I don't post often, but I thought that this might make for an interesting thread...
I am in Tampa Tue-Thu of every week running a small standby power company. (I own 20% and manage the salesmen, marketing, insurance, training logistics, certifications, new hire onboarding, generator stand manufacturing, and whatever else I can help with). I fly back and forth from Cincinnati every week.... But not this week, obviously, and maybe not for awhile...
Despite all of this disruption, Monday-Saturday my two salesmen took deposits on nine (9) deals. These are not small purchases. These are $10k-$25K "home improvement" purchases which on any given week average about $13k for each deal... We do about 10 deals per week or so during "normal" times.
We normally close our deals about two to seven months after our initial contact with the customer. These people see/hear our ad or meet us at a home show, schedule an In Home Consultation, get another bid or two, and then after several phone touches inform us that they are ready to move forward.
I'll be blunt. Our demographic is solidly white, MARRIED, 50 plus and retired or semi retired. There of course are outliers, but these are the people who are willing to pay $10K-$15K to have air conditioning during power outages. (our interviews tell us that air conditioning during humid Florida summers is more important than anything else, including refrigerators... powering Well pumps for properties not on city water also ranks higher than refrigerators...)
Other than food runs to the local Domino's, and Kroger, I haven't gone anywhere since I landed at CVG Sunday Night. My family is pretty much on lockdown. My 997S is overdue for the annual oil change and I haven't even scheduled that.
So I've been a hermit all week, but our customer demographic in Florida isn't phased AT ALL . I talk to several callers each day and not one single person has mentioned apprehension about meeting with my sales guys or about having an installation crew at their house.
Maybe next week will be different.
DL