Best Practices - March 2008

By Sonya Jennings

Paul Johnson is passionate about the flooring business and that has translated into a strong, successful business with three retail locations of Carpet One Floor & Home in and around the Tulsa, Oklahoma area. He attributes a large part of his success to taking every opportunity to learn more. “Of all the choices out there,” Johnson says, “if you have chosen flooring as a career, learn all that you can. To be successful, you must do everything in your power to make yourself and your employees the experts.”

Carpet is the company’s largest category, representing approximately 60% of the business. All hard surface products combined make up about 35%, with area rugs accounting for 5% of total sales. Laminate, wood, ceramic and vinyl are all about equal in sales.

Becoming an expert is an ongoing process for Johnson. He sees it as a never-ending task. He does this by staying closely connected to his vendors, suppliers, and business software provider. He also sees great value in participating in the industry through organizations such as World Floor Covering Association and Carpet One Floor & Home. Their events are prime sources of industry information and advice.

To engage in the industry and stay current on product information, Johnson’s team also attends meetings set up by suppliers and vendors. If there is a new product, he wants to know everything about it. He sees it as critical to take advantage of any opportunity to learn something that can help his customers. “When your customer walks through your door, it is ‘game on,’ ” Johnson says. “You need to be more educated about her options than anyone else around.” He says customers in mega-retailers won’t find anyone like Johnson or any member of his team. “We create added value by knowing a lot more…we are the experts.”

On the daily operations side, using the resources provided by RFMS, the company’s software vendor, keeps the business up to date on the latest technology. Not only does RFMS come to the stores every quarter, employees are sent to RFMS training annually to learn new ways to use the system. “Here you have this software that can do so many things, and we are always learning new ways to enhance our business with this incredible tool.” The company uses RFMS to track orders and inventory. They also use the sales tracking functions to track sales on a weekly basis. In addition, they track individual sales and margin for each ticket.

Johnson’s advertising methods include TV, radio, and inserts for circulars. His team tracks the effectiveness of advertising in all three stores. Basically, each sales professional uses a sheet that lists the number of customers who have entered the store for the day. A member of the team asks each customer what brought them in and notes this on the sheet.

Having the best-trained employees makes all of the difference to Johnson. All new employees go through an intense online training course, and every new sales person is sent to a one-week training program. Throughout the year, there are at least four other training seminars that all of his employees attend. When asked why he spends so much time and money on training his employees when they always have the option of leaving, he responds, “I would rather spend time and money to train someone and have them leave than to have someone stay for years and years who has not been given the tools and knowledge to do their job at a very high level.”

For Johnson, continuously educating himself and his staff gives his company the leg up it needs to make it in a very competitive business environment.

“To be a professional, you have to do the work it takes to be an expert,” he says. “A football team has practice after practice before a big game, and we too must practice by learning everything we possibly can before our customer walks through our door.”