Accessibility: Use every square foot

A. Your showroom is one of the strongest tools you have to impact your customers. First, understand that accessibility is not an additional product category. It is comprehensive. You always find salsa next to the chips. The point is: You should be looking at the total sales you could add to each transaction, even if you have to condense the variety of your merchandise.

One of the most common ways to quantify the performance of your selling space is using sales per square foot (total net sales dollars/square feet of selling space). Think about the products that are already taking up the selling space and consider the increase of total net sales possible. Here's how I look at this: You can't display every chair you offer, and the number of chairs is equivalent to the number of unique customer transactions you'll need. If you have five chairs on the floor, you need multiple customers to purchase a chair to provide adequate return for that space you've allocated.

Each customer that purchases a mobility device will absolutely need to consider how “accessible” their environment is and whether the mobility equipment they've just purchased can even get through the front door. Instead of having the variety of brand lines on the floor and positioning yourself as another reseller, position yourself as the expert and select the product lines that identify with your target audience. Prop the chairs on top of a ramp and platform, and set up a grab-bar rail for demonstration. Given the small amount of additional floor space it may require, the overall increase of sales per square foot will be a dramatic jump.

Megan Schmit is a marketing associate with EZ-Access. She can be reached at mschmit@ezaccess.com or 253-249-1108 ext. 2430.