“Think this over carefully: The most charming hours of our life are all connected – by a more or less tangible hyphen – with a memory of the table."— Pierre-Charles Monselet 1874Living well begins with quality family time and this quote above elegantly reminds us that the kitchen has become, or better yet, always has been the central gathering space for families. In today’s kitchen design, particularly when fine
custom cabinetry is the preferred choice, the kitchen has come to serve as something far beyond its functional purposes; it is another avenue for expressing who we are in terms of our lifestyle.
Fittingly then, to embark on a discussion on lifestyle or living well, it must certainly include today’s “Grand Central” for family life, the Kitchen. Lifestyle and one’s kitchen just as lifestyle and the “American Dream” are somewhat interchangeable in terms of speaking in a self-defined and aspirational manner—everyone defines and aspires to have his or her own unique expressions of their lifestyle.
The very idea that we would design a lifestyle leans more towards individualism rather than the status quo or personalized rather than generic; and, so goes the tastes and preferences of Americans when it comes to their kitchen cabinets. The underlying reason may be as described in a fascinating article by Leslie Hart called
The Psychology Behind Kitchen and Bath Design. Her premise, “psychologists are coming to understand the interdependence between a person and his or her environment, behavior and even physiology.”
Taking permission to adapt this insight to what can be found at
Webinetry.com, giving your kitchen a luxury makeover with
custom kitchen cabinets with furniture-grade quality doesn’t just help the kitchen look better, it helps everyone in the family’s well-being as well. It’s not about having showplaces, but about having committed-purpose, real spaces that are family oriented and yet, ready to entertain.
With factory direct cabinetry prices, this can be achieved affordably, hence, the affordable art of living well.
Today, the good life or la bonne vie as the French proclaim comes in unlimited sizes and shapes as each of us seems determined to design a model unique to our own lifestyle. As important for our well being as lifestyle is, there is a also a responsible way to go about acquiring your preferred kitchen to keep in mind. Having the fine cabinetry that a family desires is certainly wonderful; paying factory direct prices 30-50 % below home centers is ultimately the ideal way to go about it if possible. So, this post is not just about living better in the kitchen or a few areas of life to merely to enhance our style, but is intended to educate consumers with something truly empowering, “The Affordable Art of Living Well”.
Crossroads Custom Cabinetry redefines the U.S. cabinet industry by making premium quality, custom cabinetry widely available at greatly reduced prices. Webinetry.com is a completely new portal for the way today's American consumer can research, preview, budget, and finalize their cabinet purchasing decisions. With our professional network, home improvement professionals enjoy a flow of free qualified sales leads, member pricing and innovative sales support tools that are designed to achieve an optimal selection process with the homeowner.
The remodeling industry is renowned for its hidden and add-on costs that result in final expenses that simply do not resemble what one intended to spend. When investing in a new kitchen, one of your first steps should be to decide what you would like to spend. In remodeling projects, especially kitchens, costs can quickly spiral out of control with one upgrade here, another there, and just one more over here!
A successful kitchen remodel is the result of thoughtful planning and budgeting. Estimating the cost of kitchen remodeling prepares a homeowner for what to expect when embarking on a project. The products and materials you choose will have the greatest impact on your new kitchen’s price tag. Installation, labor and other costs will have to be factored too, but are less of an issue and typically easier to estimate in the beginning of a project once your cabinetry selections have been made.
The quality of your custom cabinets is typically the primary cost driver of those materials and can account for 30-35% on the average of the cost. Crossroads Kitchen Finder Tool is a great place to start getting a realistic idea of what premium cabinets will cost; and with Crossroads, ideally cost.
The Kitchen Finder Tool for Full-Access Cabinetry
Making shopping easy for custom kitchen cabinetry on the Web, the new Kitchen Finder tool should be in every Home Improvement Toolkit. This tool simplifies things early on for full-access cabinetry, which is the no-compromise standard in custom kitchen cabinets today with their furniture quality fit and ability to achieve both the architecturally inspired, old world classics with all the time-honored antique qualities; as well as satisfy the sleeker, clean-lined contemporary European motifs. Secondly, the Kitchen Finder allows you to select your CVK price range across wood species and a variety of materials, colors, and custom finishes.
