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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.

Get the Simple Things Right

I made three trips to a local service provider today. First, I checked their website for their hours. They had a beautiful, informative website. But no hours anywhere I could find. I know of other service providers in their category who open early, so after dropping my son off at school at 7:20am, I headed over.

They weren’t there.

No hours posted anywhere. There was a sign on the door saying they would be back at 8:00am, but I couldn’t make it back this morning. I swung by at 1:00pm while running other errands.

They weren’t there.

The sign on the door now said they would be back at 2:15pm. It didn’t say how long they would be there. Fortunately, my schedule for the afternoon was more flexible. I got there at 2:15pm, ran in, got what I needed, and was out the door in just over a minute.

Three trips for a 78-second transaction. A lot of wasted gas. A lot of frustration. No hours on the website. No hours on the door. Not a happy camper.

If you can’t get the simple things right, your customers will wonder what else you can’t do right. 

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I understand certain service providers will close their offices for lunch. I’m okay with that – as long as I know it is going to happen. That’s why you need to post hours on your door and website.

Retailers take note. Don’t assume customers know what days and times you’ll be open. Make sure you have it on your website, on your Facebook site, on Google, and on your door. I have a twenty year history with this service provider, but I have no room in my brain for memorizing their quirky hours.

Don’t Build Your Own Obstacles (Part II)

If you’re a BBQ lover in the Detroit area, you recognize this door. Behind it is the tantalizing flavors of smoked meats, refreshing liquids from the Great Beer State, and an aroma that pleasantly stays in your nostrils for hours. You know it as Slow’s BBQ. In fact, you take pride in knowing those natural-colored thin planks stacked tightly together is the actual door of entry, not the door to the right going upstairs, nor the door ten feet left of the picture covered with stickers and locked, nor the locked door leading to the patio another fifteen feet to the left and directly beneath the sign on the building telling you that you’ve arrived.

Those were the three doors I tried first before finding the actual opening.

If there hadn’t been a sign on the building telling me where I was, this would be a different post. It would be about Over-the-Top Design and Sharing Secrets. It would be about how you felt like an insider because you knew the red and black building without a sign and with a hidden doorway was home to some killer ‘cue. You only knew because someone told you, making it (and you) feel even more special.

Instead, I felt like an idiot. I felt like I was made to feel stupid before I ever set foot in the joint. That’s a big obstacle to overcome. If the food or the service had not been stellar, just average, I’d probably never go back. It would be a nagging feeling just below the surface.

As I was leaving, there was a guy outside having the same struggles I had. Apparently the design of the door wasn’t over-the-top enough to get people to talk about it, only about the food. Their fancy, hard-to-find door didn’t generate word-of-mouth, only frustration. You never want your customers walking into your establishment frustrated. Make sure they know how to get in the front door.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS The other alternative would be to remove the sign on the building altogether. Sure, it would make it harder and even more frustrating for some people to find the joint, but since most of these places get their new business from word-of-mouth, it would ratchet up the need for people to talk about the design elements and ratchet up the feeling of knowing something others don’t. It would have changed my feelings of frustration to feelings of discovery and being in-the-know.

PPS Of course, at the end of the day, if you’re a restaurant, you better have over-the-top food first and foremost. Slows brought it. I saw a few items on trays passing by that will get me back. They overcame the obstacle. Not many stores and restaurants do.

What Are You Doing to Grow?

I stood on the stage. It was small, in an awkward room with pillars that blocked sight lines. The room was supposed to hold 150 people, but I could see them setting up extra chairs in the back of the room. Even still, there were people sitting on the floor leaning back against those horrible pillars.

Phil Wrzesinski Presenting Pricing for Profit at Retail Success Summit

Three days earlier a gal who had seen this speech the year before told me how it had saved her store. That’s mighty high praise for any speaker. I was in awe. That speech had been my first to a group of retailers like this. To have that affirmation was amazing. She wasn’t the only one . Another retailer told me that the only reason he was back was because of what I taught. He took a front row seat to hear the same presentation again.

Back on the stage the microphone was hot. My voice was either a whisper or a boom no matter where I placed the lapel mic or where the sound guy turned the knob. I went with boom. The stage was too small and I was wireless. I walked the room, trying not to trip over the legs of people sitting by the pillars, all while making sure they felt acknowledged for being there.

I knew my slide deck by heart. Loved the new slides the Slide Doctor helped me create. Far better than the previous year. Everything flowed. The audience laughed at all of the jokes, went silent when I lowered my voice, and asked all the questions I wanted them to ask. If you’ve ever given a presentation, you know what I’m talking about. Public speaking nirvana.

All those A+ grades in my high school public speaking class just because I was good at improv, all those rowdy dining halls filled with 6th graders teaching them a new song, all those classes in the Toy House with expectant parents in rocking chairs waiting to be illuminated, even all those moments when the little red light went on to tell me we were on the air, none felt quite like this.

