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Author: Phil Wrzesinski

Phil Wrzesinski is the National Sales Manager of HABA USA toy company, a Former Top-Level, Award-Winning Retailer, a Thought-Provoking Speaker, a Prolific Author, a 10-Handicap Golfer, an Entertaining Singer/Songwriter, and a Klutz Kid who enjoys anything to do with the water (including drinking it fermented with hops and barley), anything to do with helping local independent businesses thrive, and anything that puts a smile on peoples' faces.

The Meet and Greet: Starting the Relationship Off Properly

“Always Be Closing.”

Alec Baldwin said it back in 1992 in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross and we’ve all been following lock-step behind him ever since.

If your business is one-and-done like Halloween USA, or you’re running a huge clearance, or you’re going out of business, that might be a sound strategy. But if you’re hoping to be in business for the next several years or even decades, you’re missing an important element when you only focus on the end of a transaction.

You’re missing the critical relationship-building at the beginning that not only makes the close easier, but makes the repeat and referral visits much more likely.

I have just posted a new FREE eBook on the Free Resources page of my website called The Meet and Greet (follow the link to download the pdf). It is based on the new presentation I did for the Independent Garden Center Show a couple weeks ago. The download tells you what to do and why to do it.

One of my favorite staff trainings was the Dollars on the Table Game

The purpose of today’s blog is to give you some ways to implement these ideas and teach this to your front line sales staff.

(Hint: before you read any further, you might want to download and read The Meet and Greet first.)

TAKE A PICTURE

You might walk through your front door every day. If you do, you’ve become blind to what first-time customers see. (If you walk through the back door, then you are really blind to what they see.) The best thing to do is take a high resolution picture of the front entryway. Then blow it up onto the largest screen you can and start evaluating it. The photo is unforgiving and reveals the blemishes that have faded into the background for you. You’ll immediately see what needs sprucing up and what needs some TLC. Get your staff involved, too. Have them look at the picture with a critical eye.

ROLE PLAY

Telling someone how to meet a customer and actually doing it are two different things. Since I have given you a script to use, the best way to teach your staff is to have them grab a clipboard (or other prop) and do the walk-by. They can walk by you or another staff person or even a mannequin. I once had my staff grab a clipboard and time themselves doing a slow crawl around the store. The timing was not to see who could do it the fastest, but to measure how long a typical stroll would last, and then see how long it lasted with live customers. It was an eye-opener for them.

BEST SOLUTION GAME

Have each person on your team select a basic product off the shelf. Have them present the product with a focus on what problems it solves. Once you’ve figured out the problem it solves, then brainstorm as a team what product would “best” solve that same problem. It might be the same product. It might be something different. This game gets the staff into a mindset of always looking for the best solution to whatever problem a customer has.

POINT OF CONTACT

Take random photos off the internet of customers shopping. Put them up on a big screen and ask your team to find a point of contact, some kind of conversation starter that has nothing to do with shopping. Practice this several times until it becomes so natural they are shouting out answers as soon as the photos appear.

THE NAME GAME

Make it a game to see how many customer names each person can remember between staff trainings. Give out prizes. Share what people are doing to learn and then remember those names.

QUESTIONS GAME

Have two sales people square off, each with a product they would like to sell. Have them try to sell each other their product with one rule. They can only ask questions. No statements (even as answers to the other person’s question). At first this game seems simple and stupid. But eventually they start to get that asking question that have nothing to do with the product, but that have to do with the customer, are much more effective. Advanced Level: They can only ask open-ended questions that cannot be answered with yes or no.

DOLLARS ON THE TABLE

I played a memory matching game where I put forty dollar bills on a table with forty different statements on the back of the dollar bills (email me for a list of the statements). The statements either said, “I earned this dollar …” or “I left this dollar on the table …” The game was a simple. Turn over two dollars. Read them out loud. If they are both “earned” dollars, you get to keep them. If one or both is a “left on table” leave them both on the table. We played until all the bills were read. Some people got money, others did not. The lessons were two-fold. One, life is not fair. Two, our job is to not leave money on the table—and now you know what to do.

There you go. Six ways to get the most out of The Meet and Greet.

By the way, if you are reading this list of training ideas and thinking to yourself, “but we don’t do trainings like this,” you might want to think again. Check out the Free Resource Staff Meetings Everyone Wants to Attend. It will open your eyes to ways to make your meetings and trainings more fun, more effective, and better attended.

Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Those were quick and easy descriptions of games and activities I have done with my staff with much success. If you have questions or want to know more about each activity, simply shoot me an email.

PPS Today is about Opening the Sale. Tomorrow I’ll post on Closing the Sale (I have my own take on that, too.)

Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem

I was a little harsh last week on a radio station for playing eighteen commercials in a row. I said they were purely paying lip service to their advertisers (their customers) by putting them into a block that long where it would be hard to stand out and be memorable.

Yeah, part of that stand-out-and-be-memorable burden lands squarely on the shoulders of the advertiser, but the radio station did them no favors. From the outside it looked like the radio station was trying to decrease their customers’ chances of success and thus decrease their chances of being repeat customers by scheduling the ads in the least effective way.

What was really happening was the radio station was choosing between two distinct and different customers with distinct and different needs. They were choosing listeners over advertisers.

Image result for listening to the radioThe radio station needs listeners. Those are as critical to the station’s success as the advertisers. Without listeners there are no businesses lining up to pay to reach those listeners. Therefore, radio stations develop programming designed to attract the most possible listeners. Gimmicks like 25-minute rock blocks are designed to attract listeners and keep them from switching channels.

When you’re the only station in your market playing your genre of music, those gimmicks are unnecessary. But when you’re competing with other stations playing the same music, the fight for listeners is real. The winner gets to charge more for advertising. Unfortunately, if the winner, in the process of getting listeners, convinces the advertisers that “radio doesn’t work,” they not only bring their own station down, they ruin it for other stations as well.

There is a parallel to indie retail.

If you fail to service a customer in your independent retail store, you jade the experience of shopping local for that customer, affecting her propensity to shop at other local stores.

Here is where the parallel gets interesting …

Most radio stations have no clue that scheduling eighteen ads in a row is hurting their paying customers. Most radio stations have no clue that writing boring, sounds-like-everyone-else commercials is hurting their paying customers. Most radio stations have no clue that scheduling ad campaigns that don’t reach the same listener at least 3x per week are hurting their paying customers. They get so focused on their listeners that they forget to take care of their customers.

The radio stations think that just by having their advertisers on the air those businesses will grow leaps and bounds thanks to the listeners they have attracted. (That’s the sales pitch they give you.)

Most indie retailers have had no training on customer service. Most indie retailers have invested no money into training programs or services to help increase the level of service they offer their customers. Most indie retailers have no formal training program for their front line staff to help them be better servants and salespeople.  We get so focused on the products, prices, and promotions we offer that we forget that our real goal is to service the customers.

Most indie retailers, however, believe they offer better customer service than their competitors and that if they just have the right products, their customers will be happy.

How? By accident? Just because they “care” more?

As an indie retailer you have a much easier opportunity to offer better service than your competitors. First, you have a better customer-to-sales-associate ratio. That allows for more one-to-one sales (assuming you have more than one person working at all times.) Second, you often have the owner—someone passionate and thoroughly knowledgeable on the products—on your sales floor. Third, you can take on the mindset of being awesome, compared to the corporate giants who are just trying not to be lousy.

Whether you take advantage of that opportunity or not, however, is a choice as clearcut as whether a radio station runs eighteen ads in a row.

Here is a place to start.

Two weeks ago I did five presentations at the Independent Garden Center Show on selling and customer service (which go hand in hand). Those presentations were:

  • The Meet & Greet: Working the First Step to the Sale
  • You’ll Score the Sale with Assumptive Selling
  • How to Push for the ‘Yes’—Without Being Pushy
  • Ten Mistakes that Sideline the Sale
  • Yes You Can Get Millennials to Shop in Your Store

Over the next two weeks I will be posting the notes to these presentations in the Free Resources section. Each time I post a new pdf, I will write a blog that focuses on different ways you can teach these concepts to your sales and front line staff. Knowing it yourself and teaching it to your staff are two different beasts.

(Note: those were the titles I used at the IGC Show. The bold words will be in the titles of the pdfs as I post them.)

Not only will you and your team raise your own bar of customer service while selling more at the same time, when your customers run into their friends who won’t shop local because of their experience somewhere else, your customers will be saying, “Oh, then you need to go to …”

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Okay, maybe this time I am being a little harsh on the retailers. Here is the thing. If a retailer ever thinks he or she knows it all, that retailer is part of the problem, not the solution. I spent six months researching those five topics above and learned things in the process I wish I had known years ago. I also learned better, more efficient ways we could have done what we were already doing. Even if it is tweaks around the edges, when you take on the mindset of personal growth and individual growth, it will help your business growth.

PPS I understand the balance for radio stations between catering to the listeners and catering to the advertisers. It is a fine line every advertising-revenue-based entertainment venue must walk. But if radio stations would start by looking at how best to help their paying customers, they might just find a way to create programming that serves both needs. Imagine the radio station where you didn’t mind listening to the ads because they were interesting, heartfelt, memorable, fun, and helpful. Heck, a station like that might just get a few more listeners regardless of their musical genre. Likewise, if a retailer would start by looking at the best ways to service a customer, that retailer would know exactly what products, prices, and promotions make the most sense.

