Retail Bedding Playbook: Veteran Bedding Sales Associate Poses Body-checkbook Question
David Perry -- Furniture Today, April 6, 2011
DENVER - Mike Lankes has a disarming opening question for consumers who come into his Mattress King store: "What is going on to get you out shopping for a new mattress?"
He knows that consumers don't shop mattresses for fun, and also knows that he has to learn more about what his customers are looking for. So he simply asks them. "Most people will tell you," Lankes says. "They know the reason they are shopping. I don't. The answer to that first question is critical."
Lankes has a clever way of establishing rapport with his customers: He asks for permission to ask them some questions. "I don't want to make it sound like I'm going to give them the third degree," he says.
He looks for solutions to his customers' sleep needs, and usually starts looking at the top end of the line. "I typically put them on the most expensive firm, plush and pillowtop beds," he says. "I want them to know what heaven feels like."
When Lankes hears a sigh of contentment from his customer, he knows he's got the right comfort level. "I need to know which bed is the ‘aah' bed," he notes. "I have to find that bed as we drop down in the line in price and get as close to that same feel as I can."
Lankes has a powerful way of discussing the issue of comfort versus price: "The body will want the most comfortable bed," he says, "and the checkbook will want the least expensive bed."
He tells customers the body and the checkbook "may have a serious disagreement." But there is "only one entity that should get the vote, or the majority of the vote," Lankes says. "And that is the body." He also draws a distinction between the body and the head. "The brain," he comments, "doesn't sleep on the mattress. It sleeps on a pillow."
His strategy here is to get the customer to "quit thinking and start feeling. A mattress with the right design will go a long way toward alleviating stiffness and the soreness they may be experiencing. If they aren't getting a good night of sleep they aren't as sharp and alert as they should be. They are working on half a charge."
Making the case for the importance of better sleep helps Lankes appeal directly to the importance of getting the bed best for the body. "Your body will want the best mattress it can sleep on and it doesn't care what it costs," he says. "And the body will pay the price if it's miserable."
Lankes aims to give the body command over the buying decision. "I want my customer to feel good and understand that they can feel good," he says. His goal is to sell the best bed possible, and his skillful appeal to the power of meeting the body's needs helps him push his average adult sales ticket over $2,000, for a dual income household.
He brings up a familiar analogy to help explain how he sells high-end beds. "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. The mattresses I sell are a big elephant for a lot of people. I want their body to want the bed, no matter what the price is." And thus, one bite at a time, Lankes sells beds for $2,000 and $3,000 to many of his customers.
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