WHY YOU NEED TRAX MORE NOW THAN EVER!

I’m a retail furniture guy. I’ve been involved in managing retail furniture salespeople for over 30 years. I’m also a numbers guy, but with a reservation; the numbers are only valuable when they’re RIGHT! Decisions based on bad data are bad decisions as are decisions made on guesswork about what the true situation is. I’m also a goals guy. I believe that retail home furnishings salespeople are, under-coached, under-trained, under-compensated, and under-appreciated.  Dave Mink and his Trax CRM/Sales Management System have more important, germane, and necessary sales management tools to offer retail home furnishings retailers than any other company in our business.

I’m an 80/20 guy. I believe in the universal business principle of imbalance – that most results are achieved by few causes, or, stated as the 80/20 rule usually is: 80% of results derive from 20% of causes. You all know about this economic law, but probably don’t think about it often. It doesn’t have to be an 80/20 relationship to fall under the influence of the law of imbalance, you can have 90/10 or 70/30 relationships, and these two numbers don’t have to add up to 100 either because you’re dealing with two separate data sets, so you can have a relationship where 20% of products produce 100% of the sales, or some such breakdown.

Because all actions do not have equal value in producing results, you would be far better served spending far more time perfecting, improving, and performing the 20% of actions do produce a high percentage of the results you want (increased sales) and no time on the 80% of things that don’t. Our business is totally, completely, and ultimately dependent upon the results of one-to-one interactions between salespeople and shoppers. Knowing how many shoppers you have is the one core element in the sales equation you must know. But few stores actually do.

Trax gives you the foundation data you need to identify the most productive actions and quantify their affect on overall sales. Here’s why EVERY furniture store needs Trax today!

• You have only three things to measure and improve on the sales side of your business: Traffic, close ratio, and average sale. Trax with its Visual Proof photographic interface makes traffic counting an exact science, and automatically calculates the values for close ratio and average sale based on the ongoing accountability of your salespeople for every customer opportunity you give them to serve. You deserve this accounting, and they owe it to you. Trax tracks it!
• Traffic is a function of your advertising, location, and the skill of your salespeople. Our data tells us that first-time shoppers on any furniture purchasing project make their purchase not more than 15% of the time. Second (or more) time shoppers (Be-backs) on the same project make the purchase 70% of the time or higher. Be-Backs buy, and

the higher an individual salesperson’s ratio of Be-Backs to total customer opportunities, the higher will be their sales. Trax tracks it!

• You cannot measure or judge the efficacy of your advertising expenditures unless you carefully count your traffic. Advertising does not sell furniture; it brings shoppers into your store so your salespeople can sell them. This is the only way you can know if sales increases or decreases are traffic-driven (advertising), or performance-driven (people). Trax tracks it!
• One of the key management metrics for one-to-one selling environments is called Revenue-per-Up (opportunity) or Performance Index in some systems. It is sales volume divided by the number of total opportunities, and it answers the question “How many dollars can I put in the bank every time (name) greets a customer?” This is the overall sales effectiveness measure and Trax tracks it!
• The central performance factor for every furniture store owner, individual salesperson, and manager is: are our people achieving their goals and ours? No other system can do what Trax can do in tracking goals – Trax tracks it RIGHT!

CRM – Customer Relationship Management

 In the new retail reality – now – your greatest battleground will be the retention of customers – keeping them in your realm of influence and decision and not in your competitor’s. Whole new retailing channels are opening and you must retain the goodwill of every customer by fulfilling all of their home furnishings needs. To do this, you have to stay connected to them with their blessing and permission. Trax let’s you do this on the personal level of salesperson-to-customer like no other system you can find. There is no extra charge for this tremendous advantage, it’s included in the Upboard. If you have ever priced stand-alone CRM systems you will know what an unbelievable benefit this is.