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Author: Phil Wrzesinski

What are You Doing to Reach the Influencers

McDonald’s spent millions advertising the Happy Meal to children. Yet, who ultimately controls what a child eats? The parent, of course. Yet, McDonald’s made billions from the Happy Meal by advertising to the strongest influencer.

There is a bra store near me that specializes in custom-fitted and hard-to-find sizes of bras. They advertise on the local ESPN sports/talk radio station. Yes, a bra store on a sports/talk station. And they’re making a killing by saying, “Hey guys, tired of hearing your wife complain about her bra not fitting?”

Later this fall I am going to give out about seven thousand $5.00 gift cards to the students of one of our school districts. In a couple weeks I am going to wine and dine and bribe their teachers through a Teachers’ Night Out private party at our store with food & drinks, prizes, fun activities and incredible incentives for attending. I want to make sure that when the teachers hand out these gift cards that we get a great return on our investment.

Too many retailer make the mistake of thinking they have to focus all their efforts only on the person who might buy or use their product. The most powerful push someone gets to shop at your store usually comes from someone other than you. It seems counter-intuitive, but sometimes your best advertising and marketing needs to be directed at a non-customer.

If you can convince the influencer of the benefits of your business, they will convince the end user of your benefits.

There are two advantages to this approach.

First, since you are advertising to an indirect target, they are going to be more surprised (which is a good thing) and interested in your ad. It won’t come off as such a sales pitch. The bra ladies weren’t trying to sell a product, just to offer a solution to a common problem heard by married men all over the planet.

Second, the influencer has far more power to affect the actions of your intended customer than you do. Word of mouth from a friend always trumps advertising by a company. Let the friends and family and influencers do all the heavy lifting for you.

Yeah, it’s risky. All advertising is risky. At least this one has a pretty good track record (or why else would people be trying to ban the Happy Meal toys?)

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS To do this you just have to do two things. First figure out who is that non-customer that has the power to influence your shopper. Is it a parent, a child, a spouse, a friend, an authority figure? Second, figure out a message that will resonate with that person. It is powerful and it works.

When Lions Lead Lions

Someone tagged the railroad bridge at the end of our block.

It says, “An army of sheep lead [sic] by lions will always defeat an army of lions lead [sic] by sheep.”

All four cars at the light praised me when I took this picture, thinking that I was going to report it to the authorities.

I took the picture because it gave me pause and made me think. The message would seem to be that the talent of leadership outweighs the talent of the workers. The leaders willing to make the bold moves will inspire their followers to accomplish greater things than leaders with weak ideas and strong followers. In battle that may be true, but in retail I’m not yet convinced.

A great work force without great leadership will ultimately fail.
A great leader without a great work force will ultimately fail.

Oh, they both might stick around by default for a while, but in retail both of these will fall quickly to lion leading lions.

You can spend all your time on training your staff, but if you don’t spend any time training yourself, another retailer will eat your lunch. Likewise, you can spend all your time training yourself, but if you don’t spend equal time training your staff, another retailer will clean your clock.

But when the lions are led by lions, the Savannah is all theirs for the taking.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS If you’re a sheep of a leader, hire a lion to manage your business. If you have a lot of sheep on the front lines, go find some lions to pounce on those customers. Don’t worry about teamwork. Lions work well in a pride. This book will show you how to identify the right type of lion, whether for management or the front lines.

Can You Call in Favors?

Could you call a media person right now and cash in a favor?

Maybe ask a reporter or photographer to cover an event you’re hosting?

Maybe get a little live air-time with the local morning-drive DJ?

Maybe get a quote in the paper?

Maybe get an article on the op-ed page?

Maybe get some air-time on the morning news show?

Maybe guest-host a local TV show?


No???

You have to give to receive. Start giving now. You never know when you might want to ask for that favor.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS What to give? Your time. Your expertise. Your praise. Your support. Your money. Your information. Spend a little time getting to know your local reporters, your local DJ’s, and your local news anchors. Praise them for the work they do. Offer them information that makes them look good/smart (and doesn’t promote you). Build trust by being reliable. Give them scoops. Do it without expectation of anything in return. You’ll cash in later.

