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Author: Phil Wrzesinski

David Beats Goliath (Again)

March Madness is a great reminder that even when the deck is stacked against you, you can win.

In the first full round of competition in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, ten of the thirty two games were won by the underdog.  31.3% for you statisticians.

The more telling stat is this…

100% did it by out-hustling their competition.  They did it by doing what they do best, to the best of their ability, and by wanting it more than their competitor.

Some could not match up size-wise.  Others did not have the depth.  Some lacked the overall talent.  A few even needed a lucky break or two.  Gee, sounds a lot like independent retailers.  Size of store, depth of product, lack of educational business training.

Yet independent retailers are slaying Goliaths all over the place, even without a lucky break or two.  They do it by playing up their strengths.  You don’t need a deep product mix, just a few great options.  You don’t need a huge store, just a talent for merchandising it well.  You don’t need an MBA, just an understanding of how to relate to others and build relationships.

More importantly, you don’t need to beat Goliath to win. You only need to accomplish three things:

  • Keep the cash flowing
  • Show a profit
  • Make a living

Do those and you get to raise all the championship banners you want.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS  Not doing all of those three things, yet?  Do not despair. Sometimes all you need is some coaching to push you in the right direction.  For those of you who are self-coached, check out Freebies section of my website.  There are plenty of Goliath-beating tools you can download for free.  For those wanting a little more, contact me.  Sometimes the fix is easier than you imagined.

Someone Always Does it Better

No matter how good you think you are, someone is better.  No matter how strong you think your customer service is, someone is offering more.  No matter how good you think your staff is trained, someone is trained better.  No matter how well you think you merchandise your store, someone merchandises theirs better.  No matter how many awards you win, someone is doing what you do better (but just hasn’t been discovered by the judges).

So let me ask you.  Are you seeking out those retailers who do what you do better than you?  Are you learning from their ideas?  Are you copying their best practices?
Are you using their lessons to find better ways to do what you do?

You should.

Phil Tripp of Tripp’s Auto Shop & Collision Center was a panelist for the Jackson Retail Success Academy.  He runs one of the biggest body shops in the area doing far more business than the industry average.  Yet he had just returned from a trip to the Pacific Northwest to meet another body shop owner who had found a way to do even more business.

Phil figured if someone was highly successful doing something different from him, it was worth the investment to go visit and learn.

How much of your training budget is spent on your staff?  More importantly, how much is spent on you?

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS  The opening paragraph is something I remind myself all the time.  I love learning new “best practices” and trying to see how we can implement them in the store.  Some fit, some do not, but that doesn’t stop me from looking for ways to improve.  I hope you are doing the same.

What I Learned in an Exit Interview

You know what an Exit Interview is.

I hire a large group of seasonal employees each year. At the end of the season I sit down with each one to discuss their experience. What did they like? What was a challenge? How well did they feel prepared? Did the veterans on the staff help them? What did they learn about us? What did they learn about themselves? What will they take away from the experience?

At the end of this past Christmas season I sat down with eight seasonal employees near the end of their experience and received some incredible insight into the store, the training program, and the current staff. (It is amazing how much more they are willing to share when they are leaving than when they are still employed.)

The common thread through all the interviews was the same.
The regular staff was extremely helpful in wanting the new people to succeed.
They wanted to help. They wanted to teach. They wanted the newbies to succeed, to feel like they were part of the team.

That was the watershed moment when I knew we were doing something right.

Just as I teach in my book, Hiring and the Potter’s Wheel: Turning Your Staff Into a Work of Art,
I hire purely for character traits and then teach those people how to work in my store.

The traits I hire? Helpful, Friendly, Team Player, Problem Solver, Success Oriented.

Looks like I found them.

Would you like to find the right people for your team, too? Buy the book. It works.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS  Hiring is seventy-five percent of the battle. If you do not get the right people to start, it won’t matter how well you train them. But if you have the right people, you still need to get them to the next level. Before you plan your next staff meeting, download this free eBook – Staff Meetings Everyone Wants to Attend. It will take your staff trainings to a whole new level.

You Don’t Need to Buy it All at Once

Christmas season is the time for most retailers to offer the widest selection possible. We broaden our selection. We increase the choices. We try extra stuff that we think we can sell that time of year.

The problem, however, is when we get into the off-season and start re-stocking the store. We have a tendency to want to restock every single thing that sold in December. And therefore, we tend to overbuy in February and March only to find ourselves cash-poor in May and June.

One simple tip to stop you from overbuying, to increase your cash flow, without losing sales in the slower seasons is this…

Limit your customer’s choices to only two or three per category.

Cut back on your offerings by simply giving them a good, better, best (or even just good/best) option for now. They will appreciate the simplicity of the choice. You will appreciate the simplicity of the buying. Your bank account will appreciate the simplicity of fullness.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS To learn more about ways to manage your inventory and cash flow, download my free eBook Inventory Management. In it you will learn two formulas that can help you manage your cash better than ever before.

