It's safe to say that the furniture industry has been around for a while. In fact, there is evidence of wooden furniture having been used in ancient Egypt as early as 2950 BC. And why not? Sleeping and sitting on the ground isn't exactly convenient.
But the longevity of furniture as a commodity and as a business goes beyond mere necessity; while it's true that some customers couldn't care less what their tables, chairs, or beds look like, for others, furniture is part of their home decor and needs to fit a certain style or theme. As people move between residences, as they grow older, as they try out different decorative schemes, their needs and wants change. For the furniture retailers that serve them, the hope is that they will be able to fulfill those needs year in and year out. Repeat business is good business, and developing strong customer relationships is critical for retailers.
Not only do repeat buyers equal more revenue, they also help spread positive word of mouth, which will bring more business to your door. There are a lot of ways to build a strong relationship with your retail furniture customers, and it starts, of course, with great service. But another increasingly relevant way of earning repeat business is establishing a strong customer financing program.
Customers want to have a variety of purchasing options available to them, regardless of their income bracket and spending power. Every furniture retailer should offer consumer financing; not doing so is leaving money on the table. But beyond just having a financing program, you need to ensure that you're running it the right way. Here are a few tips to help you do just that.
Make It a Core Part of the Sales Process
It's not enough to merely have a financing program; if you just put a sign up somewhere in your store that says, 'financing available,' or include a brief mention of it in your sales materials, you are doing your finance program a disservice. Your salespeople should present financing upfront, to every customer, every time. Doing so will boost your revenue over time.
Think of it this way: If any customer who would make a purchase if financing was presented as an option doesn't hear about that option, you just lost a sale. Maybe it only happens once or twice a week. Even so, you are losing out tons of sales throughout the course of the year. Train your salespeople to offer financing to every customer, every time, rather than using a complicated system where you ask your team to sort of guess or intuit which customers will be interested in financing. Financing is not always a financial crutch or means of stretching one's budget; often, it's just the more convenient option.
Simplify Things for Your Customers
You want to remove as many obstacles between your customer and their purchase as possible. That means making it easy for them to apply for financing at home or at your store, providing a quick and secure financing process, and keeping them engaged throughout that process.
You can teach your salespeople how to keep customers engaged, but if the application process is laborious and wasteful of your customers' time, even the best salesperson will struggle to keep them invested. If you have a poor process in place, expect to hear a lot of, "I don't have time right now, but I'll come back later." And, unfortunately, many of those customers won't come back.
Choose the Right Solution
Fortunately, there's an easy way to rapidly improve and streamline your financing process. FormPiper is a consumer finance automation solution that makes it easy for your customers to apply from any device at your store or from the comfort of home. It is a secure process, protecting customer data through User Verification, PCI Compliance and CCPA Compliance.
It saves you time, by helping you and your team members avoid duplicate data entry during the application process, with managed or self-managed services that ensure you'll never have to manually enter the same application details on multiple forms ever again. And once you start using FormPiper, you'll be able to track your results with ease using a convenient reporting dashboard.
Your customers deserve the best possible version of your consumer financing program, and you deserve the added revenue that comes with eliminating inefficiencies and getting them to the purchasing step more quickly and easily. FormPiper helps you deliver that, and shows you the key metrics you need to measure your finance program performance. While the furniture industry dates back to ancient times, there's no reason you shouldn't use a modern, cutting-edge solution to take your consumer financing program to the next level.