A Clean Business is a Happy Business – Three Reasons to Get Out the Paint Brush

I hadn’t washed my car in weeks. When it was sunny, I didn’t have the time. When I had the time, it was raining. I finally got it done two days ago.

As I was toweling off a few last sprinkles, I felt a little extra bounce in my step. There was a little more pride driving around town in a shiny vehicle. Even walking up to it, I thought my Pilot winked at me in the sun. The car was cleaner. I felt better. More pride.

Yes, a clean car is a happy car.

I felt the exact same way a few weeks ago. The cottonwood trees had slowed down enough for us to put a fresh coat of paint on the front of the store. Coincidentally, our business skyrocketed 20% after the paint job.

A clean store is a happy store.

I’m smart enough to know that our success the past three weeks is not just because we painted the building, but never underestimate the power of a simple cleaning job.

  • It puts you and your staff in a happy mood. A happy staff delights your customers more.
  • It sends a signal to your customers that you care about your business and, likewise, that you will care about them.
  • It sends a signal to your customers that you are fresh and new and on top of things.

Those last two are the kickers. A fresh coat of paint on the outside of your building is often a much cheaper and more powerful marketing tool than a month of billboard and newspaper ads.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Landscaping, painting the inside walls, moving the merchandise around, mopping/shampooing the floors, and updating the signs all have the same effect. The inside stuff, however, doesn’t send those signals to the outside world, only to the current customer base who already love you despite your messiness.

PPS None of that cleaning matters, however, if you aren’t first taking damn good care of your customers. Otherwise it’s just a band-aid on an amputation. If you don’t have a capital fund for repairs and improvements, take the money from your advertising budget, not your customer service training budget.

The Best Sweepstakes/Email for Small Businesses

You all know I’m a fan of Roy H. Williams, aka The Wizard of Ads. (Look down the right-hand column to see how many posts I’ve tagged him.)

You also know I have studied a number of Wizard of Ads Partners like Tim Miles and Jeff Sexton and follow a lot of their work.

You also know that I am a life-long learner always looking for more information to consume to be better at what I do. If you’re reading this blog, it is likely that you are, too.

That’s why I’m telling you to follow this link…

http://www.wizardacademy.org/giveaways/foundations-of-the-academy/

The link will take you to a Sweepstakes offer of over $3000 in materials from Roy and others associated with Wizard Academy.

Most importantly, it will sign you up for an email newsletter that will bring you amazing articles from a wide variety of Wizard Academy Alumni – Nobel prize winners, best-selling authors, NASA scientists (yes, true rocket scientists!), marketing wizards, and business owners just like you and me.

I hope you win. (The emails alone will make us all winners.)

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I entered. I also get extra entries when I send people to enter, but I’m not sure if this blog will qualify to get me those extra entries (you can tell them Phil sent you). That’s okay. I’m more about getting you signed up for the email and all the goodies in it (I’ve already received one email and found tons of value). That’s the real value.

Go BIG or Go Home – A Lesson in PR

Your store just isn’t that important. You aren’t creating hundreds/thousands of jobs at one time. You aren’t attracting tens of thousands of people into town all at once. You aren’t creating multi-millions of dollars of economic impact. You aren’t raising tens of thousands of dollars for charity.

The news media isn’t going to cover you just because you’re nice and you’re local.

There are really only two ways for indie retailers to get into the media spotlight.

BE THE EXPERT

Set yourself up as the expert in your field by following this plan:

  1. Get the contact info for every reporter out there – print, online, radio and TV. 
  2. Follow their stories – all of them – to find out who is most likely to write about something in your field.
  3. Every time they write anything close to your industry, send them a note of praise for the article.
  4. When possible, send them a link to another source of info (not you, but a third party) for more information about the topics on which they have written.
  5. Continue until they begin to trust you as a reliable source of info.
  6. Wait for them to start asking your opinion.
  7. Give it freely, clearly, in sound bites, and backed up with reliable, checkable facts.