Are Your Ads Standing Out or Getting Lost?

Last Monday I had to rent a van to move some furniture for my son’s new apartment at college. While the rental went smooth, as did the delivery of the furniture, I did something I hadn’t done in a while. I listened to FM radio. In my vehicle my phone is connected via Bluetooth so I listen to my own playlists. In the rental van I didn’t have that opportunity.

I tuned in a classic rock station out of Lansing (94.9 WMMQ) until it broke up as we got closer to Ann Arbor. There I was able to get a classic rock station out of Detroit (94.7 WCSX – yeah, didn’t have to move the needle much). 

Image result for old radio in carOn the ride home, as 94.7 was breaking up, I switched back to 94.9 just as a song was fading out and an ad-block was starting. Nine minutes and eighteen 30-second ads later, the commercials ended and the station started up a 25-minute rock-block.

Nine minutes of advertising! Eighteen advertisers all in a row!

Two days later and I can only remember one of the ads. It was about a golf scramble. I don’t remember when, where, or who it was supporting. I just remember that it didn’t make me want to play golf or support the charity (the only two reasons you would overspend for an outing like this).

The other seventeen ads had nothing memorable. There was a cheap poke at men being stupid, although I forget why. I’m pretty sure there was a car ad with a bunch of numbers thrown at me for how much down, how much a month, and how much interest over how many months if I was an employee. There had to be a drug ad because I distinctly remember being bombarded with all the legal fine print talk of all the ways this drug will make my life worse.

That’s it. That’s all I can remember of eighteen advertisers in an ad block I listened to intently.

How much do you think someone who doesn’t care about advertising is going to remember?

This isn’t a knock on radio. (Although if I were an advertiser on that station, I would be drawing up my contract to make sure I was never in a block longer than four minutes. It is hard enough to stand out among eight commercials, let alone eighteen.) This is a knock on lack of creativity and lack of understanding just how much we tune out advertising.

If you want to get someone’s attention, you have to say something unexpected. If you want them to remember you, you have to make them feel something—anything—happy, sad, angry, nostalgic, or even frustration!

I might have remembered your ad if you ran something like this …

I served them ice cream. 8:30 in the morning and I served my staff ice cream. Some looked at me like I was crazy. Others dug right in. Yeah, I’m a little unconventional that way. Kinda like how we staff the store. I have more staff on the floor than stores double our size. Some think I’m crazy. Others love it. There’s always someone available to help you. It takes a little more ice cream, but it’s worth every scoop. Toy House in downtown Jackson. We’re here to make you smile.

Or this …

She almost fell out of the pew. Her pastor actually called Toy House the Promised Land for kids. Right there in front of a packed church. The lady on her left leaned over and said, “You work there, don’t you?” She nodded. The lady leaned in again, “I love that place.” She couldn’t help but smile. “Me too,” she whispered back. It’s the promised land for kids and adults. Just ask the lady sitting on your left. Toy House and Baby Too in downtown Jackson. We’re here to make you smile.

Your advertising is up against a bunch of obstacles. First, our brains are wired to tune out all ads. Second, we purposefully do what we can to avoid ads. Third, your ad is competing to be seen and heard among thousands of other ads.

  1. Boring doesn’t cut it.
  2. Data doesn’t cut it (see rule #1)
  3. “Me too” ads that sound like everyone else’s ads doesn’t cut it.
  4. An ad that doesn’t connect emotionally doesn’t cut it.

Get me interested by saying something different and original. Then make me feel something. That’s how ads truly work.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS This doesn’t just apply to radio ads. This applies to Facebook and all other social media. This applies to your email newsletter. This applies to the posters you put up in your store about upcoming events. Do something surprising, unexpected, and heartfelt. It doesn’t cost you more—but it does make you more.

PPS This actually is a knock on radio, this station specifically. Just like your goal is to get your customer to want to come back, the radio station’s goal is to want to get their advertisers to sign up again. When a radio station puts this many boring ads together in this long of a block, they are simply looking at their advertisers as short-term money. That’s a lets-pay-some-bills block, not a lets-make-our-own-customers-happy-because-their-ads-are-effective block. I would hate to be a salesperson for this station because they are creating a huge base of businesses who “tried radio” but didn’t see the results. Don’t create a bunch of customers who “tried your store” and don’t ever want to come back.

