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.

January 12, 2018

Two Lessons From Selling a House

I’m typing this while surrounded by boxes, some full, some waiting to be filled. I’ve told you many times I’m not the most organized guy. I fear that most of the contents of my home office are just going to get dumped into whatever open containers are left, to be sorted (if at all) at some later date.

Yes, my house sold. It took seventeen months from listing to closing.

It took seventeen months, a dozen gallons of paint, a new stove, two dozen borrowed items for staging, fifteen open houses, four prices changes (the last one upward), and three written descriptions of the house before the sale happened.

I want to talk about those last two.

For the first year, we started with the house listed at $249,900, hoping to get $230,000 plus. We listed in late July 2016 so we missed the window for the families who wanted to move over the summer and be in the new place before school started. Although we had some traffic early on, most people complained about the old, dated kitchen.

Our old, dated kitchen

To their credit, the kitchen was old. And dated. And included four different types of wood (light maple pergo floors, dark cherry cabinets, dark oak trim around a tile counter, and medium oak trim around the light fixtures, oh and wood paneling—yuck!) But it was also functional and efficient and filled with good, usable storage.

No offers.

We lowered the price to $245,000 and then to $239,900 hoping to refresh the listing (by the way, the comparable values put it in the $250,000 range.) The rest of the first year was all the same. Plenty of traffic. Everyone had the same comments. Loved the location. Loved the spacious rooms. But the kitchen was dated. A few commented that the price was too high because of the kitchen.

No offers.

At the end of the first year I took it off the market for a month. I painted the remaining rooms that had yet to be painted, re-staged it, and put it back on the market at $259,900.

I also rewrote the listing to include the following paragraph …

The kitchen is dated—but completely functional—and will serve you well until you decide to build the kitchen of your dreams and turn this house into the home you’ve always wanted.

The higher price meant fewer lookers, but one thing changed dramatically. Not one person mentioned the kitchen as being an issue. Surprisingly, no one mentioned the price either.

Those two changes led us to the buyer we needed—someone who would see the house for the incredible value that it is, and not be scared away that the kitchen has to be redone.

Through our new price and new description we eliminated all the traffic that was pointless, and only brought the traffic that would be interested in a house like ours.

NEW PRICE

As I have been teaching for years, price is a perception game. In housing, that game has changed dramatically thanks to the Internet. Almost every house hunter goes online first. One of the first filters you use is price. You put a minimum and maximum price into the filters and your search appears. With a price of $249,900, we were at the top end of the $250,000 filter. People who put $250,000 as their top filter are not looking to buy a $249,900 house that needs a $20,000 kitchen. We needed to get out of that search mode.

Going to $259,900 put us into searches for people who put $300,000 as their upper limit. Now our $259,900 price looked like a value. Even with $30K worth of work, the buyer will have a $300,000 house for less than $300,000.

Yes, the perception of this new mode of search is that every house that pulls up in a search of houses between $200,000 and $250,000 has a maximum value of $250,000 because they put “$250,000 maximum value” in their search. Every house that pulls up between $250,000 and $300,000 is likewise a $300,000 home.

By changing our price, we changed the perceived worth of our house. Instead of being an expensive house that needed a lot of work, it went to being a value-priced house that needed a little bit of work.

NEW DESCRIPTION

My agent was good with my new description—even the part about the kitchen being dated. I heard from other people in real estate that you should never say anything negative about a house in the description. I respectfully disagree. By admitting the downside, I earned the trust that the other statements would have a better degree of accuracy.

Most of us know that keywords like “cozy” means “cramped” and “charming” means “hasn’t-been-updated-in-years.” Yet, by admitting the kitchen was dated, not only did it make the other statements feel more truthful, it eliminated any house hunters who didn’t want to remodel a kitchen.

Our traffic was down, but we got a buyer and closed the sale.

The lessons are two-fold.

First, price has a huge impact on the perception of an item. Sometimes a higher price is actually better than a lower price. You have to look at your prices through the eyes of a customer and see what she sees and reads into your prices. Do that and you can find the sweet spot that gets you the most bang for your buck.

Second—and this is something Roy H. Williams has been drilling into my head this entire century—you have to choose who to lose. Through our description and pricing we eliminated a lot of potential buyers, mainly because we knew they weren’t going to be the right buyers. Just having traffic to your website doesn’t make it good traffic. Just having traffic through your door doesn’t make it good traffic. You want to specifically attract your kind of buyers. You do that with your message. Our new message brought us the buyer we needed and got the house sold.