GO BIG OR GO HOME

Set yourself up in the spotlight by following this plan:

  1. Attend events where media coverage is already present. 
  2. Do something within the framework of the event that absolutely HAS to get noticed.
  3. Be larger than life. Take it to the extreme!

I just participated in our Fitness Council’s Smart Commute High Heel Bike Ride. The event includes people biking in heels and a fashion show where they crown the King & Queen. This is what I wore…

Yeah, I was voted King (or queen, I forget). Yeah, we’re getting a lot of coverage for it. Yeah, people are smiling. “We’re here to make you smile!” 

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS When you  get your chance to shine in the spotlight, remember that you have to be over-the-top if you want to generate word of mouth. People may think you’re crazy, but in a cunning way. Make sure, however, that what you do is within the framework of the event or they will just think you’re plain crazy.

The Signals You Unwittingly Send to Your Customers

While we’re on the topic of Signals you send your customers, here are few more to think about…

The weeds growing in the bushes next to your store. Gee, they must not be into taking care of their environment. I wonder what else they don’t take care of.

The old, faded, peeling window clings from companies you no longer carry. Gee, I guess they don’t have any of the new stuff I just saw online.

The sloppy, unorganized displays with no rhyme, reason, or order. Gee, I hope I don’t have to ask them to find something. That could take all day.

The gum-chewing sales clerk leaning over the counter. Gee, I hope I don’t have to ask her any questions. I doubt she knows anything.

The misspelled signs. Gee, doesn’t anyone proofread anymore. They certainly aren’t the brightest bulbs in the socket.

Everything you do (or don’t do) sends a signal, one way or another. Make sure you are sending out the right message.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS The best signal is one that is consistent with your Character Diamond. When you make sure that every single signal matches your Core Values, magic is bound to happen.

You Wouldn’t do THAT to Your Customer, Would You?

Would you treat your customer with kindness right up until the end and then kick them in the face after they gave you their money?

No, of course you wouldn’t. Yet you do.

Would you tell your customers – Don’t come around here… We don’t want you… We’re all about ourselves, not you… – but let them in and treat them kindly if they by some miracle showed up anyway?

No, of course you wouldn’t. Yet you do.

If you have a really tight, restrictive return policy, you are doing that to your customers All. The. Time.

If you are generous to a fault, bending over backwards to give the best possible customer service, making sure all the customer’s questions are answered and all her fears assuaged, going over-the-top to do more than she expected, then you are offering the kind of customer service that specialty stores should be giving.

But all that good can be undone the moment she runs into your return policy and it is just over 30 days from purchase, or she took it out of the box only to discover it wasn’t what she thought, or she got duplicates as gifts, or she lost her receipt, or she has a defective/missing part, or, or, or. If she runs into a hassle trying to return an item, it may be the last time she visits your store.

You may have won the sale, but you lost the war.

Or let’s say you are upfront about your restrictive, me-first, return policy. You might as well shout to the customer that her concerns are secondary to yours. You might as well tell her that she takes a backseat to you. That you have your own back, not hers.

You think it is fine because no one complains about your return policy. They aren’t complaining because they aren’t even showing up. You gave them the reason not to shop with you in the first place, so they never got to see your wonderfully trained staff, how fabulously you’ve merchandised the store, or the way you meticulously curated your selection to only have the finest stuff.

Here are two concepts you should wrap your head around regarding your return policy.

First, if you’ve done all the heavy lifting – making sure you met the customers needs by finding her the perfect solution to her problem and made her feel great about her purchase – then you aren’t likely to have many returns to worry about in the first place. And when you do get that return, you get another chance to turn a customer into an evangelist for your store.

Second, if you have a really liberal return policy and someone actually does try to take advantage of you time and time again, you can fire that one customer without pissing off all the rest.

Return policies are really about the Signal you send your customer. Make a liberal return policy and you are telling your customer two really powerful things.

  1. We believe strongly in the merchandise we sell. So much so that we promise to take it back for whatever reason.
  2. We believe strongly in taking the utmost care of you. So much so that we’ll do anything to make you happy.