Heart and Mind

The mind uses logic to justify what the heart desires.

Roy H. Williams taught me that back in 2005 and I have shared it with countless other retailers since.
Win the heart and you win the mind. But what does it mean to win the heart?
It means to win the right hemisphere of the brain where emotions and colors and sounds and images exist.
It means to win the right brain of connections and patterns and relationships.
It means to win the right brain that does not care about logic or labels.
It means to win the right brain, the part that never sleeps.
You do that with emotions.
You do that with relationships.
You do that with patterns.
You do that with music and sound.
You do that with surprise and delight.
You do that with stories.
Can you tell a story about your store that will connect emotionally with your potential customers? It will be far more powerful than any facts or data.
I ran this ad in December 2005, again in 2007, and again in 2009.
He left Detroit 9am Christmas Eve. Someone somewhere had to have the one toy his sweet little six year old wanted. Six cities, seven stores later he stood travel weary in front of me. “I suppose you don’t have any Simon games either.” As I handed over the last of the Simon games he smiled and said, “God bless you.” Believe me, he already has. Merry Christmas from Toy House in downtown Jackson. We’re here to make you smile.
No facts. No data. Just a true story about my first Christmas Eve on the sales floor back in 1980. Would you believe the three years I ran it are three of the best holiday seasons in the last 20 years?
Win the heart (the right side of the brain). You know how.
-Phil Wrzesinski

Universal Laws are Universal – Use Them

Newton’s second law states simply that Force = Mass x Acceleration.

That law is accepted as fact. It is a Universal law. That means it applies to everything.

Including your business.

Force = Mass x Acceleration
Impact = Size of idea (mass) x Speed at which it is delivered (acceleration)

If you have a great business idea and you deliver that idea quickly and succinctly, you will make a big impact. If you have a lousy idea and take forever to deliver it… Yeah, you get the picture.

You can even break that down to your advertising. Do you know why sound bites work so well? Big idea delivered in few words. Build your ads the same way. Make it about one and only one really big point. Deliver that point as simply as possible. Watch the needle move.

Tap into the laws of the universe and you can make them work to your advantage.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I learned this from Roy H. Williams at Wizard Academy. You should go there some day.

Do it Until it is Easy

I have always been pretty good at understanding Advertising. The stuff I have learned from Roy H. Williams, aka The Wizard of Ads, just makes total sense to me.

I have always had a knack for teaching and training the staff. Once I created my own system for hiring, I’ve been sought out as a guru for Hiring and Training seminars.

I have always been pretty good at understanding how to better manage your Inventory. My seminars on this topic have been some of the highest rated talks I have given.

My Achilles heel has been the Financials. Oh, I know ’em. Have to when you run a business like mine. But knowing them and understanding them has been two different things.

Until last night…

I gave my first ever presentation on Understanding the Financials of a Retail Business to a group of business owners. Like me, they all considered their grasp of the accounting side of business to be their weakest. But in less than 90 minutes they all understood how to read a Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss Statement . More importantly, they figured out how to use both of those reports to budget, manage cash flow and inventory, and make mid-year corrections.

How did I do it? How did I take something difficult and make it understandable? The same way a professional golfer masters a new shot. I worked at it. For me that meant writing a book about it.

Last fall the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association asked if I would write a book to help other toy retailers understand their financials. I said, “Yes!” and got busy figuring out how to do it. The book will be ready by June and can be purchased from ASTRA.

More importantly, however, the process taught me that I can take something hard and make it easy. I just have to work at it. Better yet, last night the business owners in the room unanimously agreed that I had accomplished my goal – to help them understand their financials, too. That made the work all the more worthwhile.

You can do it, too. Just keep doing the hard stuff until it becomes easy. Surprisingly, for most of us that learning curve is pretty quick. Getting started is the only real challenge.

-Phil Wrzesinski

PS I am currently reworking my eBook on this topic and hope to publish the new one soon. It is an overly simplified version of the ASTRA book. I’ll let you know here when I get it done. If you want more details, advanced ideas, and a comparison to toy industry averages, you will want to purchase the book. Check with the ASTRA office. I think they are taking pre-orders now.

How Many Points Should You Make?

(Full disclosure: I have no idea where this story originated. I think it came from Roy H. Williams or one of his Wizard Partners because it sounds like something they would say. If anyone knows where this story started, please let me know.)

The ad committee met to discuss the new copy for their next missive. After much heated debate, they finally came to an agreement on the twelve points that needed to be made.

They called in the copy writer and asked him to sit down at the end of the conference room table.

As they began explaining in detail and nuance each of the twelve points, the copy writer pulled a board out of his bag with a dozen nails sticking straight up. He laid the board on the end of the table. With puzzled looks and just a slight pause the ad committee chairman continued his description of the points.