1. CVK Price Range:
Crossroads Virtual Kitchen (CVK) provides a combination of advanced visual graphics of sample kitchens—that contain the average number of cabinets found in today’s average real-world kitchen—to help you visualize what a final kitchen can look like with a reality based pricing unit to help you match desires with budgets. As you select your desired budget range, what you will find is that CVK presents pricing for a premium quality product for your home for significantly less than you can find semi-custom products typical of home centers.
Since, CVK pricing includes ‘standard’ quality features at “no extra cost” that are rarely available or the culprit for demanding significant up charges, added control over costs is dependable as you end up “paying a lot less, for a whole lot more!”
2. Color
What is your favorite color? With literally thousands of options from standard to unique designer choices, the breadth of selection by color can be overwhelming when selecting custom cabinetry that will complement your home’s interior. Don’t be fooled, but instead delighted by the Kitchen Finder’s ability to simplify otherwise complex matters. With the Kitchen Finder Tool, you can view All colors within your budget range, or segment your choice by light, medium, or dark. As you move to the final selection of finish, you are in fact creating your own unique custom combination, all within your budget range and within seconds.
3. Finish
The final step is to select from ALL of Crossroads Custom Finishes or those with physical distress, paint or stain distress, and with or without a popular glaze. While capturing the timeless qualities of fine antique furniture, you can see what each affect has aesthetically and on the budget. Each CCF selection set is designer inspired and employs hand-applied paint and physical distressing techniques that have been developed over the centuries.
Remodeling your kitchen is still one of the best home improvements to do, but once again, before you begin estimating the costs, determine what your desired budget should be. Setting the budget before you begin helps you keep things in perspective and can help you avoid overspending. The Kitchen Finder Tool can help you along this path nicely as you proceed with confidence to browse, select, and price in a user-friendly format across the spectrum of Crossroads fine custom cabinetry—all for your style, space and budget.
Share your thoughts on kitchen remodeling budgeting, advice or experience.
Crossroads Custom Cabinetry redefines the U.S. cabinet industry by making premium quality, custom cabinetry widely available at greatly reduced prices. Webinetry.com is a completely new portal for the way today's American consumer can research, preview, budget, and finalize their cabinet purchasing decisions. With our professional network, home improvement professionals enjoy a flow of free qualified sales leads, member pricing and innovative sales support tools that are designed to achieve an optimal selection process with the homeowner.
• European Style or “Full-Access” Construction
Full-access (sometimes called European or frameless) is the standard for European-style cabinets; resembling a box, they don’t need a face frame as the front edge of the cabinet sidewall functions efficiently as the front of the cabinet itself. Full-access cabinetry is built as a box instead of using a hardwood face frame. Typically, the sides as well as other structural components of full-access cabinetry are made with heavier or thicker materials making the additional front frame unnecessary for its structural soundness.
When the doors and drawers are closed, you can see more of both as they present a ‘full overlay’ in that they cover almost the entire cabinet with tight or unbroken reveals (or gaps) between each door/drawer front. This full-overlay door style conceals hinges totally, and is adjustable for perfect alignment. Recovering the reduction in width and height lost with the presence of a frame with framed cabinetry, the interior width is the same as the opening; hence, the term full-access.
Full-access cabinetry offers a wide range of benefits, both aesthetic and functional. Creating a seamless design scheme from door to door, frameless cabinetry gained a wide acceptance in the United States on the coastal regions and as its benefits continues to be experienced by craftsman and homeowners; its popularity is increasing across the country.
The Advantages of Full-Access Cabinetry
Driven by design tastes and practicality, homeowners and homebuilders are beginning to understand the added advantages of full-access cabinetry and consensus is building that if you're purchasing custom cabinets made from a quality cabinet maker, frameless cabinets are the superior choice.
