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Author: Phil Wrzesinski

Pick One

My wife was on the phone calling to get some info about a project we wanted done.

The guy on the phone said, “Hold on a second.”

She could hear some rustling around, heard him call another person’s name. He finally came back with an answer that she wasn’t sure was directed at her or somebody else. She asked for clarification and he said, “Sorry about that, I’m doing three things at once.”

Ummm… Pick one.

Pick one, do it well, do it completely. Don’t answer the phone if you cannot give that person your full attention.

My guess is that he didn’t upset one customer. He probably upset all three.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS If you have to answer the phone because you don’t have an answering service, first ask permission from the current customer. “Excuse me, may I answer this call?” If the customer gives you permission, then answer it, get the info and promise to call them back when you’re done with the current customer. A little courtesy goes a long way.

I’ve Been Slimed

We all remember that scene in Ghostbusters where Bill Murray’s character comes in contact with a ghost in a hotel. A nasty little creature that leaves his character covered in icky goo.

I had that feeling last week. 
It started out harmless. A photo shoot for our church for the new directory. The photographer was good. Put the family into great poses and took some amazing shots. Then the sales pitch began.
Don’t get me wrong. I knew there would be a sales pitch. I just didn’t know it would be this greasy. It even started with a grease board. Rather than give us a sheet of options, packages and prices, the photographer started right in on the hard sell – the large framed photo with the retouching, UV-protected paper, matted design. He had a grease board where he wrote down what we thought we might like.
When we asked for a price, he kept stating he would figure that at the end. We couldn’t get to the end fast enough as he kept pushing product after product on us. 
We finally got to the end and he started to do his magic. He took another grease board and started making check marks and writing things we couldn’t see. Finally, he presented us a price starting with what we “might have paid” had we done a photo shoot somewhere else. There was a total price with little explanation. We had to keep digging to find out what each item was actually going to cost us. (Remember my Value Equation? Perceived Worth versus Actual Price)
Only after much digging did he show us the calculations on his grease board. The problem was that it was designed to make sense to him and not to us. All we were really left to do was divide the total price by the number of pictures we were getting and decide if we wanted to pay that much.
All in all, it left me feeling slimier than his grease board and not too thrilled with the company. I wouldn’t ever want to hire them or recommend them to anyone else. The pictures were great! The experience was horribly uncomfortable.
Here are three things they could have done differently that would have changed the experience for me completely.
First, be upfront about the sales pitch. Before I even scheduled my photo shoot, there should have been something telling me that this was an opportunity to get more than just a church directory photo. Even though I had gone through this before and knew there was that opportunity, it still needed to be spelled out in advance.
Second, be upfront and transparent about the pricing. Tell me the price of everything, especially when I ask. Heck, tell me the pricing before I even show up. Then I can plan for it, budget for it, and not be sitting there getting anxious about how much this might cost. Yeah, I know he is supposed to sell me. But remember that part of the transaction is earning the trust for another transaction.
Third, be honest. Don’t start your talk about costs with some mythical figure about how much it might have costed elsewhere. I don’t care about that. All I care about is if the price you are charging me is worth the value you are giving me. Most customers are savvy enough to know that the dining room set that is marked Original Price $16,500, Your Price $2499 was never worth $16,500. The only signal you are sending me is that you think I’m gullible. Not the best way to earn my trust.
Be upfront and transparent and honest. You’ll get the sale and the recommendation.
-Phil Wrzesinski
PS The obvious question is, would I have bought more or less had I known the pricing up front? I’m not sure. The only thing I know is that I probably will buy less the next time – if there even is a next time. And therein lies the problem.

1063 Sailors

One thousand and sixty three sailors. That’s the crew size for the USS Arkansas Battleship on which my grandfather sailed during World War II. He was on board June 6, 1944 just off the northern coast of France. He was on board March 25, 1945 when the bombing began at Okinawa.

