How closely do you track your average sale?

I’m asking because increasing your average sale is the easiest way for you to make more money… Which I’m betting we can all use.

Sure you can do more installations, but you will probably have to invest in another van, maybe more equipment, more people or even a larger warehouse.

Doing all of those things are great but even if you have the money to invest, it could take longer than you like.

Increasing your average sale can be done by working in more rooms in the house, which we discussed last week.  If you missed that post – check it out here. 

Another way to increase your average sale is by offering more expensive options to your customers.

Side note – if you have a showroom you better be showing the best of the best… There’s a reason every car dealer has the fully loaded options where you can see them when negotiating your car purchase.

I was speaking with one of my customers last week and he said since he installed his high end walk in closet in the showroom – that has become his most popular color and his customers “want” the same upgrades in their closets.. He doesn’t have to sell them anything. 

This will be the beginning of a series of posts dedicated to you increasing your profits without having to invest anything or install more projects. 

At Richelieu our mission is to have – good, better, best options for everything we sell.  I know that could be overwhelming for some of you, so I plan to start with the really easy upgrades and move on from there. 

Here is an easy upgrade that you could purchase by the job and your customer will see immediate value in. 

I think most of you offer soft close drawers and doors but if you’re not, I can guarantee you’re losing customers and don’t even know it.  

If you don’t want to stock a different hinge, you could always use a surface mounted soft close adapter that will work with your current hinge.  At Richelieu we stock Blum, Salice, Grass and of course our own brand which will give you the biggest savings.  Our Richelieu hinge is the one I always suggest that my closet customers use. 

Things get a little trickier with your drawers.  Soft close side mount slides are easier for you to install and don’t require any changes to your drawer boxes, but they do have their limitations.

We sell our Richelieu brand slide which is a great value engineer option, and we also sell King slide which is far and away the best side mount soft close on the market – its also one of the most expensive. 

No matter what brand you use I don’t suggest going wider than 30″, if you can keep it to 24″ even better.  Also please don’t use them in any crazy applications – I once had a customer complain because the slides failed in a tile store.  The store was loading all of the drawers up with tile samples – the drawer was 24″  deep by 30″ wide – that’s a service call waiting to happen. 

I also suggest managing the expectations of a side mount soft close slide compared to an under mount.  Most of your customers have under mount slides in their kitchens, there isn’t a side mount on the market that will work as well.  Explaining the difference on the front end, could be one of your easiest upsells to under mounts by just explaining the differences.

Of course using an under mount is the best option.  Many companies have made a complete conversion and use this as a feature to separate themselves from their competitor… Imagine the jobs you are potentially losing if you don’t offer under mounts.

Yes the drawer boxes are different – but you can outsource them and now we have under mounts on the market that come every 2″, just like your ball bearing slides.  

No more 12″ drawers in a 14″ deep closet.  With our 828 slide you can put a 13-1/2″ drawer in a 14″ vertical and our new closet clip makes the drawer construction even easier. 

As I mentioned at the beginning this will be a series of posts dedicated to you increasing profits and making more money.

If you have any questions or comments you can leave them below or email me at RDeMarco@Richelieu.com 

Thank you for reading.