• Flexibility in Design: With frameless cabinetry, there are no face frames showing on the cabinet making them the preferred choice of designers who demand clean, simple lines; also, they offer a wide selection of features that allow a virtually infinite measure of customization.
• Structural Integrity: Full-access cabinetry is made to last and whether its entire box is made of plywood or industrial grade particleboard, it is structural sound.
• Ease of Installation: There is a dependable and simpler system for the installation of full-access cabinetry because there is a routine to follow that is also flexible. Also, the ends and sides of the cabinets are flush like fine furniture and the hardware is accommodating if you need to adjust the position of the doors for precise alignment.
• Easy and Complete Access: As the name implies, full-access cabinets bypass the frame altogether allowing complete unobstructed access to your cabinet interior. Using the entire box, the cabinet is made more accessible while providing a couple of extra inches of space; in some cases, as much as 10-20% more storage space without sacrificing quality.
• Maximum Space Utilization: Full-access provides more usable space inside a frameless cabinet compared to a same-sized framed product—further enhanced with larger drawers and roll out shelves. And, because the cabinet box itself serves as the frame for a frameless kitchen cabinet, it has fewer braces and reinforcements inside the cabinet, and thus more space inside.
• Suits Both Traditional and Contemporary Designs: With a minimalist, smooth appearance, full-access is the preferred choice of designers who demand maximum space utilization, ergonomics and aesthetics, with the appropriate materials. Working equally well to execute a traditional custom kitchen cabinet look as European, flush doors and hidden hinges create seamless, sophisticated looks achievable only with frameless cabinetry.
As you have discovered, these two cabinet construction types result in completely different sets of capabilities. While full-access cabinetry can achieve both the architecturally inspired, old world classics with all the time-honored antique qualities, it can also satisfy the sleeker, clean-lined contemporary European motifs that framed cabinetry cannot. Full access cabinets are the new standard in Kitchen Cabinets with their furniture quality fit, and as a result, many newer homes have frameless cabinets.
Full-access cabinetry simply presents a classic case of No Compromise.
For the full article on Full Access Cabinetry Comes to America.
Crossroads Custom Cabinetry redefines the U.S. cabinet industry by making premium quality, custom cabinetry widely available at greatly reduced prices. Webinetry.com is a completely new portal for the way today's American consumer can research, preview, budget, and finalize their cabinet purchasing decisions. With our professional network, home improvement professionals enjoy a flow of free qualified sales leads, member pricing and innovative sales support tools that are designed to achieve an optimal selection process with the homeowner.
Last time we talked about the PDCA cycle which stands for Plan, Do, Check, and Act, we realized that in order to expect to achieve customer satisfaction, it will have much more to do with ‘what you do’ than what you say. But, how can you be sure that what you are doing is being appreciated by the customers?
For starters, professionals in the home improvement and kitchen cabinet profession and more so for custom cabinets, we must realize that even if we are sincere in our intentions to satisfy our customers, it does not mean that we are succeeding. This is precisely where in the cycle ‘Check and Act’ come into play.
"Sincerity is not a test of truth. We must not make this mistake: He must be right; he's so sincere. It is possible to be sincerely wrong.” -- Jim Rohn
Checking or measuring for customer satisfaction monitors the delivery of the performance measures set in the planning stage against customer expectations and perceptions. For most businesses including those serving the discriminating custom cabinet consumer, it doesn’t make sense to measure everything, so to confirm that the plan is being carried out properly, critical data and information needs to be captured, analyzed, and reported. Measurement is not a “create it and forget it” management practice, but by aligning what is measured internally with customer needs gives a better understanding of customer intimacy and trust.
The Importance of Surveying Customers
It should be noted that no company can safely assume which drivers are most important to customers “without surveying them as to exactly what drivers they consider important”. In addition to measurements from traditional management inspections, consumer-oriented companies will make great efforts to survey their customers, analyze survey results, and take actions to address areas of dissatisfaction. Doing this constantly, you will be able to focus more on preventive solutions instead of curative ones.
