Increase Your Pond Pump Profits And make Your Customers Happy
This was an article I wrote to persuade hardware retailers to help customers make good buying decisions in terms of ponds and pumps.
In this and subsequent articles I will attempt to help retailers get a full grasp of the opportunities to make considerable profit from pump sales by highlighting simple yet highly effective selling techniques.
A Retail Anomaly That Still Baffles Me After 10 Years
Go into almost any outlet selling pumps for the garden and you will notice that the number of low cost short 2-wire cabled indoor pumps on the shelves outnumber the number of outdoor pumps supplied with 10 metres of 3-core cable. Yet and heres the anomaly for me . most customers are looking for outdoor pumps.
From Retail Anomaly To Higher Retail Profit
It is a fact that almost without exception when a customer wants to buy a pump she asks for advice on which pump to buy and relies totally upon the retailers advice in other words when it comes to pumps the opportunity within a store is to make a sale. Pumps rarely sell themselves. Based upon good sound technical sales advice she will purchase the pump you recommend almost every time.
Even disregarding the legal requirements for only selling outdoor pumps for outdoor applications we have a potentially mutually rewarding transaction by specifying an outdoor pump for an outdoor application. This is it .
1. The purchaser of a pump for outdoors buys a pump that is easily installed, performs to the specification required within the customers garden and does not present a family danger. Furthermore the pump does not require cables to be joined, is reliable and will work for years on a 24 hours per day basis, whilst consuming a minimum amount of electricity.
2. The retailer optimizes the profit from the sale and converts a casual customer into a lifelong happy customer. It is a fact that for most smaller pumps the cost of the 10 metres of cable is at least equal to the cost of the pump including the short 2 core cable itself and since the pump box has to be about 3 times bigger then the freight and packaging cost component is about 3 times that for a small indoor pump of the same performance.
A preoccupation with pump price in what is incorrectly perceived to be an overly competitive environment is a real problem preventing profit optimisation. Poor product knowledge compounded by inadequate information on most pump boxes is a second reason.
Almost without exception no mention is made on the box or within the sales process of the importance of running cost based upon power consumed yet this is in almost all cases more important than the purchase price.
The consequences of this ongoing anomaly are
Your store will lose higher margin sales
Potential lifetime customers will go elsewhere
Your store will not be perceived as a serious supplier of water feature products and this is after all what purchasers of pumps are really looking for. Remember this is the fastest growing sector of the total gardening market.
Busy retailers need help from suppliers like ourselves in order to maximize their pump profits and increase their sales volumes.