Another Example of Winning – Chicago Style

Have you ever had a meal ruined by a kid at the next table? Half of the time you’re wondering why the parent doesn’t do something to fix the situation. The other half you’re wondering why the parent brought the child to this particular restaurant in the first place. Some kids are too young for certain restaurants. Some parents are too inexperienced to bring their kids to restaurants.

Yet we do take our kids out to eat at inappropriate places all the time. Sometimes it is the only choice we have. It might be cheaper to take the kid than get a sitter. it might be a gift certificate you have to spend before it expires. It might be that you just don’t realize what a nuisance your kids are to others because you’re used to their antics (and/or find them cute).

Whatever the case, if you are a restaurant owner, you’re going to have children in your establishment who might potentially ruin the experience for other guests. Yet, you’re the one who gets ripped on Yelp.

Unless you’re proactive and have planned for this contingency.

I was in Chicago yesterday doing presentations for the Independent Garden Center Show (#IGCShow) at Navy Pier. After my last class I headed out to meet a fellow toy store owner and dear friend for lunch. She directed me to Fahlstrom’s Fresh Fish Market in the Lakeview area. It is both a Fish Market and a Seafood Restaurant. It is apparently run by a smart person who is either a parent or someone who has been annoyed by children in restaurants too often.

Fahlstrom’s Fresh Fish Market, Chicago, IL

Seafood restaurants are typically the kind of restaurant you don’t take young children. They often haven’t developed the palate. While some seafood restaurants offer kiddy meals and other options, this restaurant took it to a whole new level.

You see the picture with all the cereal boxes. That’s only about 35-40% of their wall of cereal. Yes, you can quiet your children with a bowl of cereal. (You can even have one, yourself. They offer a substantial breakfast menu—not all seafood.)

I want you to look more closely at the bottom of the picture, though. Yes, those are children’s books. Books you can read to your children while you wait for your meal. Books your children can look through while you eat your meal. Books that keep kids quiet and occupied.

Kiddy meals are expected at restaurants, but a Wall of Cereal and Books to keep the kids occupied is certainly Surprise and Delight.

My hat is off to you, Fahlstrom’s Fresh Fish Market, for taking it a step above your competitors. My guess is that the children LOVE to go to the fish market with their parents which means they are more willing to behave in the first place. Plus, it increases the average ticket for the restaurant and just might get those kids to develop a taste for seafood at a younger age.

That’s winning times four!

What can you do to take it to the next level?

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

Check out their Bloody Mary!

PS The New Orleans BBQ Shrimp was fabulous! I highly recommend it!

PPS There are little things we do to appease the reluctant tag-along to our primary customer such as the “man seat” near the dressing room in a women’s clothing store. How can you take that to the next level? (Magazines? TV? Beverages?)

Winning the Millennial Vote

While doing research for a presentation I am making next week on selling to Millennials I came across an interesting statistic …

Only 51% of eligible Millennial voters voted in the 2016 presidential election compared to 63% for Generation X, 69% for Boomers, and 70% of everyone older.

Image may contain: Phil Wrzesinski, smiling, closeupOf course, the young adult vote has always been hard to come by, but even by comparison, Millennials are behind the other generations at this stage of their development. When Gen X was this age, they were voting at 57%. When Boomers were at this age, they were voting at 60%.

Some of my other research has led me to a possible conclusion why they vote at such low numbers and it can be summed up in one word—Lies.

Millennials were born into the world of hype. They grew up with marketers lying to them. Their BS Meter is more fully attuned to what they read, see, hear, than any other generation before them. They don’t like being lied to. They don’t like being misled. They can spot the BS faster than the FBI. They’ll forsake you at the first hint of falsehood.

They don’t like politicians in general because of how they constantly twist and mangle the truth.

I believe this is what keeps them away from the polls. If you were to give them a “None of the Above” box to check, not only would more of them would vote, but our candidates would become a lot better.

(Note: I have yet to prove this theory. If you know anyone who already has, let me know.)

As for an election, appealing to the young adult voters is not always the best strategy because they typically are the smallest voting block.

As a retailer, however, this group is the current customers of today and the bulk of your customers tomorrow. How well you reach them now could go a long way toward how well you are doing in the future.

The recipe is simple. Avoid the lies. Avoid the hype. Avoid the misleading statements, half-truths, and generalizations. Be honest, especially about the downside of the product. This group of consumers is savvy. If they don’t figure out the misdirection on their own, their online community will spell it out clear as day.

It might not win you an election, but it will win you a whole lot of long-term customers.

