Boyd: Sleep Metrics Program Changes Bedding Game

David Perry – Furniture Today – 10/06/16

ST. LOUIS — Boyd Specialty Sleep’s new Sleep Metrics proprietary diagnostic selling program, now being licensed to retailers around the country, uses science to help consumers find the mattress that is just right for them, company officials said.

The program has proven its worth in extensive retail tests, giving sales tickets a significant boost and also adding more accessory sales, the officials added.

The new program is helping retailers change the traditionally sale-oriented shopping experience in mattress stores into one that helps the consumer find a bed tailored to meet his or her needs, the company said. Officials say the benefits the program provides to its retailers include increased mattress sales, higher average tickets, increased accessory sales and decreased returns.

“On the consumer side,” said Denny Boyd, president of Boyd Specialty Sleep, “Sleep Metrics reduces shoppers’ confusion and anxiety, narrows the selection process from a bewildering number of options to the correct number of far fewer options, boosts confidence to invest in a higher quality product and diminishes buyer’s remorse because the consumer trusts the selection system.”

In the traditional model, consumers experience retail ads, and then as many as 75% go to the store’s website to determine if that dealer has the products or services worthy of a visit, he noted.

“But when a retailer promotes Sleep Metrics using radio, TV, newspaper and digital advertising,” Boyd said, “rather than just promoting another mattress sale, it not only drives traffic to its website, but also enables the consumer to create a Sleep Metrics profile (with a Comfort Index from one to four) and obtain a printout of recommended products based on height, weight, sex, sleep position and pain indices.”

The consumer is then offered a free pillow if he brings his Sleep Metrics results into the store. In reviewing the profile, the retail sales associate has the answers to key questions that point to the right products for that customer, a process that saves time and generates confidence that the shopper is buying the correct sleep system, Boyd said.

“The conversion rate of customers that bring their results to the store is about 90%,” Boyd said. “We’ve repeatedly tested this advertising/selling/buying motivational cycle at multiple The Bedroom Store locations throughout the St. Louis area, and it’s proven itself over and over again.”

Consumers spend more when they believe they’re buying the right product and they place more trust in the science behind a computer-based selection system to objectively determine their needs than they do in a salesperson, according to Boyd.

He said the Sleep Metrics program increases accessory sales because the selection system leads shoppers to additional products they need and want. “Our objective is to provide retailers with a trusted sales tool they can advertise and promote, which will move customers to their web sites and then into their stores,” Boyd said.

The company says its offering of the Sleep Metrics program to any retailers around the country — whether they sell Boyd-branded products or not — may be an industry first.

The company believes it is the first industry producer to offer its own proprietary, computer-based selling process for use with any mattress brand and for any store or sales platform. “To our knowledge, no other company has licensed its own mattress selection technology in this manner,” Boyd said.