Somewhere in between, this land lubber who had never set foot on a ship prior to boarding the Arkansas was made Officer of the Deck Under Way (OOD) of a battleship at war. He was responsible for the 1,063 lives of the sailors.

“Once you’ve been officer of the deck on a battleship at war, everything else you ever do in your life is easy.” -Phil Conley

Everything else you ever do.

Easy.

No sense losing sleep over which line to order, which media to use for your ads, which employee to hire, which policy to change, which bag size to stock. You’re not OOD of a battleship at war. You’re not climbing up a hundred-story building on fire with a pick axe in your hands. Make your choices and move on.

Days like 9/11 and 12/7 and 4/19 and 6/6 are good for reminding us to put things in perspective.

God bless all who have sacrificed their lives for us.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I’m not saying to blow off those decisions. Do the research. Weigh the pros and cons. Give them the thought necessary. Just don’t spend any time agonizing or worrying. They are just business decisions. Sometimes they make you money, sometimes they cost you. The best thing to do is to be decisive. Make your decision and move on to the next.

Marketing is Sharing

My wife likes sharing. Put her in a room full of other women and it isn’t a gabfest. It’s a sharefest. Right now, with two teenage boys, it is all about college and college prep. Every uncovered secret gets spread. At last Friday’s football game, while she and the ladies around us shared, I would nudge her when it was time to cheer the kids on the field.

She’s the word-of-mouth marketing machine businesses dream of.

Last Saturday I attended a workshop on The Business of Creativity hosted by Jane Robinson. Jane is an artist. Not the starving kind. Jane is that class of people now called “artepreneurs” or “createpreneurs”. She is taking what she has learned and helping create a new breed of entrepreneurs in Jackson.

She said to a room full of artists, “Marketing isn’t scary, folks. Marketing is simply sharing.”

Marketing is sharing.

Marketing is telling people the secrets you know.
Marketing is getting together with your network and sharing what you’ve learned.
Marketing is taking news from others and spreading it as far as you can.
Marketing is giving people around you ideas and thoughts and information.
Marketing is giving people something to talk about.
Marketing is telling your friends and fans and asking them to tell their friends and fans.

The cool thing about thinking this way is that people want to share. Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram are not big because of how easy it is to post something, but because of how easy it is to share what has been posted with others. Most of my Twitter feed is re-tweets.

Your marketing job is simply to give people something Shareworthy.

Your hours and location just aren’t that shareworthy. Your stories and secrets are. Your length of time in business isn’t shareworthy. Your philosophies and reasons for being in business are. The way you change people’s lives is big time shareworthy.

You tell my wife something that will help get the boys into (and out of) college, I promise you, she will share it. You tell your customers how something you know/do will impact their lives, they will share it.

Marketing isn’t scary. Marketing is sharing.  Thanks, Jane!

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS For more on what is Shareworthy, download my FREE eBook Generating Word-of-Mouth. There is stuff in there that you can use to start getting WOM tomorrow.

Don’t Be the Little Piggy

We all know about the little piggy. He went wee, wee, wee all the way home.

As you craft your message for your potential customers this fall, don’t be the little piggy. Take all the “we” statements out of your marketing and change them to “you” statements.

We’ve been in business since 1949.
You want a company that will be there with you for the long run.

We have great customer service.
You will never wait more than 30 seconds on hold to talk to an agent.

We are licensed.
You want a provider who not only stays current with licensing, but takes extra classes to stay ahead of the changes in your system to make sure you are never down.

We offer the best products.
You will find award-winning products like the…

We have time-saving services.
You can get your products giftwrapped for free in less time than it takes to walk in from the parking lot.

We started our business because we…
You want a business that understands your needs, who thinks like you…

The most powerfully seductive word in the English language has only three letters and none of them are an x.

Y – O – U

Make your customer the star of your web copy. Make the customer the star of your print copy. Make the customer the star of your radio copy. Make the customer the the star of your social media, your email marketing, your in-store signage.