Time to go fill up those boxes.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Before you ask, we got $230,000. We got where we wanted, but only after attracting the right people. The housing market hasn’t changed much in our area. We didn’t get any offers with the old description and old price during the peak selling season of April to July. We got our first offer during the off-season and only after the new price and new description. (Speaking of off-season, I am currently staring at a snowstorm out my front window that has closed one of the major highways through town. This is Michigan. When they close the highway here, it’s a real storm. Fun for my son because school was closed, but not so fun for packing and moving.)

PPS I apologize for the sporadic posts the last few weeks. It will probably continue into next week as well while we make the move. Stay tuned, though. I have some fun thoughts for how we can make 2018 amazing. You might want to tell your other retailer friends to sign up for the blog here.

January 8, 2018

Are You a Top Down or Bottom Up Company?

I once won five pounds of bacon. It was a naming contest. First prize was an Apple iPad. Second prize was five pounds of bacon. Since I primarily use my iPad as an expensive alarm clock and to play FreeCell, this was one contest I was happy to take second place.

The item we were naming was a pyramid for business owners developed by my good friend, the super-tall-and-pretty-darn-smart Tim Miles.

This is Tim Miles’ “First Order of Business” (my name suggestion was just simply “The Order of Business”)

Tim developed this pyramid because many of his clients had been buying and creating their advertising the wrong way.

They would have an advertising sales rep come in and convince them that his media was the best place to reach their potential customers. Once that was done, the sales rep would ask them what they wanted to say.

Tim was right (did I say he was really smart?) when he recognized this for being the absolute most backwards way to advertise. Your message is far more important than the media. In fact, you need to know your message before you even pick the right medium to deliver it.

Before you can know your message, however, you have to decide what kind of customer experience you want to deliver on a consistent basis.

Of course, to deliver a consistent customer experience requires some strategic planning.

And you know that strategic planning is of no value if you don’t first know your own Core Values and the Goals you are trying to reach with your business.

Yet isn’t that how we all bought ads for many years?

The sales rep for the media company came in with a fancy presentation about how his media had the best reach, the best market penetration, the best demographics, the best falsified statistics to convince you that this media buy would transform your business. He got you all fired up and had you signing on the dotted line before he once asked you about your goals and values. He got you convinced this was going to be your best year ever before asking about your strategic plans for taking care of the customers. He got you sold on the idea that unlike all your other failed media buys, his was truly the one that would make you a millionaire before he even asked what your message was going to be.

It doesn’t work like that.

I want 2018 to be your best year ever. I want to help you craft and create the best, most effective messages for your business ever. If you hire me to help with your advertising this year, the first question I’m going to ask, however, will have nothing to do with advertising. I’m going to ask you if you know your own personal Core Values. Then I’m going to ask you if your goals for the company line up with your personal values. Without that foundation, there is no media buy you can make that will get you where you want to go.

Tim is a smart man (he tries to play dumb by surrounding himself with an incredibly smart team, but that just shows you how brilliant he truly is). If you are looking for a long-term solution to your advertising needs, Tim and other Wizard of Ads Partners are your go-to peeps.

If you are looking for someone to set you on the right course and help you DIY your advertising, give me a call.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I get nothing from Wizard of Ads Partners for telling you about them. I’m not a Partner myself. But I have learned so much from them and from Roy H. Williams, aka The Wizard of Ads, that I can’t help gushing about them. I’m a DIY kinda guy when it comes to business. I like to help small businesses learn how to help themselves. If you’re someone who just needs a good push every now and then, maybe we should talk.

January 5, 2018

Manager Do’s and Don’t’s

I’ve been blessed to have several employees tell me I was their favorite manager/employer. As much as I would like to take credit for being awesome, I can’t say how much of that was because of me or because of the extremely low bar set by their other employers. The stories they would tell me of their previous employers led me to believe that my dog would have been considered a better manager.

I know my own managerial style has been greatly influenced by a number of people.

I worked for some amazing leaders back in the 1980’s at YMCA Storer Camps that had a profound impact on my development as a person. The camp motto is “I’m Third” (God is first, others are second, and I’m third.) I’m sure you have seen powerful leaders who do their best work serving the people they lead.

