Selling when the decision-maker lives in another city

The parents like the kitchen, and then comes the line many Bihar showrooms know: they will ask their son or daughter first. In many families the people at your counter are not the ones who decide. The parents visit; a child in Bengaluru or Gurugram checks prices on a phone and pays. You win that sale with one summary written for that child. It holds what the parents chose, one all-in total, three photographs, and the name and number of a person who will answer. Keep it short enough to read between meetings, and plain enough to forward.

How do you know someone else is deciding?

The signs are at the counter. A parent photographs the price tag. Someone says "beta ya beti se baat karke batate hain". Somebody makes a video call from the showroom floor and turns the phone towards the display. A family that came in for a kitchen, a two-wheeler or a solar inverter asks for "a quotation for my son" or "for my daughter".

Ask once, and ask about the details, not the money. Then follow one rule: the parents introduce the child, and you never contact the child without their say-so. If they tell you the decision is theirs, believe them. Sending the summary to the child anyway tells them you think they cannot decide, and they will be right to be offended.

What the child asks that the parents did not

The parents asked about colour, about how long the shop has been on that road, and whether the fitter is someone they can let into the house. They trusted what they saw.

The child cannot see anything. They want one total with GST, delivery and fitting inside it, because they are about to compare it with a figure on a national brand's website. They want the brand and model so they can search it. They want the warranty and who honours it in Patna. Above all they want to know who to ring when something goes wrong after they have gone back to work, because the parents will call them first. Quietly, they may also worry that the parents were sold something they did not need.

Answer all of that before they ask, in the one message.

The summary, written to be forwarded

Here is the layout for a modular kitchen showroom. Change the lines for your trade; keep the order. It is shown in English here. Write yours in plain Hindi if the parents will read it too, as writing for Bhojpuri, Maithili and Magahi speakers explains.

Namaste. This is Ravi Kumar from (shop name), Boring Road, Patna. Your parents visited today and chose the L-shaped kitchen in the photos below.

What they chose: L-shaped kitchen, 10 ft by 8 ft, BWP plywood, matt laminate shutters in the grey your mother picked, soft-close hinges, one tall pantry unit.

Total: ₹3,20,000, including GST, delivery and fitting. Not included: the granite top, the sink and new electrical points.

Photos: a fitted kitchen in our showroom, the shutter colour, and the layout drawing with measurements.

Next step: our fitter measures the site on a day your father chooses. This price holds until (date).

Questions: call or WhatsApp me, Ravi, on (number). Evening video call if you book it.

The total and names are invented. Three photographs, not thirty. One total, not a sheet of line items. What is left out of the price is named, because that is exactly what the website's lower figure leaves out too. The detailed quotation goes as a second message, for whoever wants it.

For example: the quotation nobody could open

This is an invented case. A Patna kitchen showroom sent a father an eleven-page PDF quotation full of product codes. Hinges, handles and baskets sat on separate lines, with no total until the last page. The father forwarded it to a daughter in Hyderabad. She opened it on her phone during work, gave up looking for a total, and found a "starting from" price on a national brand's site that looked far lower. She told her father to wait. The showroom only found out when the father stopped answering calls.

On the next family, the showroom sent the layout above first, as plain text with the total in the third line. The PDF followed as a second message. Ravi's name was in the message, so when the daughter rang at nine at night she knew who to ask for. A twenty-minute video call that Sunday, walking her round the display kitchen, did most of the rest. The total had not changed; it could now be seen. The family still took six weeks to decide and took the cheaper shutter finish.

When the child rings back

The call comes at night or on a Sunday, because that is when the child is free. The person named in the summary picks up, or calls back first thing the next morning. Nobody else should take that call cold.

Whatever the child is told must match what the parents were told, so write the price, the inclusions and any discount in the enquiry record on the day of the visit. If you have room to move on price, give it to the family openly and send a new summary to everyone. A quiet extra discount for one person leaves two prices inside one family, and the parents will hear about it.

This is where a written WhatsApp sales process pays for itself: who answers which number, what gets recorded, and when the next message goes.

When not to bother

Skip all of this for everyday sales. A family buying a mixer grinder does not need a summary for the child. Skip it when the child lives in the same city; ask them to come in. And if the family tells you an uncle or an elder sibling decides, write the summary for that person instead. The decision-maker in another city is one of the three problems on our Bihar page. For a hospital the child wants different things, covered in why families go to Delhi or Vellore instead of Patna.

Read your own quotation on a phone

Open the quotation your counter sent most recently, on a phone, and look for the total. Is it on the first screen? Someone between meetings will not scroll further, so if it is not there, rewrite the layout before the next family walks in. If you want the summary built into how your team quotes and follows up, lead response and follow-up is the related service, and you can tell us what you need.