I’ll tell you more of what I’ve learned after next week’s presentation.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Although many generalizations are being made about Millennials, (including the one I made in this blog), I caution you to avoid the stereotypes, especially the negative ones about Millennials being lazy, self-absorbed, and entitled snowflakes. You’ll find an ample supply of those people in every generational group, and plenty of amazing kick-ass-motivated, hard-working Millennials making a difference in this world.

I Thought She Was the Owner

Often someone from my staff would enter my office and say, “I have an idea.” Often I would answer, “Great! Run with it!”

“But don’t you want to hear it first?”
“Is it consistent with our Core Values?”
“Yes.”
“Will it cost the company a lot of money?”
“No.”
“Run with it. I hired and trained you. I trust you.”

In Daniel H. Pink’s book Drive, he shows how “autonomy” is one of the key elements for motivating your staff to do their best. Autonomy gives them a feeling of ownership and a sense of pride. Autonomy also empowers them to make decisions and take care of customers the best way they can.

Drive by Daniel H. Pink

I know. This is scary. But what if they screw up? But what if they don’t make good decisions? But what if they aren’t as good as I am?

Have you ever thought if you hired well and trained well, they just might end up being better than you?

Sure, giving autonomy to your staff is scary, but in the long game it is how you build a winning team.

I was in Athens, GA recently when my tennis shoes died. I went to the New Balance store where Cameron helped me find the perfect pair for my needs. (Did I mention I have odd-sized feet? Oh yeah, yesterday.)

She was smart. She was well-versed on the products she sold. She studied how I walked. She asked questions about what I did when wearing these shoes. She listened, repeated things back to me, asked more questions, then told me why she was suggesting the pairs she suggested. She was amazing!

As I was checking out, I just had to ask, “Are you the owner or manager?”

“Oh no, I just love working here.”

Cameron had the autonomy to make decisions and act as if she owned the place. She was in such control that I believed she was the owner.

That should always be your goal—to hire and train so well that your customers are so impressed by your staff member that they think he or she must be the owner.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Autonomy is letting your team members do the jobs they were hired and trained to do without someone breathing down their neck or constantly looking over their shoulder. Note the word “trained.” Don’t give them autonomy until they are trained, but once trained, set them loose. They’ll make a mistake or two at first, and you’ll help them learn from those mistakes, but in short order they will become the person you expected them to be when you hired them.

How to Not Frustrate Your Customer

I don’t fit in this world very well. My body wasn’t made for standard sizing. I can’t fly certain airlines without being completely miserable, cramped, and in pain. There are some cars I just don’t like to drive because not only does the seat not adjust to my size, the blindspots hit in all the wrong places. And clothing shopping, while nowhere near as crazy as it is for women, is often a struggle for a long-torsoed, long-armed, small-but-wide-footed, heavyset guy like me.

(There’s an opportunity for a women’s clothing manufacturer to start making more custom-fitted clothing instead of the archaic even-numbered-fits-no-one sizing they currently use, but that’s another post for another day.)

I currently own shirts that are XL-Tall, 2XL, 2XL-Tall, 3XL, and 3XL-Tall. Yet my pants and shorts are typically XL. My head is XL, too (I don’t think that’s what people mean when they tell me I have a big head, though.), but gloves and socks are either medium or large. I keep telling myself I will know when I’ve “made it” because I’ll be buying custom-tailored shirts.

One frustration is going to a store, finding a style I like, yet they don’t have it in stock in my size. Either that or the department is such a chaotic mess that I wasn’t going to find the one item left in my size without an army of hunters. That happens often.

Another frustration is not finding a style I like. I’m not very picky, so that only happens occasionally, but there are simple things too often missing in men’s clothing like pockets in the right ergonomic places. (I prefer function over fashion. Keep it simple, stupid.)

The third frustration is not finding someone to help me when either of the first two frustrations happen, or at the very least, not finding someone knowledgeable enough or willing enough to help me. This, more than Amazon or the Internet, is what is killing department stores these days.

Saturday I found a store free of frustration. I’ve talked about this store before because their advertising is a case study for how to advertise right. In fact, it was their advertising that got me into their store. (Sadly, there isn’t one in Jackson, so this trip took way longer than it should.)

The store was Duluth Trading Post. Their shirts have an extra 3″ in length so that they cover and prevent “cracking.” Their 2XL fit me better than any t-shirt I have tried in any size. They even had the same sized shirt in six different styles and dozens of colors.

In fact, for all of their clothing, they had several styles, all deeply stocked in several sizes. If you’re looking for casual men’s clothing, they eliminated the first two frustrations perfectly (plus, if you’ve looked at their ads, they are answering many of the style frustrations people like me who prefer function over fashion desire).

