With fall and winter approaching, your chimney and hearth sales business is gearing up for the busier season. With a little proactive planning, solid employee training, and the right tools on your side, you can make the most of your fall and winter chimney and hearth sales.

Below, we’ve compiled seven essential questions to train employees to ask customers when helping them choose the best chimney and hearth solution for their home, followed by four ways that RB software can help you streamline your business for a smooth busy season.

How important is heat to your customer? Some chimney and hearth setups are primarily decorative while others provide significant warmth combined with aesthetics.

Price will always be important. Offering solutions at a variety of price points can help you improve chimney and hearth sales by making sure there is something available for every type of customer.

It might be simple and affordable to upgrade to something that suits their needs better.

Fuel prices can vary region to region. Help your customer choose the best options for them factoring in local fuel availability and cost. Wood burning stoves may be perfect for those with wooded acreage — otherwise, wood pellet burning solutions may be preferable.

This will help them determine the best size solution for their needs.

Customers may not realize that many wood stoves, for example, can be installed in a variety of places in the home thanks to modern venting. Find out if they’re interested in creating an outdoor living room.

Some wood stoves can work during power outages, when heat is needed the most.

RB chimney and hearth sales software includes point of sale features like sales tools, customer profiles, and accounts receivable. The sales features especially help streamline the checkout process to make it more convenient for the customer. Employees can use barcode scanners for sales, price checks, returns, and exchanges. They can also build quotes, convert sales leads, and sell kits, layaways, special orders, service orders, and big ticket items through the sales order section. The software also allows you to print a picking ticket and send service appointments, deliveries and onsite sales calls directly to the Scheduler from the sales orders with ease.

With RB’s inventory tracking and optimization tools, you can automate customer equipment profiles and ordering methods, track special orders and backorders to provide customers with up-to-the-minute updates, track warranties, manage multiple locations and warehouses, and access sales tools to increase sales.

RB’s CRM includes tools for customer loyalty tracking, so you can make business decisions based on facts instead of speculation. The software lets you track important customer information (like purchase history) to determine which prospects are at risk and may benefit from a different marketing or advertising strategy. You can also easily follow up with customers to strengthen relationships and track the sales process.

With RB’s service and scheduling optimization features, you can easily and efficiently track customers, dispatches, billings, inventory, service history, technicians and more. Use the drag and drop scheduler to easily schedule jobs or appointments and make modifications for unlimited users from multiple locations, all at the same time. You can also schedule a customer’s preferred service person on their preferred day of the week to maintain optimal customer satisfaction and loyalty. When you create your services for the week, the software automatically:

• Places all appointments on the schedule
• Creates all necessary sales orders or accounts receivable invoices
• Creates all necessary in-field service forms and checklists
• Informs you of any schedule conflicts

This time just before the busy season begins is the ideal time to encourage more extensive use of RB’s chimney and hearth sales software, which is designed to help you better control your business. Enforcing the use of your company’s software is vital.

Remember, you only have a short time before business picks up, so prioritize your company’s needs and take action to help your business run smoothly when sales ramp up this fall and winter. Using chimney and hearth sales software can help specialty retailers ensure a steady stream of hearth-related activities all year long. Don’t wait — now is the time to ensure year-round revenue streams from service work and more.