It really won’t cost you any more in the long run. In fact, I’m willing to bet it will make you more in the long run. Just ask Nordstrom’s and L.L. Bean.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS The best thing to do is to look at all of your customer policies and decide who they favor – you or your customer. If they favor you, change them. Change them now before you scare away another customer or kick her in the face.

Three is Better Than One

Last fall we installed a chalkboard on the side of our building with the words MY BEST MEMORY IS… at the top and lines for people to fill in the blanks.

We did it for three reasons.

1. Because we knew it would generate talk. It did, too. Lots of it. We got press for it. We got a lot of customers talking about it. It it was the kind of Over-the-Top Design that generates Word-of-Mouth.

2. Because we wanted more reasons for customers to visit and engage with our store. Sure, it was outside, but it still got people into the neighborhood. As a destination store on the outskirts of downtown, we have to get our own traffic. There is no mall or DDA or anyone else out there trying to draw us a crowd.

3. Because we believe in art, imagination and creativity. And we’re on an official “art walk”. The sidewalk along our building is part of the River Art Walk that connects the downtown to the Armory Arts Village north of town. Now some might argue (correctly) that until we put the board up, there was no art along the art walk. So we’re just doing our part to make the walk what it should be.

Mostly, however, we did it because it fits into our Character Diamond of Fun, Helpful, Educational & Nostalgic and our motto of We’re here to make you smile.

One board definitely did that. We think three will do it even better.

We just put up two more boards to compliment the first. Within minutes people were writing on them.

Over-the-Top Design that gets people to talk about you, visit you, and engage with you is worth the investment. When it fits with your Character Diamond, too, it’s a grand-slam-dunk-no-brainer.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Yes, it helps that we own the building. It also helps that we call it art and not a sign because they would definitely be in violation of our city’s overly strict and business-unfriendly sign ordinance. But that’s a post for another day.

Team Building and Business Building – The Principles are the Same

There is an article floating around about Team Building Gone Bad.

As a business owner, you’ve heard about Team Building – doing activities to help bring the team closer together and increase communication, cooperation, and trust. You’ve probably thought about doing something with your own staff.

Before you do, do me (and your staff) a favor. Write down a clear goal of what you hope to accomplish with your efforts. Then, when you go to sign up for an activity under the guise of team building, if the facilitator doesn’t ask to see that goal, run away. They don’t know a thing about team building.

I do. I used to be a facilitator. I used to train facilitators. When I read the article above, it got me thinking about how team building really depends on the skill of the facilitator more than the activity chosen.

I wrote this on a friend’s FB page when he linked to the article…

A good facilitator knows [that there are five stages of development in a group] and would never let any group do the stuff that was talked about in this article without a lot of prep work and other activities done first.

A good facilitator would know clearly the goals of the team building and plan activities to specifically address those goals.

A good facilitator would stop an activity before it got out of control, knowing that the activity is secondary to the lesson to be learned.

A good facilitator would make safety the number one priority (and number two and number three) because without a certain level of emotional and physical safety guaranteed, no one will take any perceived risks.

A good facilitator would follow up because team dynamics are always changing. Just kick-starting a new culture does not mean that the changes will hold.

It got me to thinking that the same exact principles apply to Business Building. Let’s replace facilitator with manager and team building/group with business building/business.


A good manager knows that there are five stages of development in a business (Tim Mile’s First Order of Business) and would never let any business do the stuff that was talked about in this article without a lot of prep work and other activities done first.

A good manager would know clearly the goals of the business and plan activities to specifically address those goals.

A good manager would stop an activity before it got out of control, knowing that the activity is secondary to the lesson to be learned (and sales to be made).

A good manager would make safety the number one priority (and number two and number three) because without a certain level of emotional and physical safety guaranteed, no one will take any perceived risks (this applies to customers and employees).

A good manager would follow up because business dynamics are always changing. Just kick-starting a new culture does not mean that the changes will hold.

Make sure you hire a good facilitator before you embark on any Team Building. Make sure you hire a good manager before you embark on any Business Building.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I dusted off an old paper I wrote on Team Building and am getting it ready for the Freebies section of my website. If you’re interested in seeing a copy before I get the site updated, send me an email.