On top of that, they took pretty good care of that third frustration, too. The staff was friendly, helpful, and available. Not pushy, not bored, not preoccupied with other tasks that kept them away from helping me. They were all busy straightening and stocking, but ready to drop what they were doing to answer a question, find another size, or make a suggestion at a moment’s notice.

One major component of a successful advertising campaign is when the experience you have in the store matches the expectations set by the advertising.

In this case, they blew me away. I expected the product to be good based on the ads. I didn’t know the store would be this well staffed and trained, too.

Here is a sign I saw posted throughout the store. Even the way they advertise for help-wanted goes a step above the normal.

When I told the guy I wanted to take a picture of the sign, he said, “Oh, are you going to come work for me?” I told him I didn’t think I could help him much. The company seems to have figured out a lot of what I teach all on their own.

While it is easier to show you what not to do (because there are so many examples out there), it is fun to show you when a store gets something right. Want to do something fun with your staff? Take them on a staff-training field trip to a Duluth Trading Post (they have women’s clothing, and free coffee and water, too.)

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS When I say the experience should match or exceed the expectations caused by the ads, just be cautioned that you shouldn’t go out bragging about your top-notch customer service. That’s a quick recipe for raising the bar of expectation too high to be able to meet it consistently. Instead of telling me you’re great, show me examples of what you do differently. Let me make the determination of how great you are. (And if I believe you are truly great, I’ll tell everyone about you like I just did for Duluth Trading Post.) Fair enough?

Having Fun, Helping Others, Eating Lunch

For the past three weeks I have been making several drives from my home in Jackson to the Oakland County area for lunch. For those of you not in Michigan, Oakland County is one of the three counties (including Wayne and Macomb) that makes up the Greater Detroit Metropolitan area. Oakland County is the northernmost of the three and includes several cities, villages, townships, and lakes.

Oakland County is home to twenty-one Main Street programs in the various cities, villages, and townships, and also home to one of the largest county-wide Main Street support programs. It was Main Street Oakland County (MSOC) that hired me to make these drives each week to do a “Lunch-and-Learn” series of workshops. The workshops are four-week-long tracks on one of three topics: Selling & Customer Service, Marketing & Advertising, or Retail Math.

We rolled this out to three different communities. Two of the communities chose Marketing & Advertising, one chose Selling & Customer Service. All three are reporting back with incredibly positive feedback. Other communities are already bugging MSOC to be included in the next round.

The fun part for me is that I like driving and I love doing these presentations, mostly because I know the difference one or two good tips or techniques can make for a small business.

The fun part for the attendees is that they get a free lunch (or breakfast) and four 45-minute presentations jammed with eye-opening ideas, out-of-the-box thinking, and surprisingly simple techniques to improve their businesses.

The fun part for you is that there is still time to plan a Lunch-and-Learn in your neck of the woods (as long as you are within two hours driving time from Jackson which would include Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Fort Wayne, Toledo, Detroit, Flint, and Lansing areas).

Here are the three tracks with class titles and descriptions.

Option A: Marketing & Advertising

  • Week #1 Boosting Your Brand to Attract the Right Business – A quick lesson in branding to show you how a well-crafted brand makes a huge difference in attracting the right types of customers and business. You’ll learn how to uncover the true value in your brand and make your brand stand out in the crowd
  • Week #2 Marketing Your Business on a Shoestring Budget – Seven different ways you can get the word out about your business and draw traffic in without spending a fortune. You’ll learn how to leverage your talents and time to attract more customers to your business right away.
  • Week #3 Making Your Ads More Effective – We hate ads, not because there are too many, but because most ads suck. This presentation will show you the six principles that make the difference between your ad being remembered and acted upon or being simply ignored. You’ll learn techniques even the most highly paid professionals sometimes get wrong, and how you can apply them to your own advertising efforts
  • Week #4 Generating Word-of-Mouth Advertising – We all know Word-of-Mouth advertising is far more effective than traditional advertising, but do you know what it takes to actually get your customers to talk about you? This presentation shows you four proven ways you can generate word-of-mouth advertising. You’ll walk away with tips and techniques that get people talking the very next day.