The copy writer then took a frying pan out of his bag and slammed it down on the bed of nails. This shocked the room into silence. The copy writer then showed the small indentations on the bottom of the frying pan to the stunned committee.

Without saying a word, the copy writer pulled another board out of his bag. This board contained a large solitary spike. The copy writer took the same frying pan and slammed it down on the spike. The pan was impaled by the spike, sliding all the way down until it was stuck firmly to the board.

The copy writer looked up and said, “Now… how many points did you want me to make?”



-Phil Wrzesinski
http://www.philsforum.com/

PS Yes, that’s my pan and my boards. I tried it out on the Jackson Retail Success Academy students back in January and I’m pretty sure that point stuck. If you would like to make the point in your ads stick better. Check out my free ebooks, How Ads Work Part 1 and Part 2.

JC Penney Revisited

I wrote recently about JC Penney’s new pricing policy and my wife’s experience there.

I hoped they won’t muck it up, knowing if they do, no one else will follow their lead away from hyped up sale, sale, sale to a more realistic method of pricing.
Unfortunately…
My wife went in looking for a new pair of pants. Found some she liked. They were marked $20.00. There were a couple other colors of the exact same pant there, but one was marked $25.00. No sale signs, no discounts, no markings on the tags to let you believe they were anything other than the price marked.
She took one up to the register. It rang up at some incredibly low price, like $10.00. She immediately ran back and grabbed two more colors. One of them also rang up at $10.00, the other at $15.
She had no idea what to expect, whether to complain, whether to walk away happy or just confuzzled. She wondered later how many people had walked away from those pants because they thought the pants were $20.00.
We just got the JC Penney catalog explaining their new pricing policy. Now I am confuzzled. Nothing in the catalog made sense and nothing matched the experience in the store.
A simple lesson here. If you want to go after the Relational Customer, the one looking for an expert she can trust, you have to price your store in way that instills confidence and trust. You do that by clearly marking your actual prices on everything. Do not leave anything to guesswork or wonder.
If you want to maximize your sales, do not let your customer walk away because she thought something was too expensive. Put the actual price on the product. Period.
Unless you want to be like JC Penney…
-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com
PS Would you like to learn how to price for maximum sales and profits? Download my free eBook Pricing for Profit. Pricing is all about perception, something I hope JC Penney learns soon.

Two Things You Can Correct Right Now

Did 2011 go the way you wanted?

Do you want 2012 to be better?

Here are two things you can work on right now that won’t cost you an arm and a leg, but will make a difference.

BEAT YOUR CUSTOMER’S EXPECTATIONS

Your customer has a set of expectations of how she will be treated when she comes through that door. Either she knows what to expect because she has been there before, or she thinks what to expect based on your reputation or advertising.

And when you meet her expectation, she may smile, she may even say, “Thanks!” But that is as far as it goes.

When you exceed her expectation, however, magical things begin to happen. By the power of reciprocity she feels like she now owes you one.

She may repay that by feeling more loyal to your store and making a return visit.
She may repay that by gushing about you to her friends.
She may repay that by spending more the next time she is in.

One way you can exceed her expectations is Generosity. Is there something you can give away that will pleasantly surprise her? A classic example is the jeweler who changes your watch battery for free. Doesn’t advertise it, just does it. My favorite example is the expensive restaurant with the mouth-watering dessert menu. You and your friends have decided to split a dessert or two when the waiter comes to the table exclaiming how he is in a good mood and would like to buy dessert for everyone at the table. Do you think you’ll be bragging about this restaurant for a while? Of course you will. And you will be going back sooner than you think.

For more ways to exceed your customers’ expectations, download my free eBook Customer Service: From Weak to Wow.

SAY SOMETHING REMARKABLE

Your advertising is blah. How do I know? Because 99.9% of the advertising out there is blah. That is why it does not work. It has nothing to do with reaching the right people. It has nothing to do with the medium you are using. It has everything to do with you not being brave enough to make a bold statement.

Most ads are written not to offend. And they become so beige that they do not move the needle at all. Since about 90% of the population is not shopping with you right now anyway, who are you afraid of offending?

The best phone call I ever received happened last December. A gal called to tell me how much she hated my ads. At first I thought it was a prank. But when she did not break from this message, I asked her why she hated them. She said, “Because you make it sound like all the other stores sell crap.” Good! That is what my ads were supposed to say.

Spice up your advertising by saying something bold. Back it up with evidence. Make it interesting and relevant. Without spending a penny more, the money you are spending on advertising will become far more effective.

Do those two things and you will be praying the Mayans were wrong about 2012.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Not sure what to say in your ads? You should read these three eBooks. Don’t worry. They are short, sweet, and best of all, FREE. Read them in order and email me if you have any questions.
Understanding Your Brand (and the accompanying Worksheet)
How Ads Work Part 1
How Ads Work Part 2