Additionally, surveys allow a numerical score for each question, as well as an overall score, which can be compared year after year to gauge.
Take Action!
Acting for customer satisfaction is focused on transforming the data collected into actionable information. Overall, organizations are collecting mountains of data through more and more applications. Relevant, actionable data identifies whether the company’s satisfaction levels are increasing or decreasing, and which performance areas need improving. Actionable data will empower managers to make changes needed while improving the plan and process.
The new law for satisfying customers consistently simply states that “what gets measured, improves; and what gets measured and reported, improves dramatically". Many tasks are performed over the course of serving the typical customer and many organizations take advantage of various checklists and perhaps a prioritization matrix to help improve customer satisfaction levels. Develop a process for identifying your top 10 ‘problem areas’—the ones that are creating the highest service costs; or causing the greatest amount of customer dissatisfaction—and take action.
It has been said that trust takes a long time to earn, but only a second to lose. Common sense tells us that a company, whose clients are completely happy with the products and services they provide them, is less likely to lose that customer. Saying the words is easy: “The customer is number one”, “The customer pays our salary”, “The customer is always right”. The hard part is to create an organization that lives by these words.
As stated so clearly by author Thomas F. Wallace in his book Customer-Driven Strategy: Winning Through Operational Excellence, “Delivering superior customer satisfaction works. It results in more business. Over the long run, it separates the winners from the losers”.
See you at the top.
Crossroads Custom Cabinetry redefines the U.S. cabinet industry by making premium quality, custom cabinetry widely available at greatly reduced prices. Webinetry.com is a completely new portal for the way today's American consumer can research, preview, budget, and finalize their cabinet purchasing decisions. With our professional network, home improvement professionals enjoy a flow of free qualified sales leads, member pricing and innovative sales support tools that are designed to achieve an optimal selection process with the homeowner.
Dating back to the 1950's and still very relevant today, W. Edwards Deming recommended that to exceed customer requirements, business processes should be placed in a continuous feedback loop so that managers can identify and change the parts of the process that need improvements. Deming created a (rather oversimplified) diagram to illustrate this continuous process, commonly known as the PDCA cycle for Plan, Do, Check, and Act:
In part one of this series on customer satisfaction; we focused on the need to ‘plan’ for customer satisfaction. This first planning step came with a caveat from Deming’s philosophy—perhaps requirement for fine custom cabinets which begins its day with inherent complexity—to not confuse things by taking on cumbersome and/or intricate systems to manage quality.
For students of brand management and in this case customer satisfaction, we enter into the discussion of ‘doing’ with the understanding that the quality of a brand is much more about what we do, than what we say.
Doing or implementing the plans for customer satisfaction goes beyond the narrow view of cost and efficiency and places emphasis on three key components to excellent performance: (a) an individual’s skills, (b) what they accomplish, and (c) how they do their work. In a survey on ‘Why Customers Leave’ conducted by the American Society for Quality, a staggering 68% of customers were lost to indifference on the part of the service provider.
So in addition to continually improving efficiency and job readiness, a successful firm that delivering factory direct kitchen cabinets to home improvement consumers understands that “means matter” and will remember when they hire and train, to be clear about the systems, policies, and methods that are expected from employees to follow.
Typically, people don’t fail in their jobs because they’re technically incompetent; instead, it’s their soft skills and behavioral issues that get in the way.
In conclusion, “Show Rather than Talk about Customer Service” and remember these key points.
- It’s a matter of who you are, what you believe in and how you act when no one’s looking.
- Customer satisfaction is a byproduct of how your customer experiences what you do.
- Experience is shaped by a series of interactions with the company.
- Great customer experiences are built not on words, but actions.
*Key: If your products or services are very similar in features, benefits, and price to the competition, what you do in terms of serving the customer is the (Tie Breaker).
Stay tuned for part 3 as we look at the next step in the PDCA cycle, 'Check' or measuring for customer satisfaction.
