COMMENT AND OPINION | Paul Crow


PAUL CROW OPINION


The Ripples managing director acknowledges why it’s important to establish how much a client is willing to spend on their KBB project but that designers all have their own ways of finding that information out


Budget is one of our key questions T


he word budget gets used a lot as everyone tries to stake their claim to the winning recipe that has brought them years and years of success. It makes me smile. Every week on my screen, I review the full list of sales opportunities for each Ripples showroom and from that I can see what business we are expecting in the next 14 days and so on. Over the years, it has proven to be a pretty accurate fi nancial forecast. No enquiry goes on the list unless it has a number under the budget heading and we never have a problem policing it, as it’s a standard practice with all our franchises.


Nobody wants to forecast a sale that has no monetary value, as the


implication is that if we don’t know it, the customer doesn’t either


After all, nobody wants to forecast a sale that has no monetary value, as the implication is that if we don’t know it, the customer doesn’t either. That is not a good place to be when you work in an industry the consumer is properly introduced to around every 10 years. I do not expect it is any different in your showroom. What might be different are the debates that take place around how to get a budget, at what point in the sales process and what it really means. This is where the main debate starts. Is it off-putting, is it controlled by the client or by the salesperson and, for the grand fi nale, how important is it to stick to the budget? Statistically speaking, we have learnt that there are six key questions you must have answered prior to taking on a design project and one of those is the budget. Regardless of your view on charging for the design, or even how much you charge, it is still little compensation for loss of time that could have been spent with someone who did order, so we only want to work on projects that we truly believe will reward us. If you ask one of our senior designers with a 90% project-to-order success rate, they might tell you they always nail down the budget at the fi rst meeting with the client and then do their


best to stick to it. They swear by this method and have a track record to prove it.


Then there is the other senior designer who pauses on hearing this and counters with the view that the budget is a starting point, something to look at as an opportunity to build up from as the relationship and interest in the detail develops. They offer historic examples of where the stated budget was X and ended up as Y. The new designers in the room curiously take notes and, before too long, all eyes are on the trainer in the room, wondering what it is that they should be concluding. Before they can answer, an experienced franchisee in the room chips in from the back: “I’m not a huge fan of the whole budget thing.”


Their explanation is long and coloured with anecdotes and to the younger generation in the room, sounds a little old-fashioned. It goes a little like this. “Ticking boxes is all very well, but that does not take into consideration the heart of sales, which is the infl uencing factor. I want the client to love me and for that to happen, I need to show them I love them. I invest emotionally and seek the same in return. “I want to know where they live, what they do, why they do it, the name of their pets and their favourite restaurant. Before we even talk about the bathroom, I want to know what makes them tick and frankly, I want to get around their house as soon as I can and get the ‘second date’ under way while the juices are fl owing.” More silence in the room. “So, when do you talk about the budget?” asks someone from the back of the room. The short answer is: “I don’t.” More explanations. “It is my job as a salesperson to know the client so well that I know what bathroom they want. I know how they want to use it, why they want to change it and how they value that in their life. They do not know what things cost, but I do – and that is all that matters. After that, it’s proving to them that what I have provided is the right solution and the cost is whatever it all adds up to.”


“And what if they don’t order?” they are asked. “Why wouldn’t they?” is volleyed back. “Well, I don’t know. I don’t know your client.” “Exactly! But I always do.” That’s a fore- arm smash down the line.


18 · May 2021


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