Holiday Kitchen Makeovers
Halloween… Thanksgiving… Passover… Christmas… All of these happen during the fourth quarter of the year. They also all deeply involve the kitchen in every home. With so much time being spent in the family kitchen, is your business leveraging the potential for kitchen remodeling or new appliance sales that can come along with the time being spent?
Every other major holiday is leveraged for sales by nearly anyone in any industry that sells anything. Memorial and Labor Day car sales are almost cliché. Presidents’ Day furniture sales? Same thing. But those are limited both in time span and product focus. The largest majority of the resulting sales are single unit purchases. Appliance sales around those holidays may result in more than a single appliance being sold, but when was the last time a holiday season was used to sell not only an appliance suite but also the remodeling of an entire room?
The kitchen remodel can be a good profit generator for any home improvement retailer and it’s one of the few that, if done properly, can leave the customer with such a high level of positive emotional feedback. Everything can be remodeled from flooring to cabinets to counter-tops to appliances. And if the customer wants that remodel done by Halloween, NOW is the time to get it planned and started. Thanksgiving? They have another month to select appliances, flooring, counters, etc. Christmas? The window is relatively small for work between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so it would be beneficial to steer them toward getting it done in time for Thanksgiving.
What’s the process? Does your outlet have a home improvement / remodeling specialist on staff? That employee, equipped with a planning guide for the kitchen remodel is really all it takes. Of course, you have to either have the employees that are properly certified and licensed to do the work or you have to have a working relationship with a local contractor to get it done. Meet with them. Make sure they understand the plan for selling holiday remodeling work, the timing and the variety of work you’re trying to include.
On occasion, your customer will end up not just wanting the kitchen remodeled but perhaps the fireplace redone, something custom in the dining room or maybe something new in the family room. “The kitchen is the heart of the home,” and as such, any remodel efforts you can sell there can serve as an anchor to sell remodeling other rooms as well.
The remodeling planner isn’t difficult to develop if you don’t already have one. It should be just a couple pages. The first page should have all the customer’s information and then a short checklist of what they want remodeled in the kitchen. Flooring, cabinetry, counters, sink(s), island, lighting, appliances. Then you need a page for each of those items so they can select what kind of flooring, which cabinets and the hardware for them, what countertop material, etc. (Of course, we talk about pages but this can all be done on a computer with appropriate software or just in a common word processing program if you already have the template.)
That completed planner gets handed to the contractor so s/he can confirm the work and materials with the client and they schedule the start date as well as the finish or “delivery” date. Any necessary permits have to be coordinated and inspections as well. It may seem like a lot of work but in reality, in store, it’s an hour, give or take, and the sales generated can be significant.
So… have you sold a remodeled kitchen for the holiday season yet?