I worked for an amazing man named Dana in the summer of 1992 who taught me how to treat everyone on the team equally and also how to trust us to do our jobs. You know how tough it can be when the boss plays favorites.

My grandfather Phil Conley working the register back in 1958

I saw my own parents and grandparents in action, too. My grandfather, Phil Conley, was Mayor of Jackson. He told me time and time again that the true jobs of Mayor were to build consensus and be head cheerleader. Mayor? Manager? The roles are pretty much the same. You and I are head cheerleaders for our teams, spending much of our effort trying to get everyone all on the same page.

In keeping with the theme of the last two posts (here and here), let’s put together a partial list* of Manager Do’s and Don’t’s.

I’ll start.

Manager Do’s

Do praise your staff, even for the small stuff, even for the stuff they only partially do right.
Do listen to new ideas and carefully consider them before deciding.
Do grant your team the time off to handle family and health issues as necessary.
Do be thorough in your explanations and communications.
Do schedule them as far in advance as possible so that they can make plans farther into the future.
Do work around any time-off requests they give you well in advance.
Do encourage them to better themselves through classes, conferences, books, etc.
Do let them redecorate and re-merchandise the store.
Do give the autonomy to do their job.
Do be clear how they will be measured and rewarded.
Do give them unexpected bonuses and meaningful gifts.

Manager Don’t’s

Don’t criticize them in front of other employees or customers.
Don’t be condescending.
Don’t play favorites.
Don’t give them a task without clear instructions of how you want it done.
Don’t give them a task you would not do yourself.
Don’t share anything they told you in confidence with another employee.
Don’t talk about other employees to them.
Don’t do anything you wouldn’t let them get away with.
Don’t believe that you are “above” them in any way. (They are people, too.)
Don’t expect them to care as much as you do. It is your life, it is their job.
Don’t make a decision until you know all the facts.
Don’t micromanage.
Don’t assume they think like you do or know exactly what you mean.

What would you add to these lists?

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

*PS This will always be a partial list. No one could ever finish it (although I encourage you to try). With that said, share with me your best ever manager stories either when you were being managed or you were managing someone else and it just clicked.

January 4, 2018

Giving Back Good People

Whether you agree with yesterday’s post about giving good people back to society or not, you will likely agree with this statement …

You want the best staff your payroll and training budget will allow.

(Surprisingly, many chain retailers at the mall don’t act like they agree with that statement. Not surprisingly, many chain retailers at the mall are closing stores.)

The two limiting factors to having an amazing staff filled with good people are Time and Money. As always, you can spend one to save the other. You can pay more than everyone else in your industry and hopefully attract the best and brightest candidates. Or you can spend the time to make them the best and brightest.

I give you three things today that will help you get the most out of your payroll and training budget. The first is something you have to do no matter what. The second costs you time. The third costs you money. All three together, however, will help you give good people back to society.

HIRE GOOD PEOPLE

My team with plaques I hand-picked for them as appreciation gifts.

It starts with the quality of your hiring. In my book Hiring and the Potter’s Wheel I outline the nine steps a potter takes to create a work of art that is considered beautiful, useful, strong, and long-lasting. I then show you how those nine steps relate to the hiring and training process to create a staff that is beautiful, useful, strong, and long-lasting.

One of the first steps is to hire someone who already has the right character traits to be successful on the job.

Along with the other traits you might need, you should hire people who are already Caring and who are Problem Solvers by nature. Those people will try harder to take care of your customers in the first place.

START WITH SMILES

We started each staff meeting with “Smile Stories”, stories from the previous month where we made the customer’s day. Our mission was summed up by the phrase, “We’re here to make you smile.” By starting each meeting with those Smile Stories, we not only reinforced our mission, we put everyone into a positive mood. People were laughing (and sometimes even crying tears of joy) at the stories. This opened people up and made them more receptive to any training offered.

If you start by criticizing (as I have seen many managers do), you put people on the defensive. They close up and make it difficult for you to get anything across to them.

Start with your successes and build on them.

MAKE CONTINUED LEARNING A PRIORITY

For several years I offered a $150 bonus toward some form of continued learning. It could be used for a computer class, a conference fee, or even a dance class. The idea behind it is that a person who makes continued learning a goal in his or her life will be more open to learning new skills in general. By encouraging my team to continue to pursue their dreams and grow their skills in their personal life, I kept them in a frame of mind for growing their skills in general. This made my staff trainings more effective right from the start. Learning new skills is a mindset that you need to foster.