Crossroads Custom Cabinetry redefines the U.S. cabinet industry by making premium quality, custom cabinetry widely available at greatly reduced prices. Webinetry.com is a completely new portal for the way today's American consumer can research, preview, budget, and finalize their cabinet purchasing decisions. With our professional network, home improvement professionals enjoy a flow of free qualified sales leads, member pricing and innovative sales support tools that are designed to achieve an optimal selection process with the homeowner.
Every company in business today is involved in supplying services and/or products to people and organizations called “customers.” It is critical for their managers, particularly for those who intend to satisfy the custom cabinetry consumer, to regularly step back and reflect on the fact that the success or failure of their enterprise rests almost exclusively in their hands. Understanding what drives customers to choose a product or service, and why they choose to continue or discontinue their use is vital to a company’s ability to maintain profitability in the long run.
Studies show that customers are usually lost for three primary reasons: bad service, bad products, and competition. The bottom line is that if you don't give your customers some good reasons to stay, your competitors will give them a reason to leave.
Intuit founder Scott Cook once said “if you can’t please your current customers, you don’t deserve any new ones.”
According to Jack Welch, to truly become a customer-centered business, companies will need to be less complex and more agile, so they can respond to or even anticipate customers more quickly. In his unique manner of eloquence, “If you’re not simple, you can’t be fast. And, if you’re not fast, you’re dead.” So, “the million dollar question” is: how can we consistently ensure all modes of customer access contribute value to customers, achieve organizational success and sustainability?
Fine custom kitchen cabinets begins its day with inherent complexity; so first, don’t confuse things by taking on cumbersome and/or intricate systems to manage quality. Again, the key is simplicity and consistency. W. Edwards Deming in the 1950's recommended that to exceed customer requirements, business processes should be placed in a continuous feedback loop so that managers can identify and change the parts of the process that need improvements. Deming created a (rather oversimplified) diagram to illustrate this continuous process, commonly known as the PDCA cycle for Plan, Do, Check, and Act: For this post, we’ll cover the first step in the loop, Plan.
Planning for customer satisfaction takes into account all plans and service features related to meeting expectations. Setting and managing expectations is a critical factor in customer satisfaction and it is a good practice to underpromise and overdeliver. In his book ‘Leadership’, Rudolph Giuliani expresses that in government and businesses, organizations tend to base their projections on best-case scenarios. Inappropriate expectations lend to unclear objectives and disappointing outcomes. He goes on to suggest “that a leader must manage not only results but expectations.”
A manufacturer or service vendor will determine their customer’s requirements and will ensure all managers and frontline workers understand what is expected. "We strive to remember the Platinum Rule, says Michael Baugus, CEO of Crossroads Enterprise, Inc. “It encourages us to treat our customers as they would like to be treated rather than the way we like to be treated (the golden rule). This helps us remember that it is our customer that has the final say on whether quality service is being rendered.” For custom cabinetry, a proven contributing factor to customer satisfaction in the gap between the quality of design vs. quality of delivery.
Quality of Design versus Quality of Delivery
When it comes to custom cabinetry, customer satisfaction has roots in two ideas about quality.
1. Quality can be measured by the gap between customers’ expectations and their perceptions. This gap-based view of quality says that if you beat customers’ expectations you have quality.
2. Quality is about conformance to a standard or specification. In this case, quality is about ensuring that the end deliverable to the customer meets the design; and customer satisfaction is about monitoring the quality of delivery of the product and services.
Since these are production focused roots of customer satisfaction, they are sometimes overlooked by firms. At Crossroads, we realize that a kitchen or cabinet project design can in no way be separated from delivering a quality end product. So during our professional design process, we take great care in really defining what our customers are looking for to satisfy their aesthetic tastes and their functional as well as budgetary requirements.
As a result, when the time comes to deliver the product in its finished state, all value contributors—from our design and customer service staff to our factory personnel or a Crossroads Prescreened Pro™ (CPP) that might have contributed value to a project, everyone works from the initial design-blueprint for success. From this blueprint, everyone proceeds with the additional aim to minimize the chances of production errors which also makes customers happy…and saves money.
