The earliest recorded use of pillows dates back to ancient Mesopotamia -- around 7,000 BC. Back then, pillows were a status symbol, and the more pillows you owned, the more affluent you were.

A lot has changed about pillows since those times, but two things have stayed the same:

Luckily, today, there are more ways than ever to help sleepy customers find the right pillow for the job. And you have an opportunity to sell multiple pillows to increase your sales ticket, because it’s not just the affluent who use multiple pillows anymore.

Here’s what 10 mattress industry experts had to say about selling more pillows:

If you want to get ripped, invest in your sleep.

Lifting heavy weights damages muscle tissue and tears down complex chains of proteins housed within muscles. All this havoc causes inflammation, which is a natural response—at that point a chemical messenger system tells your brain to deal with the damage.

When those chemicals head in for the rehab, it’s like your body turns into an episode of HGTV's Fixer to Fabulous. A crew races in to remove all the damaged cells and tissue and begins the repair process. At the end of the show, during the big reveal, the homeowner pulls up and realizes the builders knocked out a wall to make the house bigger.

Cook some spaghetti, shove it into a thin rectangular container and place it in the refrigerator overnight. Dump the pasta onto the countertop. 

What you’ll be looking at resembles Labyrinth, a mattress material Enkev Natural Fibres created that’s been nominated for a 2021 Green Products Award. 

Today’s consumers research and shop online before they head into your store. The evil side of the internet is filled with trolls and misinformation. This series is your how-to guide for addressing mattress misnomers that people might ask you about after they’ve sifted through the worldwide web.

A Google search for “memory foam sleeps hot” produces 52 million results. It’s no secret that the dense material has a tendency to retain heat. Many consumers have suffered hot sleep on a foam mattress or, when researching online, they’re finding information telling them to watch out for beds that make you boil. 

On the hit TV show Friends, there’s a well-known scene where Rachel, Ross, and Chandler try to carry a sofa up a flight of stairs and Ross keeps screaming “PIVOT, PIVOT, PIVOT!” when they try to round a corner.

In the end, the frustrated trio ends up getting the sofa stuck in the stairwell, and scenarios like this are one reason king-size box springs really don’t exist. But having to buy two twin XL box springs or split adjustables doesn’t always sit well with consumers, so independent sleep products manufacturer Southerland added a one-piece king adjustable power bed base to its American Adjustables product collection.

She unties her pink sweater exposing a mass of cleavage, her breasts erupting, barely held in by a lacy black bra and buttons that are about to burst.

Another bite of the burger and she’s on her back, disconnecting the fabric cord clipped to her panties.

Needing a drink, she drapes herself across the front seat as she sucks on a red straw. Cooled off, she retreats into the back seat for another lip-biting session with her favorite hot burger.

No, I’m not watching porn. It’s an accurate description of a Carl's Jr commercial promoting their Southwest Patty Melt sandwich.

The spot didn’t make me want to run through the drive-through, but it sure did catch my attention. It brings up an old debate: does sex really sell?

According to the research conducted by John Wertz, University of Illinois Advertising Professor, it can definitely grab your attention but in most cases, the benefit of using sex in advertising stops there. “We found that people remember ads with sexual appeals more than those without, but that effect doesn't extend to the brands or products that are featured in the ads." Audiences remember the ads. But they don’t remember what the sexy spots were advertising.

When salespeople educate mattress shoppers about how to get better sleep, they’re making each interaction more emotional, meaningful, and beneficial. Brush up on sleep knowledge and send customers home with a great mattress and a lifetime of better sleep.

1. Don't Trust Most Doctors. During four years of medical school, most doctors get less than two hours of training about the field of sleep. This is according to researcher Raymond Rosen. If you read two books about sleep, you will be more knowledgeable than most medical professionals.

Listen to hear the other five sleep insights. 

Rachel is standing in front of a whitewashed wooden wall flanked by an Avocado Green Pillowtop Mattress. She adjusts her phone camera to fix the framing for the Zoom call. Behind her the Southern California sun spills through large hazy windows—that soft glow is frost applied to the panes or the famous Los Angeles smog that hovers over highways like cotton sheets fluttering toward a freshly made bed.

It’s 11:30 a.m. and Rachel is my Avocado Mattress Virtual Experience Specialist. We chit chat about the weather, she talks about her sons who wrestle, and then tells the story of a spirit-filled Christmas night that ended with an overturned couch and a mad dash to wrap all the gifts the next morning. We laugh and joke and then dig into the details about the organic sleep system in the background. 

I scheduled the VX appointment to see for myself what Avocado’s Brett Thornton and his team had cooked up in the 8,000 square foot space that, pre-COVID, was filled with employees.

What if the FDA approved a new pill that reduced the number of days your kid was sick? 

That one pill also improves their mood and raises athletic performance to new levels. Also, it boosts test scores and delivers a better sense of well-being. Do you want to know more? Of course, you would.

According to Web MD, this is all possible, and the best part? It’s not a pill, it’s sleep.

Imagine this: You won $300,000 on a scratch-off lottery ticket. When the high dies down and you realize you won’t quite be able to live like The Great Gatsby, you decide to put half the money into your savings account for a rainy day. But that still leaves you with $150,000.

Thinking of all of the things you could do with the money, you remember that it’s always been your dream to open a mattress store.

So, how do you do it? What do you need to consider? Is “location, location, location!” the only thing you need to think about?

This exact hypothetical question was posed to several mattress industry experts, and they each weighed in on what is most important to focus on.