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Author: Phil Wrzesinski

The Four Worst Words in Retail

You know them. You’ve probably even said them. More than likely you started cringing even as the words were floating across the ether.

Can I help you?

You say those words and the response is automatic.

No thanks, I’m just looking.

Here is why those words are so bad.

First, the knee-jerk reaction, even from someone who actually wants your help, is to say NO. The last word you want your customer to say is NO. NO puts up a wall between you and your customer. NO ends the conversation and makes you feel bad, too.

Second, you just got your customer to say out loud that she is Not. There. To. Buy. She told you she was just looking. She told herself that she was just looking. Once she says it, she starts to believe it. It becomes her reality.

Third, about three-fourths of your customers are scared to be approached by your staff in the first place. In part it has to do with how we communicate – especially the guys.


MEN AND WOMEN COMMUNICATE DIFFERENTLY

I’m going to share a secret with you. Men and women communicate differently. Yes, I said it. Crucify me now if you want. I speak the truth.

Men speak vertically. Did what I say make you think higher of me or lower of me? This is why guys don’t like to ask directions. To ask is to imply that I don’t know. To ask is to make someone think lower of me. Sorry, I’m just not comfortable doing that.

Women, however, speak horizontally. Did what I say draw me in closer or push me further away? Women love to ask for help. It draws them into the inner circle.

For men, when the sales staff approaches and asks to help them, they immediately go into a shell. They put up the wall of defense. They say “I’m just looking,” sometimes before you even say a word. In reality, they are just looking. They are looking for a sign to tell them the information they need so that they don’t have to ask anyone. If you want to assist a man who is shopping, you have to say things that empower him and make him feel important and smart.

For women, understand that even though they like to ask, about half of them need time to formulate the proper question before they will ask. Those are your introverts. They will engage, but only after they have figured out exactly how they want to engage. You have to bring them into the inner circle on their terms. Get too close too soon and up goes the wall.


A BETTER APPROACH

Rather than bombard your customers with a barrage of “Can I help you’s?”, Try a different approach. Say “Thank you for coming in,” with a genuine smile and appreciation. After all, they didn’t have to come to your store. With all the options out there, they chose you. Be thankful. The guys will feel empowered. The gals will feel like they are invited into the inner circle. The introverts won’t feel threatened. The wall won’t get built.

Then you have a chance to do what you’re really supposed to do with your customers – build a relationship that leads to trust.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Building a relationship that leads to trust isn’t as hard as it sounds. If you were paying attention, the last three posts were about the parking lot, the front door, and the greeting. Building the relationship is next.

I Want a New Front Door

Our front doors suck.

Okay, they could be worse. They could be something other than glass, heavier than hell, and hard to hold open. At least you can see through them into and out of the store, and most of the kids can push them to get in.

There used to be a store downtown that kept their heavy front door propped open almost all year long. They had heavenly scents wafting out onto the sidewalk. You had to stop and enjoy the smells when you walked by, even if the inviting doorway didn’t draw you in.

About the only thing our doors do is slow you down to a crawl when you have a head of steam built up from the trek across the parking lot. If you have a stroller, wheelchair or walker, heaven help you.

For our store, the front door is our Bad Table. It is our Achilles heel. Along with our 1967-built bathrooms, it is one of the few design flaws of our store.

For that reason, I have instructed every single member of our staff to always keep one eye out the window. Sure, they need to focus mostly on who is in the store, but keep that one eye out for someone crossing the parking lot who might need help with the door. Keep one eye out for strollers, walkers, wheelchairs, and young kids.

Yes, we rush over and open the door for our customers all day long. Coming and going. It takes a little more work. It takes a little more hustle on the part of the staff. It also takes one of the negatives of our store off the table.

Average stores that cater to average customers don’t even think about their front doors. They figure every store has a front door and every customer is versed on how to use one. And they are right. But not every front door is the same. Not every front door sends the same message to the customer. Amazing stores have amazing front doors because they know it is the first impression the customer has of their business.