With the right cabinet design/manufacturing partner who understands that there is wisdom in the statement “it’s always cheaper to do it right the first time” you can mitigate against a potential problem area for customer satisfaction or having to pass on higher service costs.
The Bottom Line
The combined benefits from reduced production errors and satisfied customers far outweigh any costs associated with achieving quality for customers desiring fine custom cabinetry; hence,
Quality is Free!
Stay tuned for part 2 as we look at the next step in the PDCA cycle, 'Do' and the value in Customer Satisfaction Surveys.
Crossroads Custom Cabinetry redefines the U.S. cabinet industry by making premium quality, custom cabinetry widely available at greatly reduced prices. Webinetry.com is a completely new portal for the way today's American consumer can research, preview, budget, and finalize their cabinet purchasing decisions. With our professional network, home improvement professionals enjoy a flow of free qualified sales leads, member pricing and innovative sales support tools that are designed to achieve an optimal selection process with the homeowner.
In the world of custom cabinetry, what is best for me? Face Frame or Full Access?
In the first post of this series, I stressed that, although it is helpful to have an aspiring vision of what you’re looking for in a design, you should not select custom cabinets merely on their looks, but also on the quality of construction. In this edition of ‘Full-Access European Cabinetry Comes to America’, we continue the discussion by diving into the first of the two types of cabinet construction and the type that most here in the U.S. are familiar with,
American Style or “Framed” Construction.
Face frame cabinets use solid wood joinery at the front of the cabinet to form, as the name suggests, a face frame around the front of the cabinet while frameless cabinets don't. You can usually tell the difference between face fame cabinetry and full access cabinetry ‘which I will feature in the next and final post of this series’ by the way the doors and drawers fit against the front.
With the framed cabinet image generously provided by NKBA Image Gallery, you see a mixture of frame and door/drawer front, with wide reveals (or gaps) between each door/drawer front. This is called a frame-overlay style. When the doors of the cabinet are closed you can still see the cabinet face frames around the doors and drawer fronts and you can often see the hinges as well.
Framed cabinetry is most likely the one you will feel familiar with as it has been the standard style in America for several decades. This is due to the fact that framed cabinetry was made widely available by big manufacturers who generally produce face frame cabinets and distribute in various places to buy cabinetry including big-box home centers.
Made typically with a plywood or particle board box that is held together by a hardwood frame attached to the front, framed cabinetry is identified by the spaces between the doors and drawers where the frame is visible.
The interior of the cabinet is wider on both sides than the cabinet opening. The face frame usually extends into the opening about 3/4" or more. Even though the prevalence of full-access cabinetry is increasingly featured in style and design publications, framed cabinets are still the choice-of-comfort in the United States representing “about two-thirds” of cabinet purchases.
Coming next, learn why European Full-Access Cabinetry is the ‘air-inevitable’ to becoming the new standard for fine kitchen cabinetry construction in both old world traditional classics as well as the sleeker, clean-lined contemporary kitchen cabinets.
I look forward to your comments and questions.
Crossroads Custom Cabinetry redefines the U.S. cabinet industry by making premium quality, custom cabinetry widely available at greatly reduced prices. Webinetry.com is a completely new portal for the way today's American consumer can research, preview, budget, and finalize their cabinet purchasing decisions. With our professional network, home improvement professionals enjoy a flow of free qualified sales leads, member pricing and innovative sales support tools that are designed to achieve an optimal selection process with the homeowner.
In the world of custom cabinetry, what is best for me? Face Frame or Full Access?
For those that travel abroad, it is not unlikely to hear from Europeans that Europe has increasingly become more like the U.S. and to hear from those here in the U.S. that America is more and more like Europe. This phenomenon is called convergence and it is certainly not limited to Europe and the U.S. as it is gaining momentum worldwide ever since the onset of globalization; and its pace is expected to only quicken by technological advances and the Internet.