You’re already making the customer the star of your business. Now make her the star of your marketing.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS When you talk about your customers, remember to do these three things.

  1. Tell them specifics. Specifics are more believable and lend credibility.
  2. Tell them why. People like to know why you do what you do.
  3. Speak to the heart. Emotional connections are strong. The mind will use logic to justify what the heart has already decided.
Go back and read the You statements above to see what I mean.

Peeing Before the Race

Jeff Foxworthy cracks a wonderful joke about a financial planner who advises that you take half your earnings and shove them under a mattress and the other half down to the track and bet it on the dog “who does his business just before the start of the race.”

You laugh because you know there is some truth in that last statement. The dog who does his business is going to be better suited to run a fast race.

Your race is about to start. Have you done your business?

Have you looked around the store to see what is old and out-of-date, broken and need of fixing? Get it fixed now.

Have you identified the must-have items for your store? Order more of them now.

Have you crunched your numbers to see how much you need to buy between now and Thanksgiving? Get out the calculator and a pencil today and do a little math.

Have you sat down with each staff member to show them what it will take for them to get to the next level? Set aside some time in your calendar starting Monday.

Have you updated your website? Have you planned out your events? Have you ordered giftwrap and bows and bags? Have you crafted your message? Have you plotted out your staffing needs?

The race will start whether you are ready or not.

Your chance of winning goes up when you do your business before the race.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS September is a great time for doing your business. The kids are back in school. There is a collective sigh in September between the Back-to-School season and the Holiday Rush. Make a list of everything you do this September. Write it all down. When you can look at what you did this month, you’ll quickly see whether what you are doing is leading you to a better November/December or not. Plus, you’ll have a good reminder for what to do next year.

We Need More Rock Stars

Not just any Rock Stars – we need Retail Rock Stars. You know the stores I’m talking about. The ones you would be most disappointed if they closed. The ones who always seem to have traffic and buzz and excitement. The ones you think should probably be in a book or something because of how they merchandise the store, how they treat the customer, how they participate in the community.

Retail Rock Stars change the landscape of a community. They become the focal point of the shopping center, whether downtown, in a strip or in a mall. Retail Rock Stars attract customers, but they also attract other retailers. People want to be around winners.

The best way to grow your business is to decide right now that you are going to be a Retail Rock Star in your community. You are going to be the retailer everyone wants to be like, to locate next to, to build a community around.

How? Decide what a Retail Rock Star store looks like and do it.

Merchandising? Yes! Displays that are fresh and ever changing and new and eye-catching.
Staffing? Yes! A friendly, helpful staff that will bend over backwards to delight your customers. And I mean BEND OVER BACKWARDS.
Products? Yes! The latest products, the newest innovations, the fresh-hot-off-the-presses stuff.

The Retail Rock Star does not have peeling paint on the side of the building, an old sign, a tired window display. The RRS does not have old lighting, faded carpets, and a tired, boring staff. The RRS does not have merchandise older than the store’s pet dog.

The RRS is a learning store, learning new techniques for marketing and merchandising and training. The RRS is a trying store, trying new things, measuring and tweaking.

These are the kinds of retailers I want to help build. These are the kinds of retailers this economy needs to get out of the current funk. These are the kinds of retailers your community needs to grow and attract people and business. Yes, your community needs you to become an RRS!

That is the goal of the new and improved Jackson Retail Success Academy.



A HISTORY OF THE JACKSON RETAIL SUCCESS ACADEMY

Six years ago Scott Fleming, then director of The Enterprise Group in Jackson County challenged a full alphabet of organizations with the task of supporting and keeping indie retailers in town. From that meeting the Greater Jackson Chamber of Commerce (GJCC), South Central Michigan Works (SCMW), Jackson DDA, Jackson Local First (JLF), Midtown Association of Jackson, Small Business Technology & Development Center (SBTDC), City of Jackson Economic Development, and The Enterprise Group developed the Jackson Retail Success Academy (JRSA).

