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How to up-sell with Confidence
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ASA MCGILLIAN, MANAGING Director of door manufacturer Apeer and the man behind the highly successful Lumi window and door system, shares his experiences about homeowners’ willingness to up their budgets.
Northern Ireland – based Apeer has been through a dramatic transformation during the past three years. Driven by the perpetually smiling Asa McGillian, the Ballymena firm has morphed from a highly competent if conventional manufacturer of a rather nice range of composite residential doors, to becoming something of a mould breaker in the field of windows and doors per se.
The transition has come about following the launch of the widely heralded Lumi range of windows and doors, which the judges hailed as‘ a product that truly reinvents the window’ when they bestowed the G Awards Product of the Year award on the system. Since then the company has pursued a marketing strategy that has seen Apeer take Lumi to homeowners and installers via a tortuous 25 consumer homes and trade shows during the past two years, one that has brought the company and its staff into close contact with its potential customers. And the results have offered, says Asa, quite a learning curve:“ We pursued what has been an exhausting exhibition programme because we understood early on that the aesthetics of our new‘ frameless’ window and door system- Lumi- could not be fully communicated through photographs. And this proved the case – when people see the products they are swept away; very few people have said they don’ t like the appearance even if they are not what they are looking for.
“ The response we received actually caused us to change our marketing strategy for Lumi …. because whilst we launched Lumi as a window system, with complementary sliding, bi-fold and residential doors, such has been the demand that we now include the doors as part of our broader door offer, alongside the composite doors – and that is where we have learned about homeowners’ willingness to tear up their original budgets when they see something that really catches their imagination. In other words, offer something extraordinary and they will find the money for it!”
Asa says that this experience has been reinforced through the company’ s website and a growing band of installer customers that have latched on to Apeer’ s offer of full customisation of its range of composite doors.“ We have a number of installers who are going to their homeowner customers and offering colours, glass, hardware in an almost limitless number of permutations that most of their competitors are unable – or choose not – to
offer. And despite the increase in cost that is often way above the customer’ s presumed budget, when they see what is available to them they find the money, up their budget, simply because they can get something that is unique to them, that they had no idea about previously.
“ We have found the secret is to offer something that is unique and special to the buyer, which happens increasingly with our customising options; or alternatively to fire
44 » MAR 2018 » CLEARVIEW-UK. COM