Option B: Selling and Customer Service

  • Week #1 Selling in a Showrooming World – Online shopping is here to stay. So is the concept of Showrooming, where a customer uses your store to touch and feel the product before ordering it online cheaper. This presentation shows you the two types of customers, how to recognize them, and the very different ways you sell to them. Learn this and you’ll close far more sales than ever before.
  • Week #2 Raising the Bar on Customer Service – Every store thinks they offer Great Customer Service, but every customer can regale several stories where the customer service fell far short. This presentation gives you a different perspective on customer service and shows you how to up your game so that Great Customer Service is only the minimum. You’ll learn how to surprise and delight customers at every turn.
  • Week #3 Building the Perfect Salesperson – Finding the right salesperson is the key for any organization. But how do you identify the perfect fit? This presentation will change the way you look at interviewing and hiring and even training. When you’re done you’ll have a better understanding of how the best companies find the best employees time and time again.
  • Week #4 Training and Motivating Your Team to Perform Their Best – The carrot and stick might be good for a donkey, but it won’t get the best out of your team. This presentation will show you what really motivates people to do their best work and how to get the kind of creativity from your team that sets you apart. You’ll also learn how to turn staff meetings and training times into something your staff looks forward to attending.

Option C: Retail Math

  • Week #1 Reading Your Financial Statements – Your accountant will be glad you attended. This presentation will show you in layman’s terms how to read the two most common financial statements – the Profit & Loss and the Balance Sheet. You’ll learn how they are calculated, what they show, and an intuitive way to use them to check the financial health of your company. It isn’t as scary as it sounds.
  • Week #2 Inventory Management – Cash is King. In retail, the biggest use of your cash is your inventory. This presentation will show you simple and smart ways to manage your inventory levels better including how Open-to-Buy programs work and easy ways to increase cash flow. You’ll learn how to turn slow moving merchandise into cash and make your inventory work for you.
  • Week #3 Pricing for Profit – Most businesses leave thousands of dollars on the table because they don’t understand the principles behind how to properly price their products or services. This presentation shows you how you can raise prices and increase unit sales by harnessing the power of perception. Learn these techniques and you’ll start making more money the very first day.
  • Week #4 Unlocking the Hidden Cash in Your Business – There is more to retail than just buying and selling product. This presentation will show you some different ways to measure your business and some simple ways to make a little extra cash that might just be the difference you need to pay yourself a bonus this year.

If you just read those and said, “Dang, I could use this!” pass this post along to your DDA Director, your Chamber of Commerce, your Main Street Director, your Economic Development Director, your Shop Local director, and tell them, “Dang, we could use this!”

(Heck, you don’t even need one of those organizations. Just get a few other small businesses together and give me a call.)

Then contact me. We’ll go over what it would cost, creative ways to finance it, how to get the food and venues, and what dates to schedule this fall to have some fun helping small businesses grow and thrive, all while having lunch.

Sound yummy to you?

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Not within that two-hour drive? No worries. Instead of four lunches, we’ll do one big brunch and put all four lessons into a three-hour workshop. Call me.

PPS The beauty of what you’ll learn in these tracks is that the dividends are immediate. With many of the lessons you’ll see results right away. Having this information fresh in your mind leading into the busy holiday season will make a huge impact on your bottom line this year. Lets get some dates locked in now.

PPPS If you’re in Oakland County, MSOC is already working on the budget for 2019. Contact John Bry at MSOC and let him know you want in. If you want something this fall, however, check with the other organizations in your community to see if they will help you organize this.

Delegate to Make Two People Happy

I started working full time at Toy House on April 30, 1993. It wasn’t my first job at Toy House. That started when I was the cute kid on the float in the Rose Parade through downtown Jackson at the age of three. At seven I was getting 10 cents and hour to put price tags on boxes. At twelve I got paid to mow the lawns. In 1980 I showed up the day after my 14th birthday with work permit in hand to work on the sales floor selling handheld electronic games.

My dad convinced me to come back to the store full time in 1993 to help expand the baby department. We had a baby department since 1962 when my grandfather bought out Bennet’s Furniture that had been located across the street from the store at the corner of First and Franklin Streets. Dad felt there was a lot of room for growth in that area. (He was right.)

By 1996 the baby department was growing fast. Dad decided it was time to shed more of his responsibilities. The first was marketing. Dad never really liked marketing and advertising. He wasn’t the creative type. He didn’t want to deal with the salespeople. He didn’t want to craft any messages. On the other hand, I loved it.

The second task dad turned over to me was hiring. My dad is introverted. He likes his alone time to recharge his batteries. Oh sure, he can be outgoing and friendly when he wants, but he prefers to work alone. Interviewing employees, hiring them, and training them were not high on dad’s list of favorite things to do.

Although my dad was fairly quick to delegate certain tasks over to me, it took me time to appreciate how he delegated. Prior to my arrival I had heard he had a hard time letting anything go. Partly because he knew he could do it faster and better, partly because he didn’t want to spend his time teaching someone else. I felt both of those as I took over my first two roles. He lamented how much time and energy I put into those roles yet left me to my own devices to figure things out for myself.