In Daniel H. Pink’s book Drive, he states there are three things needed to motivate your staff. One of those is Mastery, the idea that they are learning new skills to become better at what they do. When you foster continued learning, you lead your team to Mastery. When you lead your team to Mastery, they find the intrinsic motivation they need to do their best.

Too many retailers look at their staff as a plastic bottle of syrup to be squeezed until every last drop is out, only to be discarded for a new bottle down the road. Instead look at your staff as the ceramic pitcher that holds the syrup in a much more classy way, gets refilled as necessary, and lasts through many years of service.

That’s how you get the best staff your payroll and training budget will allow.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I cannot emphasize enough the importance of starting off meetings on a positive note. I did a presentation to kick off a staff meeting once. We were having a rocking good time. Then the meeting began and the manager started off with a laundry list of every mistake the team had made since the last meeting. The energy drained from the room faster than if a tornado had swung through. I could tell by the body language in the room that everyone had shutdown. No one was listening intently after that. If you have to criticize, do so in private and sandwich it between two pieces of praise. If you have to bring up a problem in a meeting, do it by saying, “Here is an area where we can improve.” Much more positive that way.

January 3, 2018

What are You Prepping Your Staff For?

The biggest thing I miss not running Toy House is my staff. I miss the daily interactions. I miss the camaraderie. I miss the laughter and jokes. I miss the smile stories we shared at the beginning of each staff meeting. I miss the “Aha” moments during those staff meetings when light bulbs went off or new ideas sunk in.

This was one of our staff meetings where we discussed different toys for special needs.

Of all the things we accomplished at Toy House over the years I am most proud of creating a team that other people recognized for being at the pinnacle of what retail is all about. The day we announced our closing I fielded several phone calls from people wanting to know how soon they could start hiring away my staff. Every single caller said the same thing … “I know the quality of people you have on your team …”

A few weeks ago a wise woman said,

“The greatest thing we can give is good people back to society.” -Mary Ben Woolbright

She was talking about being parents as we watched a mutual friend’s daughter graduate college. She could very well be talking about our role as managers of people, too.

Mike Rowe does a television show about Dirty Jobs, but we all know retail and its kin sister, food service, are the lowest rungs on the employee food chain.

If nothing else, we owe it to our staff to give them the tools to better their lives, whether that’s through education, learning new skills, or simply learning how to be “good people”. If we don’t do that for them, we do them and our business a disservice.

If we do that for them, we create a culture where everything is possible, where people want to work, people want to shop, people want to be. If we do that for them, we give good people back to society and help individuals achieve their dreams.

This is a mindset. Not every employer has that mindset (but wouldn’t it be great if they did?) If you don’t have that mindset, tomorrow’s post won’t be for you.

If you do have a similar mindset, tomorrow I will share with you some of the things I did to try to give good people back to society (hint: it helps to start with good people in the first place, but then you have to nurture it, too.)

This mindset served my team well. Every person on my team that wanted work, found it quickly, and in many cases found better work than even I could offer them. It also served my customers well. That’s why my phone was ringing off the hook. Other employers liked the standards we set and wanted the people who met those standards.

When I look back on 2017, that is what makes me happiest.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Go read my free eBook Understanding Your Brand in the Free Resources section of my website. I’ll reference it tomorrow, but to give you a heads up, you can read it today.

PPS Please forgive my humble brag. We weren’t perfect. Far from it. There are so many things I wish I had done better. So many things I left undone (or even unstarted). I wasn’t always the best boss. One thing that made it work, though, was that we always strove to be better. Start with that. Start with where you are right now and figure out small incremental steps to get better. You’ll be amazed how quickly steps turn into leaps.

January 2, 2018

Few Things Go As Planned

Back in the early 1990’s I ran a wilderness trip program out at YMCA Storer Camps. I had a team of trip leaders who would plot out backpacking, biking, rock climbing, and canoeing trips around the Midwest and Ontario. One of the planning stages for the trip leaders was to build an itinerary showing what they would be doing each day, where they would be camping each night, and what goals they hoped to accomplish on the trip.

Papa Moose and family on the Missinaibi River, Northern Ontario 1987

Before each trip I would go through their itinerary with them, making sure the trip looked sound on paper. Then I would have them fold up the itinerary, place it in a Ziploc bag, and stick it in the bottom of their rucksack to only pull out if necessary.

