Adding Technology to Your Counter

The key with counters is giving a reason for people to come to you vs. someone else, especially since competing distributors like to congregate geographically and that there are usually more than a few places (i.e. Home Depot and Lowes) that carry similar “stuff”, especially when the contractor needs a few extra pieces.

While promotions can work and reinforcing the message of availability helps, counter traffic is down for many. And increased gas prices get contractors thinking of stopping off at the location closest to them.

But what could you add to get contractors to want to come to you?  How about a better environment and/or workplaces?

A couple of weeks ago my daughter and I flew to New York for a college interview for her.  We landed in JFK’s Delta Terminal 3.  She say what she said were iPads in the gate area.  I told her “doubt it” and thought they were dummy terminals.  After all, why would an airport invest that amount of money and there were no signs saying that they were donated by Apple.

Since this is a waiting room and counters have a tendency to make customers wait, could there be an electrical distribution application here (why do I think about these things on the weekend?!)

Consider, if you had iPads at your counter you could

• Load them with electrical apps
• Load them with manufacturer apps
• Develop an app that listed your top 50-100 counter-ordered SKUs so that they could use the iPad as an ordering device and then have someone pick the orders while they are waiting at the counter
• and even offer some “entertainment” or “surfing” (news / sports) capabilities.