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Top 3 Secrets to Selling Home Furnishings to Millennials

Posted by Tom Lombardo | Mon, Aug 31, 2015 @ 03:26 PM

Millennials are in their twenties and thirties right now and they know for a fact that they’re heroes.

You better know it, too, if you want to sell home furnishings to them this year and next.

In fact, you better know it if you want to sell any furniture at all, because your Millennial sale probably includes a Boomer sale, and vice versa.

For all the details, please get our latest white paper for the furniture industry, Electric Lady Studios & Selling Furniture to Millennials. Right now, we’ll prep you for the hero you’ll meet tomorrow.

Secret #1: They’re Family

Home-Furnishings-Great-RecessionMillennials were trapped at home by the Great Recession, but the media’s stereotype of them as lazy freeloaders has no basis. In fact, most were employed and a quarter worked full time. Many helped their parents. Many saved for college rather than go into debt.

All of them learned that families stick together when times get tough.

And as a group, they may be more politically and economically astute than any generation since the Boomers. They knew things weren’t working out as planned, and they sought to understand why.

Now they want to use their work and their money to be part of the solution. They want to engage businesses that make them feel good about supporting them.

One study by BrandRepublic found that, even in the Millennial generation, 85% of all buying decisions are made by women. And 95% of those women want brands – in this case, your store – to adapt to their needs. They expect a brand to be personal to them. They expect you to want to have a relationship with them.

Insincere marketing and trite sales techniques turn them off. That all holds true for nearly sixty percent of the men, too.

So think of your showroom as the Temple of Apollo: Know thyself. The more authentic you are, the more you’ll sell to the Millennial generation.

Secret #2: They’re Investors

Millennials check their phones, on average, forty-three times a day. You’re right that they mostly read texts and Facebook, SnapChat, Instagram or Twitter.

But a lot of the time they’re doing research. Boomers worked through the library stacks; Millennials pose questions to their phones.

Which is not to suggest that they believe what their phone comes up with. They do repetitive research, check reviews and poll their friends because they consider themselves to be conscientious shoppers.

Their ability to filter content is nothing short of remarkable; they can detect insincere marketing and sales techniques at a glance, and those methods crash and burn every time, in every medium. 

They may be as frugal as their Depression-era great-grandparents. That’s why they don’t buy expensive items online. All of them browse online, but nearly three quarters of them buy in a brick and mortar shop.

There are two reasons for this. The first one is that they want a relationship with you, and they want to make sure you’re sincerely there for them. Since they record their lives on social media, the shopping experience itself becomes a critical part of their purchase. They’re not just looking for furniture; they’re looking for a story about buying it, too.

The second reason has vast implications for the furniture industry: When Millennials spend, they’re looking for value, and they want to make an investment.

They’re obsessed with financial security, for obvious reasons, and they literally waited until the recession was over before starting families.

Home-Furnishings-Millennials

Thankfully, they’re confident enough to start having kids now.

And they may very well be the generation that returns furniture to the status it had for their Depression-era grandparents. To them, it’s not disposable. It’s a potential heirloom.

If that’s music to your ears, there’s more.

Secret #3: They Care

Millennials have a saying: “Your dollar is your vote.” They know that purchasing power is really all you need to steer a capitalist society one direction or another.

And they’re going to use it. In fact, they’re more likely to buy in your store for the simple reason that it’s your store.

You’re cool. You’re independent. You’re not some “faceless corporation,” even if you proudly sell a few pieces of Ashley furniture. Ashley itself doesn’t even fall into the “faceless corporation” category because that term is reserved for global conglomerates that seem, to Millennials anyway, to operate above the law. Millennials blame the recession on “faceless corporations” and when they spend their money in your store, they’re advocating – they’re voting – for an economy owned by their neighbors.

And you’re not faceless because you’re on social media yourself. They can check out your Facebook page, read the reviews on Yelp or the ones you put on your website. They can even communicate with you before they ever walk in.

Home-Furnishings-Millennials-Trends

All that makes you real.

So be ready when they arrive. That Millennial woman all by herself might be pregnant, she might be furnishing her first home, and she might be vacating a room in her parent’s house.

She’s family, she’s an investor, and she cares. She’s a hero who helped her parents through the recession, who didn’t go into debt to get her degree, and who waited to have kids until she knew she could support them.

Treat her like that, and she might be three or more excellent sales.

And be sure you can send her home with her purchase today. After all the work and preparation you put into the sale, the last thing you want to do is lose it because of price. Rent-to-own and layaway can save a sale like that, because you know for certain a Millennial will not use a credit card for credit.

But we have another tool that we’ve been providing to furniture stores for over thirty years. Our clients call it “in-home layaway.” You can let your customer write a series of checks to be deposited over time. We guarantee every one, so if one is returned – even the last one – you get paid anyway. And your customer can match her outlay to her cash flow.

We hope you enjoy Electric Lady Studios & Selling Furniture to Millennials and that you, too, take advantage of an innovative payment method that closes sales all by itself.

 

Selling Furniture to Millennials

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Topics: Home Furnishings

Written by Tom Lombardo