is an extremely rare company or salesperson that hold themselves accountable for every prospective customer that comes in and yet that is where all of our money comes from.
Bill Gates, in his book Business @ the Speed of Thought, tells the retailer and this certainly includes the furniture retailer: “The internet changes everything. The manufacturer can now have all the benefits of a retail furniture showroom with none of the retail costs.” He then continues to give the retailer these two bits of advice if they expect to survive where the internet is rapidly taking us. Retail salespeople must be able to add value to what they sell without adding cost or reducing its quality.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t tell you how to do this, but there is now available to the retail furniture dealer, manager and salesperson a simple plan that when followed, has the salesperson adding perceived value upon perceived value until it so far exceeds the cost that all the salesperson need do is write the order and get it signed.
But, incredibly: As perceived value increases, the perceived quality increases to the same degree.
If you will take about three hours of your time to read The SRI™ Ultimate Agenda all the way through one time, you will have no doubt that this is the first time and the only time that any book or training plan has ever fully defined this problem.
Bill Gates goes further . . . . “When I get an e-mail telling me of a big account we got, I think no one sends me e-mail telling me if the ones we didn’t get because that is the bad news . . . .” “I think that my number one job as C.E.O. is searching for the bad news.”
What is the worst of all bad news in your retail furniture showroom as far as Bill Gates is concerned? Someone who shopped your showroom and left without buying – and you have no record of that.
This is his advice. “You must require your people to record every bit of information gained with every interaction with every customer contact and they must bring that information to you. Then, you must act on it or they will not think it is important to you and they will stop brining it. That will be the beginning of the end.”
The computer has made it incredibly easy for us to account for our money and inventories. In fact, this can now be done with little – and in some cases – no paper record of this information. It can be accessed instantly at a computer station. But, there are some things that are even more essential to your success according to Bill Gates that the computer can’t do.
It cannot get nor give you the information that Bill Gates says will prove to be the only way for you to survive and thrive the long term effects of the internet. Yes, the computer works at the speed of thought and yes, it can take you down the road of success at a rate of speed never dreamed of by anyone in the world prior to the incredible advancements in technology.
But like all good things, it is a two-edged sword and it can take you down the road to failure at the speed of thought.
If the computer is the solution, why do we have more of our major retail furniture companies and manufacturers in severe financial trouble than ever before in history? Because of The Law of Cause and Effect.
We can measure how effective/productive everything done in our companies today because the computer gives us instant information. But from the earliest day, it has been a well-known fact that “garbage in/garbage out” – and that is more dangerous than “nothing in/nothing out” if we rely on it. This causes everything to be getting better or worse at the speed of thought.
In my opinion, supported by Bill Gates’ statements, the most dangerous thing being done in the retail furniture industry are door counters used to give management and salespeople a guesstimate of how many buying units were in the showroom. Door counters have now proven that you cannot improve people collectively. They must be improved individually which results in their collective improvement. Because, almost every company that I know of who uses door counters to estimate traffic flow, has seen the percentage-sold actually slip down ever so slowly. After all, when you are only selling 15%, it can’t dip down very fast.
The industry, as we know it today and as we knew it in the past is doomed, if just one absolute well-known fact is not accepted and acted on – because what Bill Gates said wasn’t the full truth. We will either change or we will be the victim of chance.
Improvement is not static. It must be ongoing. If improvement stops, things start to worsen and they go downhill much faster than they went up. Without a doubt, the best known facts in the business world are these....
- What can’t be measured, can’t be improved.
- What can be measured can be improved.
- What gets measured will improve.
- What doesn’t get measured will not improve.
As any mathematician or CPA will assure you – these are the facts of mathematics which is our only pure science. All other sciences are based on opinions.
Want proof? When the doctor says you need surgery, you are told that if you are wise, you need to get a second opinion. You can get thousands of opinions and never be positive that one is right until after the fact. But, 2 + 2 = 4. And that is a fact only a fool would question. In business, all of these facts are meaningless if you forget the most important fact of all: Improvement is not static. It must be ongoing. If it stops, things start to worsen and they go downhill at a faster rate than they go up. So what gets measured doesn’t improve – unless it is being measured on an ongoing basis.
I think that I am safe in saying that I have proven this to millions of people in the retail furniture industry over the past 30 years. In the late 1980s, I introduced the SRI™ Fabric Protection Selling Plan at a cost of $199. It included nine audio tapes (of course now they’re CDs) but the point is not one word has changed.
It only required the retailer to do three things:
1. Select a reputable source for their fabric protection plan.
2. Require every salesperson to own a set of the three audio tapes and listen to them at least three times.
3. Raise the prices on their current fabric protection.
(At that time, most retail furniture dealers, if they did have a fabric protection selling plan, had kept cutting the price due to competition -- and as they did, the
percentage-sold had been dropping. In the two biggest companies at that time, less than 15% of those buying upholstered furniture were sold fabric protection. Most of the biggest companies in the industry bought this plan.)
They raised their prices, at my suggestion, to:- $75. For a sofa
- $65. For a love set
- $55. For a chair.
Each morning, before they open, they use the percentage of the upholstered furniture sales made who were also sold fabric protection, to measure the selling competence of each individual salesperson for that day, week, week-to-date, and month-to-date. The salespeople are given this information daily.
I know of no company doing this consistently, whose salespeople are not selling over 80% of all upholstered furniture buyers fabric protection at premium prices.
When leather started selling and leather care plans introduced, these same salespeople were quickly selling over 80% of their leather buyers leather care, and continue to do so to this day in companies maintaining these daily reports.
That accurate measurement has made master fabric protection and leather care salespeople out of every salesperson in their companies who collectively, for the most part, are selling less than 15% of the prospective customers shopping their showroom.
Incredible as this may seem, the 80% sold continues – while the percentage of prospective furniture customers sold dropped from 25% to less than 15% over the last 25 years.
The definition of insanity? Go on doing what you have been doing, expecting the results to be different.
Now, there is an “ultimate” solution for the hiring, training and management of retail salespeople while operating a retail furniture company as systematically and as effectively as a McDonald’s franchise.
To date, not a single person who attended the three-day Management Seminar and Workshop which included the SRI™ Ultimate Agenda™ and SRI™ Management Missives™ has had any doubt that these are facts – not opinions. I used the SRI™ Fabric protection selling plan example because it illustrates the proven facts of these plans.
If I were in the retail furniture business today and there was even one-chance-out-of ten-thousand that even a part of this was true, wild horses would not keep me from attending the next three-day seminar when one is to be held.
Just one day of these effects in your company would more than repay the cost – and from then on it’s all profit.
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Primary Resource
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