Rarely if ever did a trip turn out exactly as it was written on paper. Flat tires, flash flooding, lost canoes, or other unexpected obstacles would always throw the itinerary off track. Sometimes the itinerary had to be adjusted to meet the needs of the group. One of my bike trips added an extra 100 miles to their trip because the kids had the skills to make that extra jaunt. There was always something.

What I learned through this exercise was one simple lesson—the future will not turn out exactly as you planned.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan for it. The two most important days of the itinerary were the first and last. The first set the tone, the last got you home. What happened in between was subject to change at a moment’s notice. A skilled trip leader knew when to adjust the itinerary to make the trip fun for everyone. A skilled trip leader expected to make changes mid-stream and was prepared to do so.

So here is my best New Year’s advice to you.

2018 will not turn out how you planned.

I’m not being a Debby Downer here. In fact, 2018 may surpass all your wildest dreams. Or it may take a hard 90-degree turn down a path you never imagined that might be the best path you ever could take. It may be close to what you thought, but there will be plot-twists, obstacles, detours, re-routes, and even a dead-end or two along the way.

That’s okay.

It is impossible for you to foresee that much of the future to meet every challenge perfectly prepared, knowing what will happen before it happens. (If you had that skill, you likely wouldn’t be reading my blog.)

With that said, you still need to plan your itinerary. You still need to plot out where you are today and where you want to be at the end of the year. You still need to put down a plan for how you will get from Point A to Point B. Without a plan, I can promise you won’t get anywhere close to Point B.

A skilled retailer will plan the following:

Marketing: What events, what advertisements, what other ways will you draw traffic to your store? At the same time, how will you measure new, unforeseen opportunities as they come along? What will you need to see to jump at an opportunity or take a risk with your advertising and marketing?
Staff Training: What skills do you want your staff to learn and strengthen in 2018? At the same time, how will you deal with the sudden change should you lose a key employee or two along the way?
Customer Service: Where are the holes in the service you provide and how will you raise the bar for 2018? At the same time, how will you spot new opportunities to surprise and delight customers in the future as their bar of expectation rises as well?
Inventory Management: How will you raise margins and turn ratios (to increase cash flow) while keeping prices attractive and keeping enough inventory on the shelf to maintain sales levels? At the same time, how will you respond to fads? What criteria will you use to jump in whole hog when something is going hot (or jump out quickly when something has died?)

A skilled retailer like a skilled trip leader knows that the goal is to start the year out on the right foot and make it to the finish line intact. What happens in between will never match the plan, but if you’re prepared, will be a helluva lot of fun.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Those four categories will be the main focus of this blog for 2018. My goal for the New Year is to prepare you to see the opportunities, the detours, the 90-degree turns, the obstacles, and the dead-ends for what they are so that you can navigate through them or around them. Sound good?

December 21, 2017

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner Part 2

I was on the train that ran from the Rental Car Center near the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport to the main terminal. It was about a two-mile trip on the rail over the highways to the airport. One hundred feet from the terminal our train stopped. A voice came on apologizing for the delay. This was at 1:05pm last Sunday. Most of you have probably heard about the power outage that shutdown ATL last Sunday.

The rest of my story was quite boring compared to some of the people affected that day. We waited an hour on the train until the fire department came to safely walk us up the tracks to the airport. After a couple hours in the terminal, realizing that no flights were going anywhere that day, we got a taxi, got back to the Rental Car Center, got a car, and drove through the night back to Michigan.

Other people were not so lucky.

Some people were stranded on their airplanes because there was no power to move the jetways to the planes so they could get off. Some people had luggage stuck somewhere in the bowels of the airport with no power to run the baggage claim conveyors. Some people had no means to get a car, were too late to get a car, or were too far away to make driving an option.

Most of those people ended up in temporary shelter at the Georgia International Convention Center next to the airport.

Chick-fil-A showed up to feed thousands of people for free that Sunday evening at GICC.

Why is that a big deal? Chick-fil-A isn’t even open on Sundays. That has always been a cornerstone of their Core Values. It says on their website …

“Our founder, Truett Cathy, made the decision to close on Sundays in 1946 when he opened his first restaurant in Hapeville, Georgia. Having worked seven days a week in restaurants open 24 hours, Truett saw the importance of closing on Sundays so that he and his employees could set aside one day to rest and worship if they choose – a practice we uphold today. Sundays are meant for getting out and spending time with family and friends.”