One day I will have an amazing front door. For now, we hustle to make sure it is at least above average. Helpful is one of our Core Values.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS The Coat Check is another one of my plans for making the front door more amazing. What can you do to your front door to at least make sure it isn’t a barrier to business? My grandfather wanted to build a carousel that kids could ride into the store. Now that would be an amazing front door!

I Hate Slush

Winter weather has finally arrived in Jackson, Michigan. Snow, ice, wind chills below zero, the whole nine yards. Every trip to the bank means sloshing through the slush that accumulates at the curb. My shoes and boots are a mess.

I hate slush.

I can deal with the snow and the cold. I just don’t like the slush.

I also have a big parking lot – 58 spaces. That’s the potential for a lot of slush. But not if I can help it. We go through tons of bags of salt and multiple shovelings to try to keep the lot as clean as possible. My snowplow guy knows I want it plowed at any sniff of snow, far less snow than his other clients. He charges me a little more, but it is worth it.

It isn’t just my hatred of slush that causes this behavior. It is my love of my customers. I figure I am not the only one who hates slush. I want to send a strong signal to those people that we will keep our parking lot as slush-free as possible.

You don’t think that matters? People make decisions daily on where to go and what to do based on tiny little factors like this. Your attention to details (or lack thereof) is sending signals to potential customers Every. Single. Day.

My customers might not even be consciously aware of why they like going to my store in the winter. But I am certainly going to make sure I eliminate as many possible things they don’t like.

When you are trying to give your customer the best possible Experience, it starts when they park the car. If you can control that Experience, you need to control that Experience. These things do matter and do make a difference.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Ask yourself this question… Which costs more? A dozen bags of salt or a lost customer?

PPS One other benefit is that we rarely have that situation where our carpets are soaked from all the slush dragged in. Don’t those blowers you see at the big box stores just make you feel dirty?

Here is a Year-End Evaluation Most Retailers Won’t Do

Try to describe in as complete detail as possible the typical experience your customer has in your store. Be as specific as you can from her parking spot through the front door all the way through checkout.

Take your time. This is an important exercise. You can even do this with your staff. Write down all the touch points, all the interactions she has with your business, your displays, your products, and your staff.

Once you get it all down, take a close look at each touch point.

  • Which ones are remarkable? 
  • Which ones are experiences she will not get at any of your competitors? 
  • Which ones are above and beyond even her lofty expectations? 
  • Which ones surprise and delight her? 
  • Which ones are simply average, similar to what everyone else is doing? 
  • Which ones are worse than your competitors?

In today’s high-tech economy where shopping online has a better selection, is more convenient, and often has better prices, the primary way indie brick & mortar stores are going to compete and grow and win the hearts of customers is through the experience you offer them.

Shopping is still a contact sport. Shopping is still a touch & feel activity. Shopping is still a multi-sensory Experience with a capital E.

To win the customer, her Experience has to be remarkable. Her Experience has to surprise and delight her. Her Experience has to go above and beyond her lofty expectations. It cannot be at or even near the same levels as your competitors. By all means, it cannot be average.

Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Interactions all have to shine together.

Most retailers this time of year look at your numbers, look at your product selection, look at your local economy, look at your marketing for reasons why your business did what it did. Few will take a critical eye to each touch point of the customer’s Experience. Yet that is where your success will be.

I’ve read all the predictions for 2015 about mobile shopping, online and big data, For big companies with average products and average services, all that data is important for them to compete in their race to the bottom.

You are not average. You are not going after average customers by selling average products. If you want to win the race to the top, make sure your customers’ Experiences are so far above average that they don’t think of it as shopping so much as an outing or an event. I predict that will be the biggest key to your success this coming year.

The Red Hat Ladies Having Fun at Toy House

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS If you need some ideas on how to look at all the touch points in your store and raise the bar of Experience, download my FREE eBook Customer Service: From Weak to WOW!

A Journey of a Thousand Miles…

We all know the proverb… A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

We all know January is the month of making resolutions and getting started on that first single step.

