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learn more. The first thing New Tech will do is learn more about the prospective user.
“We immediately take that call and get a little bit of information about height, weight, size, and what their needs are and make sure they can, because will not for everyone, it’s for select clientele that has the upper body strength and hand motion, that kind of thing,” he explains.
Then the next step is getting that users to start interacting with the product.
“Then we go to their house in their environ- ment where they’re going to use it,” Mykol says. “I think that’s one of the big differences that we take the WHILL to them to do test drives. They don’t have to come into our store or anything like that. So we let them experience the will and tight confines of their kitchen, their bathroom, their living room, out on the sidewalk, the mall, whatever it is close by. “
Once the customer buys the chair, New Tech delivers the chair to the customer, trains them on how to use it, and then touches base regularly with the client to ensure their experience is still positive.
“Any service issues or anything else is taken care of immediately,” Mykol says. “We do that ourselves also. And I think it’s just the follow-up and that constant ‘reach out and touch someone’ as they used to say at AT&T. We touch them frequently.”
And Mykol says that work to maintain healthy customer relationships pays dividends.
“We also reminds them that we do have a referral program,” he says. “We pay him a little spiff if they refer someone that buys a chair,” he says. “I have had a couple of customers make some pretty good money at it because they refer a lot of people, but at the same time they’re doing it because they like the product and they are believers in it.”
FOLLOW THE MONEY
Smart retailers know where they derive the lion’s share of their revenues. For Slavitt’s Mobül, his store’s retail mobility strengths are lift chairs
and scooters he plays to those strengths. His store is brimming with a wide selection of items from both categories. For instance, there are so many lift chairs you might be fooled into thinking Mobül could be a furniture store.
“It didn’t take long for me to figure out that
if we focus on lift chairs and scooters, we’ll do
all right,” Slavitt says. “We still sell a lot of other things and that, and the lifter and scooter might not be the first thing people come in to buy, but once we get you in here, we’re going to sit you in a lift chair eventually.
“It might not be the first time, might not be
the second time, but if we make the suggestion, it’s because we’ve identified a need you might have for that lift chair,” he continues. “And that’s going to be an important thing that we get to show you.”
Providing a broad range of selection on your main offerings is crucial to maximizing that cate- gory’s sales potential. And you have to back that selection up with the kind of sales and service that will seal the deal.
“I equate buying a lift chair to buying a pair
of shoes,” Slavitt explains. “We want people to be able to try it on, and sit in it for a while. I tell the story often of this customer who has since passed away, but when he bought his lift chair, he brought a book with him. He said, ‘“I have a 35-minute rule.’ He said, ‘I want to sit in the chair and I want to read a book for 35 minutes. And if it feels good after 35 minutes, I’m going to buy it.’
“You want to sit in it long enough to really get a feel for how it’s going to feel,” he continues. “So we sat him there, we left him alone for a while. We never pressure-sell anyone. We never force them to buy something they’re not ready to buy. With some customers, we need to help push them along a little bit sometimes; they need a little suggestion. So we’re going to help them with color. We have color swatches and they can take them home if they want. They can try it out, what- ever a customer needs to be comfortable.”
FOSTER PRODUCT INTERACTION
One thing Mykol has started doing and is going to make a regular part of his business is to
host test drive days where users can test the chairs and enjoy some snacks or other goodies. The more prospective buyers can spend time demoing a chair, the more they can decide if it’s right for them. He advises that the provider be there as a facilitator and to answer questions more to sell. Rather, let the experience and the product convince the customer.
“People come in and they test-drive them and no charge, no pressure, no nothing,” he says. “And that also is I’m sure going to get some sales, but they can also watch what works, what doesn’t work, you know, go outside and you
know, take the curb. You know, or the curb cut, you know, squeeze between cars in the parking lot. You know, all those types of things that WHILL is good for because of its compact size.”
But Mykol adds that he still thinks the best environment is for the test unit to get demoed in the user’s home.
“It’s a big difference from test driving a power chair in the store than it is in their kitchen, their bathroom, their hallways, their doorway, etc.,” he says. “I think that’s critical.”
But at the end of the day, demoing a product the more a customer tries out a product, the more that person can imagine that product in their life.
CREATE A STORE THAT
TRULY ENGAGES
Bearing that thought in mind, Slavitt says he
tries to get his customers to envision Mobül’s HME products in their lives. To that end, he has build a four-room “home”— complete with walls, windows, and even a street number — in his showroom.
The home fatures a garage, living room, bathroom and a bedroom that all showcase various retail HME items in real-life settings. The purpose of the display is to get customers to interact with various HME items and see how those products can fit into their lives.
“You might wonder, why would we build a house inside of a store?” he says. “The main reason is that we want to give customers a chance to see what it might look like in their home and also to try out products.
“It also lets them do what’s really impor-
tant to us in retail, and that is to imagine,” he continues. “To imagine having a nice, adjustable bed; imagine having a lift chair in your living room; imagine a scooter being parked in your garage. When we start to use ‘imagine,’ then the customer can envision it in their own house, and that gets them closer to making a decision.”
As they say, the proof is in the pudding, and Slavitt says his store experiences low return rates thanks to that focus on customer-product inter- action and orientation. n
“By having various choices at different price points, we’re able to find a solution that not only is going to be functionally sound, but also fits into someone’s budget.”
— Wayne Slavitt, Mobül
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