Saturday we had the pleasure of welcoming returning clients in our showroom - we, like every business no doubt, love returning clients - specially when you sell high value goods like wooden flooring.
We installed a natural wooden floor for them 6 years ago - they were one of our first Wood You Like clients so we remembered many details - but one year later they had sold-up and moved to another town in Kent. They were kept in the picture of our business through our monthly newsletter and when the time came to finally get rid of the existing carpet in their "new" home they didn't go anywhere else but back to Charing.
In our showroom we display many large sample boards because wood comes in plenty of options in species, finishes, colours and floor-types (from veneer to design parquet). It happens frequently the floor area is covered with 3 to even 7 large sample boards so all can show off their own characteristics perfectly. Our main manufacturer/supplier provides us with product information leaflets, but a printed sample doesn't always give the right impression in regards of the true colour. So seeing a "live" large sample works best, specially when our prospect/client is in dubio of what would suit his/her design style best.
In our cupboard we keep a stack of small off-cuts from floors installed, but there is a small problem with this: it only shows part of all the characteristics a floor can have. It is in fact almost an "art" to make a correct sample board - it should really display most of the things you will find in the whole floor, warts and all! (Or in this case: knots, filler and variation in colours).
Our returning clients couldn't really make up their minds on the three most preferred floors. Did we have samples of all three so they could compare the colours etc with their existing furniture and design. I came up with a better idea, or so I hoped.
Why didn't I take high resolution pictures of the sample boards and email them together with our written specified quote on all three floor types? That idea was appreciated and after they took their farewells I took to work - only to discover the battery of our camera was empty! Waiting for the re-charge to complete I pondered on the format I would email the images - I had to make sure the images were named correctly and all of a sudden I realised the best way to do this - including adding important information - was to create a document using ScreenSteps.
So I took the overview picture and all individual close-ups of the sample boards, downloaded them into my pc and viewed them in the standard viewer (large). Normally I would crop and reduce seize of the "raw" images to make the file smaller - especially when you do not know if the prospect can receive large files without problems or might have problems opening the format in which I turn the images. But almost everyone can open a PDF file without any problems!
Using the CapturePalette of ScreenSteps Desktop very quickly all four images were automagically transferred into one document where I only needed to write the extra information and could now also use the annotation option to number the boards to correspond with the specific information.
Floor Options
When this was done I exported the document as PDF file, attached it to my email and away it was! (If you're interested you can download/view it here to see exactly how effective it shows the sample boards in their full glory.)
In 5 minutes time I had created an instant, personal and relevant product information leaflet, showing our clients exactly what they had seen in our showroom to assist in their decision making.
Their reply after receiving the quotations and the personal leaflet:
"Thank you that is really helpful as we could put them against the floor boards in the hall, and our decor in the room to get some idea what they will look like."
Our next follow up is an on-site survey to check measurements and discuss further installation matters.
This must be the 7th possibility I can use ScreenSteps Desktop for (one of the other possibilities is writing this article in it and uploading it automagically into my blog), such a multifunctional simple program. It makes effective and relevant communication with our prospects and clients so much easier and quicker without compromising on quality.
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