Lawhon calls for integrity in pricing and store selling
By Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, April 14, 2002
TULSA, Okla. — Responding to Furniture/Today's March 11 front-page story on NBC-TV's "Today" show report on discount shopping, sales and management training consultant John Lawhon called the segment an attack on the industry's pricing policies and said, "We need to think long and hard about the effect this publicity will have on our retail salespeople.
"Every person in our industry should put themselves in the place of the retail salesperson and ask how they would respond when confronted by prospective customers with this issue," said Lawhon, an author and chief executive officer of Selling Retail International.
Suggested retail price lists "are one way to create illegal price comparisons legally," he said. "When there is no integrity in the price of what's being sold, there will be no integrity in the selling."
Lawhon recalled what a Harvard professor once told him: "In all business, marketing precedes production. If you can't get it sold, it doesn't matter whether you can get it produced."
"This simple fact makes getting it sold the basis upon which all other things in your business and our industry rest," he said.
"But there's something that has been almost entirely forgotten," he continued. "No sale is completed in our industry until the product has been sold to the end user. Even then, it is not a successful sale if the buyer didn't wind up a satisfied customer."
Lawhon will be conducting a seminar April 19 during the High Point market entitled, "Your Road to Selling Success Revisited for the 21st Century." The session is set for 8:30 a.m. in the National Home Furnishings Assn.'s seminar rooms on the 12th floor of the International Home Furnishings Center.
-
Expert tells how to negotiate life
Jun 18, 2006 -
Letters to the Editor
Apr 14, 2002
VIEW ALL GALLERIES