I’ll throw another favorite saying out at you… Success is a journey, not a destination.

Maybe your journey really is one thousand miles. Maybe your journey only feels like one thousand miles. Maybe your journey has no end point, but is the purpose in the first place. The reality of that single step, however, can never be underestimated.

I took a step six years ago to launch Phil’s Forum Publishing, LLC and start writing this blog. At first I was lucky to get 6 people to read each post. Sometime last month, however, (while I was busy running the toy store instead of blogging, ironically) I reached one million views. It wasn’t a goal necessarily, but it sure is a cool milestone, that upon reflection, reminds me how far I have journeyed the past 6+ years.

You just have to take that first step.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I apologize for not writing much the last couple months. I have many steps to take this year to make up for it and hope you are ready to journey along with me.

Getting Around the Facebook Algorithms

Everyone is lamenting the death of free posts for your company on Facebook. For the third time in the last year or so, even Facebook has said that if you want to play, you better be prepared to pay.

Maybe you have already seen your organic reach plummet and are already calculating your budget for boosting those posts.

I haven’t paid a penny to boost a post in the last three years, yet four of my posts in the last three weeks have reached more people than I have fans for my page. What am I doing differently? After extensive testing, I have learned the following…

What the Facebook Algorithm Doesn’t Like

  • Posts with exclamation points
  • Posts with LOTS OF CAPS
  • Posts with words like Sale, Event, Deal or Free
  • Posts with hours or days of the week

What Your Fans Don’t Like

  • Posts that look like an advertisement
  • Posts that yell or scream at them
  • Posts that are all about you (the company) not “you” (the customer)
  • Posts that tell, not show
  • Posts that tell, not ask
  • Posts that are boring, expected, or blah
  • Posts that take the obvious approach instead of a different angle
  • Posts with no meat on the bones

What the Facebook Algorithm Likes (Allows through)

  • Interaction – lots of likes, comments and shares, especially shares
  • Question marks and periods

What Your Fans Like

  • Stories, good emotional stories that tug at the heart strings
  • Pictures, especially pictures that tell a story
  • Interesting facts, insider-information type facts
  • Links to stories that reinforce their world views
  • Posts that take different, unexpected angles and approaches to the subject

Here is a breakdown of a post I did yesterday that has already reached 50% more people than I have fans. It started with this picture…

The copy for the post says…

This is a roll of our giftwrap. It is 24 inches wide, 833 feet long and weighs 28 pounds.

Every year we go through at least twenty four of those big heavy rolls of paper. Plus we go through another forty of the 18 inch wide version. And last year we added a smaller 12 inch width (and used another thirty-plus rolls of those).

All told, that’s almost 15 miles of giftwrap to cover your gifts. 

Why? Because we can. Because we like to wrap. Because after fifteen miles a year, we’re pretty fast and efficient. 

Because it makes you smile. That’s the best reason of all.

I could have simply said, “Don’t forget, we offer Free Giftwrapping!” and walked away with my 368 people reached. But within 24 hours this post had reached well over 5,000 people (even though we only had 3580 fans at the moment I posted).

Why?

I told a story. I used interesting, specific facts. I gave out insider information. I avoided the words that might flag the FB algorithms. I stayed consistent with our Core Value of Nostalgia. 

The reality is that most of my fans already know we offer free giftwrapping. We’ve been doing it for 65 years. The goal of the post was to touch an emotional nerve that gets those same people to Like, Comment and Share. Those Likes, Comments and Shares help spread the post to their friends and family who might not know that we offer free giftwrapping. Plus, every time someone Likes, Comments, or Shares, it reinforces our brand in their mind.

