We asked our experts for their best recommendations for setting up pricing within Online Selections to extract the most useful data, as well as practical strategies to maximise profits from upgrades.
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Steph Schumer, Constructive Client Success Manager, believes integration with your source system is key for pricing precision.
“Constructive is all about improving accuracy and automation, and pricing is no different. Pricing integration, if available from your source system, would ensure the most accurate pricing is represented to your clients, and for the most items!”
Providing visible pricing for your items is essential to give you a clear picture of exactly what clients are spending on.
Data Engineer, Nigel Stacey, advises: “Price as many items as possible. This will help you achieve better accuracy in tracking revenue and upgrade percentage.”
“There are some retail price comparisons within the Price Configuration and Selections Price Reference areas within Intelligence Analytics to assist you in finding the right price point.”
Client Success Manager, Emma Lord, agrees, and encourages builders to use real pricing, (rather than labels of ‘included’ or ‘upgrade.)’
“If you use ‘real’ pricing up-front, you’ll unlock visibility into so many useful metrics, like the total overall value of upgrades, categories of selections that are increasing your revenue, and inversely categories where clients are spending the least amount of money plus specific items or brands and manufacturers that are popular.
This opens up analysis into examining averages, trends over time and opportunities to improve upgrade revenue, for example, by identifying where you might introduce alternative ranges of upgrades in low performing upgrade categories.”
Client Success Administrator, Gemma Elliott, says, “Pricing everything means you can capture granular data. This allows for more accurate analysis and facilitates a better understanding of your cost structures.”
“I’d also say maintaining consistency in categorising items across projects is important. Standardising categories helps in comparing data accurately and identifying trends or outliers.”
“Builders can also utilise custom fields to allow for capturing project-specific information or unique requirements. This enhances the specificity of your data and ensures that you track relevant details.”
Monitor upgrade choices to increase profit margins
“Through Intelligence Analytics, Constructive will monitor your clients’ spending habits. This will show you where they are more likely to make upgrades at their colour appointment. From here, you can continue to offer any big “money makers”, and display them front and centre in your showroom, and on your Constructive Online Selections Portal,” advises Steph.
Emma says watching the popularity of upgrade items, and gradually increasing the price over time, can help you find the ‘sweet spot’ for maximum profit.
“First, identify popular upgrade products; you’re looking for the ones that are selected often over a sustained period. Start to increase the upgrade cost of these items slightly, using Intelligence Analytics to monitor the increase does not deter the selections decisions. You’re looking for the highest price you can push your pricing for these items, where clients still perceive value for money, without a drop off in selection rates.”
On the other end of the scale, she believes you should ‘clear out’ your rarely selected upgrades to keep your selection options streamlined and profitable.
“Identify upgrades via Intelligence Analytics which are never, or very rarely, selected — is there an opportunity to reduce the margin on these items, making them more affordable to clients, to entice them to select them? If not, consider removing these items from your template entirely — upgrades that are beyond the scope of possibility for your client demographic will detract from the customer experience during the selection process. It’s important clients aren’t overexposed to options outside of their budget which can dampen their enthusiasm.”
“Similarly, look at categories where clients are never, or very rarely, upgrading and just sticking to your standard options. Perhaps the gap between the standard versus the upgrade is currently too high? Here’s a great opportunity to provide a more affordable range of upgrades as a high volume of smaller upgrades over time is a more sustained revenue model than only one or two occasional large upgrades.”
Nigel advises checking price overrides to check your pricing is at the right level.
“Intelligence can tell you how often prices are overridden to inform which items may need a price update. This can save you lots of time in the longer term.”
Identify high performing team members
“You can track whether there are certain Selections Consultants who are more likely to sell upgrades during their appointments with your clients and consider incentivising this within your team or setting KPIs around this metric,” says Steph.
Emma also recommends identifying trends across staff. “Intelligence Analytics allows you to track upgrades against Selection Consultants. You can ask yourself: Are there any trends here in certain consultants who produce higher upgrade revenue? Can you speak with them to uncover how they’re achieving those results more than others? Tapping into their product knowledge and sales skills to train other staff members can be an easy way to increase these upgrades.”
Benchmark, review and repeat
Our team agrees a review at a high level should be looked at every month. Here, you’re looking for any obvious peaks or troughs that are different from the common trend line.
“A more in-depth review should be conducted every quarter to ensure that your product offering and pricing is continuing to drive revenue, whilst satisfying your clients’ wants and needs,” advises Emma.
“Upgrade Percent over time is a good benchmark to track,” says Nigel. “You should also review prices that haven’t been updated in some time to check they’re still correct.”
Steph agrees. “Constructive can trigger automatic reminders for you to check pricing that hasn’t been updated after ‘x’ amount of time. This ensures you’re notified and constantly reviewing stagnant pricing to ensure it is still correct. I would suggest reviewing manual pricing at least every 6 months.”
“When pricing is set up in Constructive and your clients are making selections at home, or on the spot in their selection meeting, understanding their total variation cost means they’re more decisive. That way, upgrades can — and should be — looked at as an additional revenue stream rather than a hindrance to the administrative pre-construction phase of the build process,” reflects Emma.
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