They’re back! Some level of confidence has returned to wealthy households and this has helped push nationwide furniture purchases to over $8 billion, one of the best performances we’ve seen in years. And there may be more on the way: the number of millionaires in the United States finally soared past its pre-crisis level and hit an all-time high of 9.63 million households while households worth between $500,000 and $1 million almost recovered to their pre-crisis population.  

But they’re different. The recession changed affluent people’s buying habits and the second decade of the Internet’s commercial development changed their shopping habits. Their expectations are completely different, especially for high-end purchases, and so savvy home furnishings store owners and managers may want to retool the way they approach the close.

The Internet’s Counter-Intuitive Impact

Information overload slowed down the sale over the past decade and made each high-end purchase more deliberate.  A third of shoppers visit luxury stores about once every six months and 40% of them say they’re considering their purchases more carefully, with impulse buying dropping 34% and planned buying increasing 24%.  Of course they do research online, but compared to shoppers ten years ago, today’s shopper visits three times as many stores before making a purchase.

And all this deliberation and window shopping takes time. At the turn of the century the average consumer spent 52 minutes browsing and less than half a day making a purchase. Today that same consumer spends 89 minutes browsing and it takes them nearly four days to make up their mind.

How to Use Social Media

What are they doing for four days?

Well, people earning between $100,000 and $1 million increased their use of both Facebook and LinkedIn by over 30%. They’re not just asking their friends’ opinions, either – they’re looking for and consuming buying guides made by entrepreneurs just like you.

The perfect social media strategy for your furniture store might be posting videos examining your favorite pieces in detail. Production matters less than content, so a hand-held overview of a couch, for example, showing a shopper how to evaluate finishing so she can fully appreciate how quality is built may elevate your stature in that shopper’s eyes and close the sale.

Given the fact that people stand in your showroom unabashedly checking prices of your competitors, it may be time to train your salesperson with 40 Tips to Combat Showrooming.  

“Be Backs” Are As Good As “Ups”

For decades furniture store managers and owners have been trying to train their salespeople to close the next “Up” right now, while salespeople have always seemed happy to exchange phone numbers and believe that every “Be Back” would become a close.

Now that we’ve quantified this four-day decision-making lag, it might be time to accept the salesperson’s beliefs and to refine your “Be Back” process.

The ambiance of your showroom and the experience your customer has there may be at least as important as the quality of your merchandise. Your store must become a place people want to visit often. The old consumer mind-set that considered products only in the barren context of price has (thankfully) dissipated.

Are You Experienced?

Now, the shopping experience matters more than ever. And if you’re able to refine your customer’s physical surroundings to the point that she feels compelled to come back and explore again, your salespeople need to inhabit that space like natives.

Success arises from within, as Aristotle observed millennia ago: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.” Confidence creates confidence so bashing the competition is out, completely, no matter how enthusiastically your customer wants you to join in. Unreasonable optimism undermines your credibility just as much, so never over-promise and never, for any reason, guess if you don’t know the answer. Be honest and forthright, because that’s the person today’s shopper pays – even if it costs a little more.

Ultimately if your salesperson believes in what he’s selling, so will your customer. If your salesperson believes the sale is inevitable, so will your customer. Even objections contribute to the sale, since top salespeople read objections as needs and go about satisfying them – within the strict limits of the truth about what you’re selling and the level of service you can provide.

Value Over Price

These intangibles contribute to the value proposition that affluent shoppers seek out today, and there will be more of them in the next few years. The “mass affluent” – the households between half a million and a million in investable assets – number 15.3 million and will surpass their 2007 numbers soon enough.

And no one is returning to the pre-crisis mindset. Now the search for value extends across all markets. It even had a massive impact on how people pay for things: Americans closed over 400 million credit card accounts over the course of the recession while simultaneously one out of five of them began using checks more – especially for purchases over $100.

Of course you accept checks because refusing a customer’s preferred payment method can undo all the work you put into your ambiance and your sales training as well as the four days you’ve waited for the sale. And of course you offer layaway because you know sales needs it when trying to prevent that “Up” from becoming a “Be Back.”

But with online check verification from the right provider, you can combine checks and layaway into what we like to call “in-home layaway.” It’s a solution that will enhance everything about your business’ ambiance, because it lets your customer take her purchase home now while freeing you from the burden of financing that purchase.

So, if the shopping experience is as important as the research indicates, try to make payment the most pleasurable part of it. Learn more here.