JRSA was designed to help start-ups and new retailers with less than five years under their belt get the tools they needed for retail success. For the last five years we have been doing exactly that. Well, kinda…
A number of retailers that took the class closed. They found out while doing the math that their business model was flawed from the get-go and there wasn’t enough market in Jackson to make it. Others were just too deep in trouble to dig out of it. A handful of class members took it to the next level, but for some, the next level was to merely go from struggling to surviving.

Most importantly, we weren’t accomplishing the real goal – to turn Jackson into an indie retail haven, a place where indie retailers would not just survive but thrive. We kept looking for struggling retailers to take the class, super small retailers, the minnows in our pond. We were hoping to grow them into fish.

We were focused on the wrong crowd. Winners attract winners. We needed to spend more time trying to grow whales, not fish. We needed to create more Rock Stars.

Time to refocus.

The new and improved JRSA is starting over with a new focus. We are looking for the whales, the established indie retailers who want to go from surviving to thriving. The curriculum is pared down to the essentials of Rock Stardom. The instruction is updated to include thriving in this most challenging new era of retail where all the rules you knew before have changed.

This is not to say that start-ups and newbies are not welcome. They are. Gladly. The information is only as good as the effort you put toward using it.Anyone willing to put forth the effort will get the results they want. But my focus for JRSA will be to go whale-hunting.

The bait is pretty good.

-Phil Wrzesinskiwww.PhilsForum.com

PS The beauty of the new and improved JRSA is that it is easier to take on the road.  If you have a handful of retailers in your town that are on the verge of Rock Staardom, but just need that push to get over the edge, get in touch. I can cram all 20 hours of instruction into two days that, if your head doesn’t explode, will rock your world.

Inspiration and Creativity

“Where do you get your inspiration for the ads you run on the radio?”
“Where do you get the creativity for the ads you run on the radio?”

I doubt a week goes by where I am not asked at least one of those questions.

My stock response is that’s the fun part of my job. Here is the real answer…


INSPIRATION

I love quotes. They inspire me. I type words into ThinkExist.com and just start reading. Sometimes a great quote is all I need to spark the engine.

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” -Pablo Picasso

I love to read. Fiction and non-fiction. Children’s books and adult books. I wrote an entire book on hiring because of this line in the children’s book Taran Wanderer (book #4 of The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander.)

“Before you learn the craft, you must first learn the clay.” -Annlaw Clay-Shaper

I listen. To music. To talk-radio. To interviews and podcasts. To comedians (I love comedians). I wrote a song after hearing a comedian’s routine about road signs when he said…

“I saw a sign along the highway that said ‘Gas Food’ and decided I was no longer hungry. Glad I didn’t stop. The next exit had a sign for a Gas Food Hospital.” (-unknown)


CREATIVITY

Is creativity something you’re born with, or something you learn? I think both. I think some people (like my sister) pop out of the womb with a talent that cannot be denied. I think the rest of us can learn creativity by learning to not be afraid of criticism and failure. I am bolstered by this quote…

“I haven’t failed. I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” -Thomas Edison

I am also bolstered in my ad writing by this little exercise Roy H. Williams, aka The Wizard of Ads made me do…

Quick, write down the percentage of your traffic that is repeat business. Customers who come in time and time again. Now write down how much of your traffic is referral business. Customers who are in because one of your repeat business customers told them to stop by. What is left?

When I did this, I wrote down 60% for the repeat, and 25% for the referral. That left only 15% of my traffic that is location/advertising driven. When your advertising only accounts for 15% of your traffic, you can take some more risks and be a little more crazy.

Creativity for most of us is like a muscle. The more you work it, the stronger it becomes. Writing this blog is like doing a dozen push-ups. Writing emails and Facebook posts is like taking a half-mile jog. Writing songs and books is like taking a spinning class or six. Writing a thirty-second ad that is interesting, tells a story, makes only one point, and connects emotionally is like doing 60-second planks ten times a day.