A company that believes in taking care of family and friends took care of strangers on a day they were closed. A company founded on true Christian values showed those values of compassion and caring.

Chick-fil-A didn’t have to feed those people. There were other restaurants equally capable. The mayor of Atlanta made the call for assistance and they answered. They mobilized their employees and fed thousands of people for free.

They showed their true Core Values and everyone across the country and around the world saw it in action.

You don’t think people are going to remember this? You don’t think people are going to look at that chain a little differently? Those who looked at the chain being closed on Sundays and thought them the business fools for giving up the money, or those who thought them to be a little too pious for closing Sundays for “rest and worship” are probably looking at them differently. They walked the talk. People who believe the way Chick-fil-A believes will renew their support of the chain.

For me, the lesson here is simple. Make sure all of your actions are consistent with your Core Values and you will create loyalty and business through those actions far better than any advertising could ever reach.

I expect a spike at Chick-fil-A restaurants across the country that will more than make up for their expenses from last Sunday. (I also believe they did what they did because of who they are, not because of how it would affect their bottom line. That’s consistent with everything else about this chain.)

Chick-fil-A for the win once again.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Your actions speak louder than your words. Control your actions and you control the way people perceive your business. Make sure everything you do is consistent with your Core Values and you’ll find people who share those values drawn to you. Not everyone will like you. Not everyone will agree with you. But those who believe what you believe will become more loyal and faithful.

December 15, 2017

A Little Forethought Keeps Little Things Little

When I was a kid, I loved riddles. I especially loved the gotcha riddles where if you didn’t pay attention to everything you were sure to get it wrong. One of my early favorites was,

“What weighs more? A pound of feathers or a pound of gold?”

Once I learned the devil was in the details, I would never answer a riddle until I heard it several times, always paying attention to every little detail. Another of my favorites was,

“You’re the driver of a bus. The bus goes west one mile before turning right. Then it travels two miles, drops off one person and picks up three. The bus turns right again and travels 4 miles, dropping off six and picking up five. The bus turns left and goes a half mile dropping off two and picking up nine. What is the bus driver’s name?”

Miss that first detail and you miss the whole riddle.

The Toy House Team during our Summer Fun Sale

This Friday, every year, was a detail day. Tomorrow you will be as busy as any day of your year. You’ll likely have to fight to get a break just to eat some cold leftovers (unless you were smart enough to cater lunch for the team). You’ll feel overwhelmed at times. You’ll feel pulled in several directions at once. The last thing you need tomorrow is to have to take care of problems that can be nipped in the bud today.

The night before a big day we replaced all the cash register receipt tape with fresh, full rolls. We checked the ink levels on the registers and in all of the pens nearby (and made sure there were plenty of pens nearby). We restocked all the giftwrap paper we used to wrap gifts and had extra rolls on standby. We checked all the tape dispensers, refilled all the staplers, and made sure there were plenty of our yellow note pads at every register and phone.

Those all seem like simple things that should be done every night, but on Friday nights especially, the team is tired and wants to go home. Those few minutes spent, however, make a huge difference when there are lines at the register the next day and everyone in line has somewhere else to be, too.

I’m not a detail guy by nature. But I understood at an early age the importance of paying attention to the details and seeing how they would payoff in the long run.

Tomorrow is going to rock and roll. You’ll have your moments. And if you take a little time tonight to take care of some little things, those little things will remain little things and not blow up into big things tomorrow.

You might even get a moment for a quick bite.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Murphy’s Law states that the register will run out of receipt paper at the worst possible time. Doesn’t it always seem like it takes twice as long to change the paper when people are waiting in line staring at you than it does when no one is at the counter? That is stress making you feel that way. You have enough stress already. Eliminate that one before you even get started. You’ll have plenty of days in January to use those partial rolls of paper.

December 14, 2017

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

I had my first Chick Fil A sandwich a few years ago. We don’t have a Chick Fil A in Jackson, and until recently didn’t have any in the entire state of Michigan. I knew people that drove to Toledo, OH just to get Chick Fil A. That’s pretty high praise for a fast food sandwich.

It is deserving praise, too.

That sandwich is quite good. Every single time. Every. Single. Time.

I’m not alone in liking that sandwich. The average Chick Fil A restaurant does $4.4 million in sales. Contrast that to Kentucky Fried Chicken that does $1.1 million in sales. Four times their biggest competitor! Number one overall in sales per restaurant in the fast food industry! And they’re only open six days a week!!