Don’t fear the new FB algorithms. Fear lousy copy-writing, a lack of storytelling, and ignorance of a few handy tricks. That will bring your reach down faster than anything FB does.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS What to do if you have a promotion you really want to share? Put all the promotion info into a jpeg on top of a really cool picture. Then share the picture with some catchy saying. For instance, we did a Disney Princess event with Elsa & Anna from Frozen. I made up a poster for the event and shared the poster with the simple statement, “Do you wanna build a snowman?” Yes, the Frozen angle helped. Most importantly, we reached over 11,000 people and had over a hundred shares without spending a penny.

Launching a New Website – The Jackson Retail Success Academy

Back in February 2008, the newly hired director of The Enterprise Group, Scott Fleming, invited all the alphabet groups in town to a meeting to discuss how we were supporting existing retailers in Jackson.

The DDA, SCMW, SBTDC, JLF, EDC, JCCC and MA were all there. I was there. Everyone but Scott himself who got called away at the last minute.

The question of the day was, “What is your agency doing to help indie retailers survive and stay in business?”

After seven people said, “Absolutely nothing,” an idea was born – the Jackson Retail Success Academy (JRSA). Less than two months later we launched our first series of classes.

I was the only retailer sitting at that table that morning, so I was asked to come up with a curriculum (a healthy dose of customer service, marketing & advertising, inventory management, financials, and hiring & training). Ten businesses signed up for that inaugural class.

Over the next several years, we tweaked the class schedule to make it work better for the attendees. We had start-ups attend. We had new owners taking over old businesses attend. We had non-retail businesses who wanted the customer service, marketing and hiring segments attend. We had business coaches who wanted to learn new techniques for teaching attend. We had restaurants, online retailers, and home-based retailers attend.

The cool thing is that JRSA is still around and still getting better. The class schedule is shorter (from an original 10-week program down to 5 weeks now), but the content is better, tighter, and more focused.

A retailer who takes this class will have amazing tools they can use to fix almost any kind of retail problem.

Finally, a website with all the details is up.

www.JacksonRetailSuccessAcademy.com

Just like the class, the site is constantly being tweaked and will continue to get better. The retailers in Jackson ready to take their businesses to the next level are already checking it out and signing up for the next class starting in January.

What are you doing to grow your business?

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com
www.JacksonRetailSuccessAcademy.com

PS If driving to Jackson five times is out of the question, but you still want to grow, I have a Road Show version of JRSA I can bring to your town. You only need to convince five businesses to sign up and find a place to hold the classes and I’ll do all the rest.

What Kind of Candy are You Giving Out?

There was a house on the next block that gave out full size candy – Milky Ways, Snickers, Butterfingers and M&M’s. My friend Peter and I spent one Halloween changing into multiple costumes and running up the street to that house at least five times.

There was another house on the street we just avoided. Stingy old man who gave out only one single piece of that orange/brown wrapped tootsie roll wannabe. Wasn’t worth the hassle to go to Mr Stingy’s.

Are you the Mrs. Generous House that everyone goes to multiple times or are you the Mr. Stingy House that everyone ignores?

Depends on the candy you’re giving out.

This Halloween is a good time to think about how you can be more generous this holiday season. Word gets around quickly where Mr. Stingy and Mrs. Generous live.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Generosity is one of those gifts that comes back to you in droves. It is one of the key drivers of Word-of-Mouth advertising. You need to incorporate it into your way of doing business.

PPS Happy Halloween!!

Do You Have Enough Staff or Just Enough Staff?

There are two ways to determine the right amount of staff to have on your floor.

You can have enough people to handle the average traffic expected that day.

Or you can have enough people to handle the peak traffic moment that day.

Yes, the second one costs you more in labor expenses because you never know when that rush will occur. But look at the pluses.

  • You’re never under-staffed. You never have to worry about a customer having a bad time and flaming you on Yelp because your staff wasn’t able to handle the rush of customers. Whelming? Yes, but never overwhelming.
  • You have plenty of extra bodies to do all the other stuff that you never seem to find the time to do. Make a list for your go-getters. Sweeping, dusting, rearranging merchandise, creating fabulous window displays, making signs, tagging merchandise, updating social media, etc.
  • You have the ability to exceed customer expectations on a regular basis. To get customers to talk, you have to do more than they expect. Imagine their delight when you have extra bodies to help them shop, wrap their gifts quickly and carry them out to the car. 