“I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” -Blaise Pascal

And one last quote…

“Now you know the rest of the story.” -Paul Harvey

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS One of my goals is to write a short story all from famous quotes by other people. That would sure take some creativity.

PPS I don’t know if my percentages of repeat and referral business are accurate. They probably aren’t. That’s quite okay by me. I got what I needed out of the exercise – to take more risks with my advertising. Consider it just one of those 10,000 ideas Edison learned from.

Pump Up the Values

We took a look at our Core Values of Having Fun, Helpful, Educational and Nostalgic to see where we might be lacking. If you’ve read Understanding Your Brand then you know the importance of making sure your business shows your core values in everything you do.

Having Fun: We have toys out for demo all throughout the store. I lost count well north of fifty different items out for people to try. We have Story Time, Game Night and special events throughout the year. Yes, we are having fun.

Helpful: Free Giftwrapping, Free Layaway, Delivery & Assembly, Car Seat Installation, Personal Shoppers… Yeah, we have helpful covered, too.

Educational: Free classes on how to buy toys and baby products? Check. Signs throughout the store to educate customers on how to buy different types of toys? Check. Brochures on smart toy shopping? Check. Toys that are educational by nature? Check.

Nostalgic: Hmm… We have been in business since 1949, but just saying that doesn’t necessarily evoke feelings of nostalgia. At Christmas when we have the lights and decorations up, we get that warm, fuzzy nostalgic feeling, but what about the rest of the year? We celebrate birthdays by ringing a thirty-two pound brass bell. That is good, but we can do more.

Nostalgia is defined as a sentimental yearning of a past period. I am working on three new projects to add more Nostalgia into the store.

The first is a photo gallery of our old store along with some old toys produced locally (on loan from the local museum). The second is a milepost sign with directional arrows pointing toward real and fictional places that will take you back to fond memories. The third is a take on the Before I Die campaign that Candy Chang started in New Orleans. We will have chalkboards with the Before I die… statement as Candy did, along with chalkboards of My favorite toy was…

Sentimental yearnings of past periods.

Your business has Core Values. You have to play up those values in everything you do. Everything. Not only you will make your brand stand out in the crowd, you will attract a better breed of customers, customers who share your values.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Don’t know your Core Values? Do this worksheet. Figure out who you are and what you do to show those values. Then pump up the volume on the values not being shown as much. It might not make a difference today, but it will tomorrow. You are in business for tomorrow, aren’t you?

Powerful Networking

I’m meeting with my US Congressman Tim Walberg in two weeks. He agreed to hold a round table discussion for retailers to talk about the Marketplace Fairness Act and other topics.

(Wednesday, Aug. 21 at 8am at the Chamber office for all my local peeps reading this – please join me)

A lot of indie retailers think you need to be a big guy to have a meeting with your congressional reps. You don’t. You don’t have to give them money, either. You don’t even have to belong to the same party. You just have to be informed, interested, willing to listen and have an opinion preferably based on facts.

Let me repeat that… You just have to be informed, interested, willing to listen and have an opinion preferably based on facts.

Gee, now that’s not so hard.

Do that and you can get a meeting with your state and federal representatives. Once they get to know you, they will begin to trust you. Once they begin to trust you, they will seek you out for your opinion on matters pertaining to your business. They will give some gravitas to what you say. It starts by first forming a relationship.

Yeah, I know, it can be scary calling for a meeting with your rep. But that’s a poor excuse for not making the call. Do the scary thing. Call your rep. Talk to him or her about Marketplace Fairness, about Obamacare, about roads and infrastructure, or whatever issue is on your mind.

Just be informed, interested, willing to listen and have an opinion preferably based on facts.

I am happy to say Mr. Walberg is not only in my network, he’s also a customer.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS If I had to pick two, be informed and willing to listen. You can have more influence by listening than you can by talking. Try it. It works.