Sales: An Honest Opinion

To start with, I'll need to introduce Mike...

It's Mike that is most likely to be the person that you would have first contact with in attaining a quote, or simply talking over your project. Initially he will take you through the very first steps of your door purchase: prices, components, configurations, styles and lead times.

He'll also offer any guidance that you may need when making these decisions – in terms of previous customer choices and selecting the best type of doors for your situation – be it a south facing sun-trap that would benefit from performance glass or a sea-front facing property that needs more weather proofing than standard.

After quotation (or several if necessary) Mike will then arrange your site survey with our surveyor and finalise the details of your order, which he will then pass on to me (Chloe...) to order and schedule the installation or delivery.

I'd like to point out...

...something that may differ slightly from how other companies operate – is that Mike is not just selling our product, but he is a point of information for our clients. He is also available to talk to about other areas of the project, to recommend local builders or to discuss different options – and he will always try and accommodate the needs and price range of the customer, often going out of his way to give a price that fits in with their budget.

There is a lot of debate (in the blogosphere) regarding the 'hard-sell' – having personally never witnessed a 'hard-sell' I'm not completely familiar with how it works. But I imagine that it's something along the lines of a 'One day only, £1000 drop in price' etc.

For one, I think its pretty patronising to the customer, and two doesn't it completely degrade the quality of the product, if you're willing to sell it at such a loss?

Of course, everyone tries to keep the price as low as possible for the sake of the sale, but at the same time dropping the price so (in my opinion) ludicrously low you are more likely to put off a prospective customer than entice them to buy as you are so clearly employing fast-sale and frankly unprofessional tactics.

By dropping your price so far or using these methods you are essentially telling the customer that you don't think your doors are worth paying full price for, which I think is ridiculous.

We want to sell our product because the product is good!

And we believe the price reflects that. We also think our price reflects our service and the benefits from buying with our company (which I've talked about here, and will go on to talk about even more! ). Meaning that it doesn't matter if a customer takes 3 days or 3 months to come to a decision and sign up the order.

So I guess I completely agree with DGB on this issue, that 'hard-sales' are a thing of the past, and that the industry (along with the rest of the world) has modernised and updated it's sales techniques.

Instead of pressuring a customer to buy just for the sake of making a sale, the emphasis in this economic climate needs to be on the customer being completely happy with what they're buying – so that they are getting precisely what they want, the best value for money and the best service possible.

Yes, this does mean that it's impossible to sell unbelievably cheaply, but - to coin a phrase – you get what you pay for, and I think in this industry it really does ring true.