Western Washington's Real Estate BoomWritten by Joe Giles
Since I started my career in selling real estate, there has been plenty of talk about how good market has been lately, second to what we've seen in California of course. Bothel for example, according to our General Manager at our company-wide meeting in mid April '05, had seen prices increase by 26%. Meanwhile, Northwest Multiple Listing Service--the largest MLS in our area reported that from March 2004 to March 2005, prices in Northwest Snohomish County rose more than 17%; Meadian prices rose more than 22%! Meanwhile there is plenty of talk among agents in this area concerning new outlet mall that is supposed to open on May 5th, 2005, as well as a Six Flags theme park that could be on way right behind it. The expectation is that this will bring more jobs into greater Marysville area and fuel a doubling of Snohomish County's total population by 2025 as many local authorities are predicting. So given this extraordinary growth rate, how high is too high for a mortgage interest rate? at what point does cost of money offset enormous gains that could be made through real estate investments in our area?
| | Improving Suggestive Selling Initiatives With Performance Measurement and Competitive MotivatorsWritten by Matt Wozniak
Cross Selling, Add-on, Suggestive Selling, Up Selling, Down Selling, Soft Selling and Hard Selling, all mean same thing – more or less revenue generated at customer sale point, and if done correctly, a happier, better informed, well satisfied repeat customer. Some approaches work, others do not…The numbers can be staggering when looking at how minute changes in front-line staff behaviors can influence revenues into millions of dollars. The following example is gleaned from real data gathered by National Shopping Service http://www.nationalshoppingservice.com, a 33-year veteran mystery shopping provider offering customizable mystery shopping services and solutions for Global 2000 retail organizations: Let’s assume we have a chain of 900 C-Stores averaging 7,000 individual customer transactions each week. Let’s also assume that our historical mystery shopping observations have shown us that in only 10% of transactions, CSR offered an additional revenue producing item to customer (…”did you need a bag?” does not qualify!) Lastly, let’s assume that a typical add-on sale, or suggestive sell item is valued at $1.00. If we can motivate front-line staff with incentive programs, actionable mystery shopping feedback, and refresher training to increase suggestive sell from 10% to 11% of our customer, base we can increase system wide annual gross revenue by a staggering $3,276,000.00! The numbers speak for them selves, trick is how does one motivate 25 or 25,000 front-line C-Store employees to consistently and effectively offer revenue increasing items or services to daily customer flow. Furthermore, how does one deter staff from down selling (…”Did you want a small…”)? The answer is to implement a consistent, reliable, non-biased monitoring tool and to offer training coupled with positive, constructive feed back. An incentive for employees to perform is a definite plus. A Mystery shopping program works extremely well to fill this requirement. Statistics show that front-line employee suggestive selling training works very well…until they arrive to work following day, at which point they place suggestive selling at bottom of their list of duties. Most staff are initially uncomfortable “selling” – they are cashiers, not salesman. They feel as though they are “bugging” customer or are being “forced” by management to sell something customer didn’t want in first place. At peak customer flow times, suggestive selling becomes just another task that slows down queue times – a built-in conflict as front-line staff have had customer through-put hammered into their heads.
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