In retrospect, I appreciate how he delegated because he gave me room to develop my own style and systems for doing those tasks. Sure, we butted heads often on how and what I was doing in those roles, mostly over budgetary concerns as he still controlled the purse strings. And there were days I felt he was holding me back. But in the long run it worked out quite well for both of us. He got rid of two tasks he never really liked and I got to do two tasks I really loved.

That’s what this post is about—delegating the tasks you don’t want to do to someone who wants to do them.

If you truly want to make your business more fun, hire someone who loves to do the stuff you hate to do.

 

That used to be my office!

I hate filing papers. My desk is a mess. My piles are everywhere. I know what is in each pile, but I still need to pick up the pile and sort through it to find what I want. At Toy House my desk was equally as messy. So I hired an office manager/bookkeeper who loved filing and keeping things organized.

By giving her free reign to clean up my office, I made both of us happy. It also freed me up to do the things I loved to do.

I know there are some things you have to do that you cannot easily delegate such as paying bills, taxes, etc. But you can always ask yourself this question. “If I pay someone else to do that stuff, will it free me up to make more money so that I can afford to pay that person?”

You might be surprised how many times you can actually answer yes to that question. When you do delegate those things, you find you enjoy your business that much more.

When you delegate you have a couple options. You can teach them how you want it done or you can let them figure out their own way. My dad did the latter. Since I loved those two tasks so much, I spent a lot of time learning new and better ways to do them. I did the same with my office manager. I showed her what we had done, but then let her figure out better ways to do it.

After my office manager got me organized!

When you find people passionate about doing a task you hate, they will often find a better way to do it than you ever could.

When you run your own small business you wear many different hats, often too many hats. See how many of the hats you hate to wear that you can pass on to someone else. Not only will it free you up to wear your other hats better, the people you delegate to will wear those hats you hated better than you did.

That will make a lot of people happy, you most of all.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Once I saw the light, delegating became a lot easier for me. Whenever a team member came in and said, “I have an idea,” I would often respond, “As long as it is consistent with our Core Values, run with it.”

“But don’t you want to hear what it is?”

“No. I trust you. After all, I hired you.”

PPS It seems almost too simple, but so many people get this one wrong. Hire people who love to do what you want them to do and they’ll not only work their tails off, they’ll find better ways to do what you want them to do, and they’ll be happy to do so.

Getting the Help You Want

Ever have one of those moments where things just clicked for you and everything that was a little hazy before now came into focus? I feel blessed that I have had several of those moments in my life and business career. One of them happened in October 2006. I wrote the following script for a radio ad looking for seasonal help at Toy House.

“Are you reliable and trustworthy?  Positive and cheerful?  Friendly and outgoing?  Do you love to help others, no matter how difficult the challenge might be?  Are you continually seeking to improve yourself, to be better tomorrow than you were today?  Are you willing to give up your weekends just to bring smiles to people’s faces?  Do you desire to work for a company that believes in the value of education, the importance of family, and the merit of hard work?  Are you willing to forgo upward mobility for stability and satisfaction of a job well done?  Apply in person at Toy House, 400 North Mechanic Street, downtown Jackson.”

Image result for help wanted adThis ad was a far cry different from previous help-wanted ads.

This was the first I ran that was more about the person than about the job.

Two things happened when I ran this ad.

First, I had fewer applicants than in previous years. This is not a knock on radio because I had used radio several times looking for seasonal employees.

Second, the quality of applicants went up dramatically. I had far more people I was excited to interview than in any year prior.

Actually, three things happened. the third was that I started to see a cultural shift in the team. Oh don’t get me wrong. We had a crack staff in 2006 and, for the most part, for most of our 57 years in business at that point. The sweetest music to my ears was when people told me they loved hiring former Toy House employees because of the quality people they would get.

After running that ad in 2006, however, I never ran a help-wanted ad again. I made a few posts on Facebook. I put a blurb in the email newsletters I would send out. But I didn’t have to pay for another ad. Partly because I found seasonal people who came back year after year for the season. Partly because the team really began to embrace those traits more openly, which, in turn, attracted more people who shared those traits, without even having to run ads.

It really was amazing to see the difference in the quality of people I attracted when I made the help-wanted ad about the person and not the job. Some people heard that radio ad and said, “Oh wow! He’s talking about me!” Others heard it and said, “No way. Not for me.” 

When you write your classified about the person, not the job, you are pre-selecting candidates who believe they have the right traits for the job. You’ll attract more of what you want, less of what you don’t want, and have a better pool (even if smaller) of qualified applicants.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I’ll be teaching this along with other tips and techniques for “Building a Better Salesperson” for Main Street Royal Oak tomorrow at noon at Cafe Muse on S. Washington in Royal Oak. Hope you can join me.