Dealer 101
Recipes for Success in the Commercial Furniture World
Know Your Ingredients!
Crafting Your Recipe
Gain a new client. Quickly develop a design solution that gives them everything they want while striving for speed and accuracy. The best recipes yield a happy client and a portfolio/resume-strengthening project.
Webinars, Seminars & Trade Shows
CEUs & Lectures
Product Demonstrations
Technical Manuals
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Furniture is a small piece of the puzzle that has a great and lasting impact on the project and your client’s future success.
What are you doing to educate yourself?
Sometimes one client needs to be your one and only priority.
Sometimes a coworker thinks you have 10 hands.
Sometimes a vendor thinks you can read minds.
It’s what makes our jobs exciting!
different cuisines
require you to employ different skills and strategies for you to succeed.
The same goes for the different markets in the world of commercial furniture.
Do you know what you need?
Do you know how to find out?
First you must know and understand the tools in your kitchen.
A good cook always keeps certain items in stock. In the same way you must always gather the following components before you can successfully craft your furniture solutions.
Pantry Items
Hover over the pantry items to see key points
and how your dealer can assist to make you look better.
PANTRY ITEMS help identify Your Client’s Objectives
Why does the project exist?
What kind of culture change(s) are they looking
to achieve, if any?
What is going to change for the end users?
Who are the decision makers and influencers?
What’s the overall timeline for the project?
What’s the project budget?
Who knows who among the project’s key players?
What is the overall project timeline?
This is the mise en place, the critical first step.
The sooner you engage your dealer, the more time you will have to play with products and spec options, and the more thought your dealership team members can give for your benefit by identifying potential issues that you may not know to look for and these are just a few things that can impact your project timeline:
use of custom fabrications, components, and/or materials
multiple decision-makers in the approval process
multiple workspace typicals or other product variations
multiple design revisions
multiple design concepts and layouts
Our Project Lead Time Calculator tool converts manufacturer lead times to real time deadlines for you.
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What is the project budget?
If your client doesn’t really know or is hesitant to say, here are some questions that can help get that conversation started:
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How many people should the space accommodate?
How many square feet are available for this project?
What specific roles, responsibilities, activities, or conditions do they need you to consider? (e.g. LEED, social vs. private spaces, departmental and users’ task/responsibility requirements)
Your dealer has tools to convert these details into dollar values and ranges that help you move forward with valid solutions.
Do any key players have an existing relationship with the client?
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Is your client standardized on certain products?
Are they looking for a change of products?
Have they been doing their own research?
These can reveal means for you to support your client.
Pro Tip:
Work with existing relationships and your creation can achieve a beautifully complex flavor.
Ignore or undermine existing relationships and risk building a harsh, disappointing dish… you don’t want to accidentally serve steak to a vegetarian!
What are the health & safety concerns in this project?
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What kind of work will be performed by people?
Are there any employees working remotely?
Furniture can remove or minimize many common workplace injuries.
Your dealership team can assist with health and safety concerns brought up by any member of the project through material specifications, installation instructions and user training.
Let us show you more about what a dealer does and how we work.
contact Wittigs for more information!