World to Home
Although this converging trend towards a common center called the global marketplace can sometimes create disagreement politically or economically; for our lives and times, lived out daily in our kitchens, it can only add some spice when we can take advantage of the best of all worlds with more choices in custom cabinetry in terms of style, function, and affordability—all in the spirit of better suiting all of our unique lifestyle needs and preferences as never before.
Understanding the influences that contribute to the growing diversity in the tastes of today’s consumer is very important for makers of custom kitchen cabinets who are intent on satisfying their customer's diverse set of preferences. When it comes to the kitchen cabinets and bathroom cabinets that we choose for our homes, many of Crossroads customers begin by requesting a free kitchen design in order to visualize their appearance which is driven by all of our experiences; maybe you have traveled a lot, grew up in the country or perhaps a big city and you begin to imagine how a particular style like contemporary or traditional, type of wood, stain or paint will work with your vision.
Once you have an aspiring vision of what you’re looking for in a design, you should not select cabinets merely on their looks, but also on the quality of construction. It is important to first get acquainted with the various classifications of cabinetry; which include stock, ready-to-assemble (RTA), semi-custom, fully custom, and Crossroads Custom Cabinetry™.
You can see how easy it might be to get overwhelmed by all of these terms. So, in this three part series of posts, we will simplify it all by clarifying the two types of cabinet construction, American traditional face frame or framed cabinet, and what is increasingly being considered as the vanguard in modern manufacturing efficiency, full-access cabinetry.
In the end, you will not only be informed on the distinct differences inherent in both construction types, but it will become clear which one is best for you.
I look forward to your comments and questions..
Crossroads Custom Cabinetry redefines the U.S. cabinet industry by making premium quality, custom cabinetry widely available at greatly reduced prices. Webinetry.com is a completely new portal for the way today's American consumer can research, preview, budget, and finalize their cabinet purchasing decisions. With our professional network, home improvement professionals enjoy a flow of free qualified sales leads, member pricing and innovative sales support tools that are designed to achieve an optimal selection process with the homeowner.
Imagine an innovative new business model that actually empowers Home Improvement Professionals to have access to fine, handcrafted cabinetry-factory direct. Now..
• Imagine receiving free pre-qualified leads from homeowners that have shown an interest in remodeling thier kitchen.
• Imagine becoming the price setter instead of the price taker.
• Imagine having control over your product selections and project from beginning to end.
• Imagine cabinets that will work with your vision.
Preparing for the Upturn
Perhaps just over the horizon, we’re beginning to see that there are some indicators of a budding recovery as forward looking markets have already factored in the specific drivers. Perhaps, there may still be unforeseen challenges that will prolong the recovery. Regardless, adapting to new ways of achieving value creation, leveraging competitive advantage, and generating wealth is not an option for those looking to not simply survive, but thrive in the here and now, and beyond.
At Crossroads, we are aware that we are experiencing more than just an economic slowdown and that technology, globalization, and commoditization are transforming the world. Taking our own advice to prepare for the upturn, we realized early on that helping home improvement professionals access factory direct kitchen cabinets was half of a potentially remarkable success equation. Revising our mission to bring about the other half, we sought to help home improvement professionals adapt to these challenges and prepare for the future with a more intelligent and agile business model--fueled by a powerful lead generation engine.
Crossroads Professional Network (CPN)
This business model is aptly named Crossroads Professional Network (CPN) and I invite you to stay tuned each month to learn more about the benefits of becoming a CPN Member, success stories, showrooms of the future, how to get involved, etc. As we explore the CPN Program in detail, you will discover a program that is simply Loaded with Benefits such as”:
• Factory-direct access to fine custom cabinets.
• Dealership privileges without the costly overhead.
• Unlimited use of Crossroads factory-direct showrooms.
• 20-20 design support by a Crossroads Cabinetry Specialist.
• Participation in qualified lead sharing program.
• The ability to drive new business opportunities through Webinetry.com.
