Luxury Furnishings Sales Reps – Can’t Live With ‘Em / Can’t Live Without ‘Em
It’s long been a tradition among luxury furnishing sales reps that we show up at the worst times; when you’re too busy, frustrated, or just plain weary to deal with them. While it’s an intuitive impulse, it takes years of experience to perfect this intrusive talent and only the best of us truly excel at disrupting designer’s and buyer’s lives.
Now, as we remove our tongues from deep within our cheeks, it must be said that the lives and practices of traditional sales representatives have evolved greatly over the past decade or so. “For many, gone are the leisurely in-person meetings exploring samples. Instead, the work is now defined by more targeted interactions - and often conducted from afar.” (Haley Chouinard, BOH.com author/editor)
Clearly, developing technologies have enabled designers and dealers to view and purchase furnishings within what we might call a “virtual showroom” without relying on face-to-face interactions. Beyond this, the recent pandemic forced all of us to withdraw from interpersonal interactions to some extent.
So, we essentially have a bit of fear, increasingly busy schedules, and technology driving sales reps and manufacturers to become more creative in the ways they work with their clients.
Creative Interactions are Becoming the Norm
Thankfully, the folks at BusinessOfHome.com have investigated this trend and shared their findings (including the quotation above). The results are far less intimidating than we all may have imagined.
“The days of knocking on a designer’s door and showing them all your lines are pretty much over. Designers are busier than ever, and they don’t necessarily have an afternoon to spare for a visiting rep,” says Anderson Somerselle, the founder of Somerselle, [in] New York [with a] digital-first operation that includes an online showroom experience and a team of road reps in the tri-state area. “The idea of a traditional sales rep reads very Tupperware party nowadays.” (emphasis added)
Author Chouinard explains further, “There are a number of factors that have contributed to the changes. During the pandemic, many designers experienced a massive influx of new work, robbing them of the free time required to wander a design center for inspiration. Covid restrictions didn’t help either. So, reps were forced to get creative.”
As a matter of necessity, sales reps in the luxury furnishings industry have devised clever ways to keep in touch and promote their products to designers. For example, “… independent rep Nancy Stout started sending her clients boxes of curated samples, bringing discovery directly to their doorstep. The practice caught on, and a lot of her clients still request more of what she calls ‘shop jobs’ versus traditional sit-down meetings.”
Whether virtually or face-to-face, the counter-intuitive result of this separation between rep and client has resulted in designers and dealers needing support from their reps more than ever.
As Ms. Chouinard goes on to say, “That’s the flip side of the new normal: Many designers have less time for reps but rely on them more. Nancy Evars of the San Francisco-based showroom Evars Collective has noticed that designers now turn to her staff in a way they didn’t [ten] years ago, looping salespeople into the details of projects and asking for recommendations. ‘We’ll get a call, and the designers will say, ‘I’ve got a presentation next week—can I send you our FF&E budget and the inspiration board? I’ve even had designers send furniture plans,’ she says. ‘We’re more like an extension of their team.’”
Stay Tuned for More
That seems like a good place to end this post and let you ponder what we’ve shared. However, this is all we have to say on the subject of the evolving role of luxury furnishing sales reps and how you can keep a relationship growing.
With that said, we ask that you keep an eye on this page for more on the subject. If you have questions we’ve yet to answer, Ted is available for business coaching and consulting to the trade. Just… Contact TD Fall today.