The Safest Blinds Around: So, you want to sell more Motorised Blinds?

Our Technical Manager, Antoni, shares his top tips on what to consider when selling motorised blinds

You are probably well aware of the motorised window blind revolution, and the various benefits it brings. The most obvious benefit to customers is peace of mind in terms of child safety. Motorising your blinds virtually eliminates hazardous control cords and chains. I say “virtually” because there are integral cords for example in the likes of pleated, roman and venetian blinds, which are core to their function.

There are various other benefits apart from child safety, with one of the main benefits to motorising your window blinds being the ease of use and the power of control at your fingertips. Many other practical reasons can be:

• Your customer plans to automate their home.
• To be incorporated into a security scheme (part of home automation).
• Help the elderly and infirm to operate their blinds safely.
• Motorisation is becoming more affordable.
• Relatively easy to install especially with the introduction of fully integrated motor systems.
• Impressing friends and neighbours. Let’s be honest here, they are pretty cool!

Considerations for installing motorised blinds

Ok, so your customer has decided to go down the motorisation route following some expert upselling. Simply sticking a motor into a window blind sounds easy enough, right? Relatively speaking that is probably the easiest part for you because we, the window blind manufacturer, take care of it. The part where it becomes a little more complicated (this is the bit you have to do) is the installation and programming. With a little practice, preparation and planning this can be less stressful than you think.

The two biggest considerations after your customer has selected what type of blind they would like are:

• Power Requirements:
  • Mains motors – Do I need an electrician to wire in mains sockets and control wiring?
  • Low voltage Motors – What are the wiring distances. Placement of power supply units and radio receiver units?
  • Battery Motors – For external battery pack systems, is there enough room to fit the battery tube close to the blind installation? Will there be sufficient access to the charge port on integrated blind motors?

• Controlling the Blinds:
  • Mains motors – Things your customer needs to tell you: Are the blinds to be operated from hard wired wall switches (again an electrician required) or remote radio handsets?
  • Are the blinds to be individually operated or in multiple blind groups? This determines the number of handsets/channels and receivers in the case in the case of some low voltage motors.

It’s a good idea to familiarise yourself with the motorisation products available. This I think is key to supplying a good purchasing experience for your customer and enabling you to easily sell the benefits of motorisation. We recommend making sure that you and your staff are familiar with everything from the performance specification of the motor and the blind operating characteristics, to the installation requirements.

The vast majority of this information is readily available in the Technical Info section of our Trade Partner Portal and section 9 of the Stevens Scotland Product Selector & Trade Price List.  However, if you still have any questions about motorisation, then there’s always the Stevens Sales team and I at the other end of the phone as a back-up. Better still, why not speak to your Stevens Area Sales Manager about organising a visit to our showroom for some solid hands on training, I’ll be more than happy to host you and your team for such a session.

There are so many considerations and head scratching moments involved in supplying and installing motorised window blinds. I’m sure as you upsell more and more to motorisation, your knowledge and confidence will grow, as will your hair as the head scratching reduces – something that many of us in the trade are concerned with just as much as motorising blinds.