• Compact Tower and Mobile Showroom systems for reseller member use.
At the heart of the CPN Program, is a winning customer value proposition to make luxury affordable and within reach of the average citizen. Empowered by CPN, success is likely for those who execute the fundamentals as inspired and defined by their customers’ needs and desires, consistently and extraordinarily well.
I invite you to explore Crossroads Professional Network (CPN) or call to set up a visit to our factory showroom today.
Crossroads Custom Cabinetry redefines the U.S. cabinet industry by making premium quality, custom cabinetry widely available at greatly reduced prices. Webinetry.com is a completely new portal for the way today's American consumer can research, preview, budget, and finalize their cabinet purchasing decisions. With our professional network, home improvement professionals enjoy a flow of free qualified sales leads, member pricing and innovative sales support tools that are designed to achieve an optimal selection process with the homeowner.
Many of the posts that I write for HIP_ONE are geared toward helping home improvement professionals to empower their businesses by getting the online edge to sell custom kitchen cabinets. In my previous post, I focused on positioning your brand for Online Leadership. We discovered that the most important attribute of any aspiring brand leader is that they build their brand on truth. We hear about it in many forms, “truth in advertising”, “keeping your brand promises or under promise and over deliver”, “transparency”, etc.
All of these forms heavily rely on the all-valuable byproduct of building on truth which is a having a foundation of trust.
Trust confirms that the customer and the brand are worth focusing on.
For a home improvement professional such as an architect, builder, designer, remodeler, or contractor, or anyone selling custom cabinets on the web, we could focus on the interesting flow on effects of a breakdown of trust, somewhat of a domino effect in the negative direction; but instead, let’s focus on the bottom line benefits of having a culture of trust. This focus begins with the realization that the strength of trust on the outside is directly related to trust levels on the inside of your company.
Goal --> Brand on the inside is as strong as the brand on the outside.
- Firms with high trust levels are 5X more efficient in producing results.
- Corporations on Fortune’s Most Admired Companies list increased stock appreciation 50% over their peers after instituting trust development employee measures.
- The share performance of companies with high employee trust levels outperforms companies with low trust levels by 186%. Advertising Age, citing Watson Wyatt Study.
Why is trust so important? Trust is the glue that holds the culture together. Trust isn’t something that happens or doesn’t happen. It is the result of consistent and deliberate intentions and actions that begin with the understanding that:
1. Leadership must be by example: Everyone in the company needs good role models.
2. Trust is the highest form of human motivation, especially when it comes to business.
3. There are proven models for deliberately and consciously creating a climate of trust.
With all of these values understood and fully mobilized, a home improvement firm can progress. The cultural progression directly contributes to exceeding revenue goals. This graph demonstrates the balance between the culture and sales. 
This graph may look complicated, so as you look to deliberately build a culture of trust for your organization, remember to keep it simple as with the parable of The fox and the hedgehog: As the parable goes, the fox knows many things, while the hedgehog knows one big thing. Despite the cunning of the fox, the hedgehog always wins.
Why? The hedgehog has simplified the complex world around him into a single, organizing idea that unifies and guides his life. For a company, the key attributes of the hedgehog are:
Clarity: Everyone gets it.
Coherence: It’s all connected.
Control: Someone’s driving it.
In conclusion, the difference you make regarding building a culture of trust is limited only be the indifference you show toward it. Secondly,regardless of the scope and breadth of the trust-building program, the commitment and energy behind the program will be the true success factors.
Question for all of us is, do we deliver on our promises: functionally and emotionally?
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Crossroads Custom Cabinetry redefines the U.S. cabinet industry by making premium quality, custom cabinetry widely available at greatly reduced prices. Webinetry.com is a completely new portal for the way today's American consumer can research, preview, budget, and finalize their cabinet purchasing decisions. With our professional network, home improvement professionals enjoy a flow of free qualified sales leads, member pricing and innovative sales support tools that are designed to achieve an optimal selection process with the homeowner.