You can’t do all that with average staffing and above average traffic. As for costing you more, if you think of your staff as your greatest asset, the more you invest, the more it pays off. My grandfather had an old adage that served him well for his life – it’s impossible to overpay for great help.

Keep that in mind as you do your seasonal hiring.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS There are ten employees in the above picture (some hidden behind big boxes). There are another ten employees not shown out serving other customers. My payroll is a higher percentage than most stores. I take that money out of my ad budget because delighting customers is every bit as important as a marketing tool as running great ad campaigns.

PPS If you need help hiring a better quality of employees, read the book Hiring and the Potter’s Wheel: Turning Your Staff into a Work of Art. It is the method of hiring that has made the biggest difference in the quality of my staff.

Anatomy of a Promotion That Pays

What if I told you that you could market your business to 6,000 customers and instead of costing you a penny, you would actually get paid $328 to do it?

What if I told you that you would also get valuable market data from that promotion?

What if I told you that you would be praised mightily for the campaign?


Here is what we did… (shout out to Bob Negen of Whizbang Training for this idea)

I contacted the local public school district and asked permission to send each of their 6,000 students a $5.00 Gift Certificate. They said yes and sent us a breakdown of how many students in each school. I mocked up the gift certificates as postcards and had them printed locally for $278.

When we got the GC’s from the printer we bundled them in bundles of 30 and made a bag for each school. I delivered them a week ago Wednesday to the main offices. They distributed the GC’s to the schools the following day.

The GC’s had only this disclaimer: “For Student Use Only. One Per Student. Expires 11/15/14”

Here is where it pays…

We are expecting a 10% return on the gift certificates. That’s 600 GC’s we expect to be used between now and 11/15. In the first couple days alone we already had 60 returned and not all the schools had distributed them! The average ticket so far has exceeded $12.00.

So let’s do the math…

600 x $12.00 = $7,200.00 in sales

Minus Cost of the GC’s  (600 x $5 = $3,000.00)
Minus Cost of the Products  ($3,600.00 – 50% of the retail price)
Minus the Cost of the Printing ($278)

7200 – 3000 = 4200
4200 – 3600 = 600
600 – 278 = $322

Here is the bonus…

Not only did we get the word out to 6,000 students (and their parents) about Toy House, but we will get 600 of them (and their parents) into the store right before the prime part of the holiday season where we will entice them with product displays, events, and wish lists for them to fill out and get them back for Christmas shopping.

Not only did we get the word out to 6,000 students, but we also will get 600 purchases to tell us what kinds of impulse items are popular with today’s kids.

Not only did we get the word out to 6,000 students, but I have received tons of praise from parents and teachers for our generosity.

Not only did we get the word out to 6,000 students but I have had friends and customers ask me what is going on that has kept our parking lot so full the last few days.

Here is the kicker…

There are some people who will tell me that I have the math all wrong, that I sold $7200 worth of stuff and only made $322 dollars. Those people are looking at the gift certificate as the be-all, end-all of the promotion. The customer came in once, spent a little money, and left. Promo done. They missed the whole purpose of the campaign, which is to earn top-of-mind awareness by getting them in the store right before the time we really want them in the store. I am banking on my staff’s incredible customer relations skills to earn their repeat business whether they spent $1.62 (our smallest transaction with the GC to date) or $58.02 (our largest).

Frankly, the $7200 in sales, while nice, is just a drop in the bucket. The real value is in getting the word out, getting them in to look around, getting them to buy into our generosity, and getting an idea of what is attracting their attention once they are in the store. The fact that I get paid $322 to get all of that is the icing on the cake.

Do you have any promotions planned that pay you to do them?

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS If you sell stuff for adults, is there a major employer or three that you could contact about giving away gift certificates to their staff? Colleges, hospitals and city governments employ a lot more people than you might imagine.