It isn’t just the sandwich that makes them the true kings of Fast Food Chicken. It is the service.

According to a Business Insider article last summer by Hayley Peterson …

“The chain consistently ranks first in restaurant customer-service surveys. In reviews, customers rave about the restaurants’ cleanliness, quick, convenient service, and hardworking employees.”

The article goes on to say …

“Chick-fil-A says its service is so consistent because it invests more than other companies in training its employees and helping them advance their careers — regardless of whether those careers are in fast food.”

Invests more in training its employees. Gee. Where have you heard that before?

I’m going to tell you one other thing that sets them apart. They do what other fast food restaurants don’t do. Look at this picture of the Chick Fil A in Athens, GA.

Chick Fil A Restaurant, Athens, GA December 2017

You don’t see that in other restaurants, period.

There are only seven fast food restaurants doing more overall business than Chick Fil A. All of them have many multiple times more stores than Chick Fil A.

Like I said before … You can either do stuff no one else is doing, or you can open up more stores than anyone else. Those are the two paths to success.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I went into a Kentucky Fried Chicken the other day. The menu was amazingly confusing. It didn’t even have everything on it. Worst of all, I only wanted some of their chicken strips and a drink. I was told it would be more expensive to buy chicken strips and a drink than to buy the meal which got me chicken strips, a drink, a side, and a cookie. I’m trying to watch my carb intake. I didn’t want a side or a cookie. My choices were to …

Pay less and throw away food
Pay more and not throw away food
Pay less and eat more than I wanted

This is a business plan???

Let’s just say I was surprised, but far from delighted.

PPS You could look at this as a lazy post, just using someone else’s research to make my point. I look at it as a Case Study and social proof that what I have been preaching is working for a business that believes the way I do. By the way, Case Studies are a great advertising tool, too. Don’t tell people what you do, show them.

December 12, 2017

Being World Famous

I hope someday to be world famous. I could almost say that I already am world famous. I do have a follower in Russia. I have another in Serbia and one in Austria. I have a couple followers from the southern hemisphere. I have shipped my Hiring and the Potter’s Wheel book overseas on several occasions. I’m not exactly a household name, but getting there.

Some places claim to be world famous on even less than that. Some places truly are world famous. I talked about two of them yesterday.

Here is another worth mentioning.

World Famous Pike Place Fish Market

Pike Place Fish Market, the retailer highlighted in the excellent training book FISH!, wasn’t world famous at one time. They were just a fish market in Seattle trying to carve out a niche in their market. Business was okay. Like every retailer on the planet, they wanted it to be more than okay. The staff and management got together and decided they wanted to be World Famous.

Deciding you want to be World Famous is powerful. Acting on that decision is the true magic.

When the team at the fish market made that decision, the first question that popped up was the one that would change their fortunes forever.

“What does a World Famous Fish Market look and act like?”

The simplest answer was that it doesn’t look and act like all the other fish markets out there. It does things differently.

A World Famous Retailer …

Offers services no other retailer in their industry offers
Treats customers better than they could ever imagine
Has hard-to-find products no one else sells
Makes an emotional connection with their customers
Makes people feel good about themselves, about their purchases, and about life in general
Is an experience, not just a shopping trip
Is prepared for crowds (heck, they are prepared for anything)
Always, always, always has the right attitude
Always, always, always does more than the customer expected
Foresees problems before they happen, and nips them in the bud
Fixes problems right away without hassle, and to a level better than the customer expected

Being World Famous is a mindset first, a recognition second, and a designation third. The path to World Famous is pretty simple. Decide you want to be world famous and do everything on that list consistently year-in-and-year-out, or open up a few thousand stores. Either way, you’ll become World Famous.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I was looking through one of the Memory Books we had for people to sign when they visited Toy House. (People love to sign books like that at World Famous locations, hint, hint.) Found this one …

“Awesome store! What a pleasant surprise! Greetings from the Netherlands, Europe”

Right below it was …

“Thank you for such a wonderful evening and such a wonderful store. -Amiye, Cairo Egypt”

You don’t have to be World Famous to act World Famous. Do the acting part first and the rest will take care of itself.

PPS You can call yourself World Famous before you actually are, but then you better perform like it. Anything less and the marketing will be all for naught.