It wasn’t a standing ovation (unless you count the people sitting on the floor getting to their feet). But I can still hear the applause. One hundred and thirteen of the roughly 175 people in that room filled out their evaluations. All one hundred and thirteen gave the topic a perfect 5.0 out of 5.0. All one hundred and thirteen gave the presenter (me) a perfect 5.0 out of 5.0. The room itself got a 3.2 for lack of chairs among other issues.

It was Mary Lou Retton at the Olympics. It was Michael Phelps in the pool. It was the 1972 Miami Dolphins. It was seven years, dozens of presentations and eight perfect scores ago.

That’s why I’m signed up for a one-day Speakers Workshop in April.

Confused?

The point is this. No matter how good you (think you) are, no matter how experienced, you can always get better. Every year I hear business owners say they want to grow, but then they go watering the wrong plants. Your experience and training got you this far. If you want to grow your business farther, you need to grow yourself first.

You’re already reading this blog. That’s a good start. I encourage you to spend some of your precious time and energy strengthening your own roots. The more you grow, the more your business grows with you.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Read books. Read blogs. Watch YouTube videos. Listen to podcasts. Sign up for webinars. Go to seminars and workshops. Hire a coach. Find a mentor. There are many ways to fertilize your growth. Ask me if you’d like suggestions. (I just did the same thing – asked a bunch of my peers for new reading material for 2017 and got a list started.)

PPS Pricing for Profit (I knew you’d ask.)

 

 

 

Be Confident in Your Prices

Have you ever asked, “How much?” and you could tell the person selling you believed the price was too high? They usually start with something like, “Before I tell you the price, let me tell you all you get.” They might as well say, “I’m afraid to tell you how much because you’ll just think it is too much and walk out on me.” When they start out justifying the price, they have no confidence in their pricing at all.

This is especially common when selling high-ticket items. You know it is expensive so you feel a need to justify before you say how much. The problem is that the more you try to justify, the more over-priced the item is perceived.

There is a better way…

HAVE FAITH IN YOUR PRICES

First, you need to have faith in your prices. Most people, especially if they are selling themselves, such as artists and presenters, tend to undervalue themselves and their products or services. Maybe it is because you wouldn’t personally pay that much for the item or service being sold. Maybe it is because you are afraid of rejection and being told No. Maybe it is because you see the value but you can’t afford it yourself because of your own financial hardships.

You have to get over whatever is holding you back. You have to understand that you are offering a fair price for the item or service. You have to accept that you have to charge a certain amount if you want to pay your bills and stay in business. You have to tell yourself that your items and services are worth more than you think.

THERE ARE CUSTOMERS OUT THERE

Second, understand there is a market for your products or services at that price. Not everyone buys solely on price alone. In fact, in your industry, as in any industry, about half the shoppers make their decision based on price, and half don’t. That second half looks at factors like Trust and Expertise and Convenience. If you’re not confident in your pricing, you’re losing the trust and expertise crowd, too.

If your price is higher than others in your category, hopefully it is because you baked your expertise and some customer conveniences into the price (hence the justification you tried to make before stating your price). At the end of the day, you really are offering a fair value. You just need to learn the proper way to state that value.

PRICE FIRST

Learn to state your prices first. When someone asks, “How much?” the next word out of your mouth better be a number. Take a deep breath, say the price, and then tell them all you will do for that price.

How much? Five-hundred-and-ninety-nine-dollars-and-for-that-you-get-our-white-glove-treatment-which-includes…

Say it with confidence and pride. You might not win the price-only folks, but you’ll actually build trust and show off your expertise while telling your customer about how you’ll make it convenient for them. (Make it convenient enough and you’ll win some of those price-only customers, too!)

Change the way you answer the How much? question and you’ll close a whole lot more sales.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Pricing and negotiation are tricky. We are all driven by fear. The fear of rejection, the fear of losing the sale, the fear of making a bad impression, all drive away our confidence. You are worth more than you think. Your prices are fair. Heck, if you’re the typical indie retailer, you’re offering up a whole lot of expertise and convenience for your prices making them more than fair. You won’t win them all, but if you show more confidence in your prices, you’ll win more often, and that’s all it takes to grow.

Not All Retail Experience is the Same

It dawned on me what a hypocrite I was last week. I was doing some talks to retailers at a conference and in my introduction I bragged about getting my start in retail at the age of seven when my grandfather paid my sister and me ten cents an hour to put price tags on boxes. My official start in retail came just after my fourteenth birthday back in 1980 and my full-time career in retail began April 30, 1993 – as if all those dates were important.

I say that because at the end of my talk I share a quick story about my book Hiring and the Potter’s Wheel and how all other books on hiring say Hire For Experience. As I tell the audience in my presentations, I used to hire for experience until I realized you can have twenty years of retail experience and still be lousy at it.

See the hypocrisy?

In my book I teach that you should hire personality traits suited for the job. Without those traits, there is no amount of training that can turn them into the kind of staff you want. Experience can sometimes be a negative because that means you have a lot of bad habits to break.

Yet I sell myself on exactly that – being experienced. It begs the question… When is experience bad and when is it good?

BAD EXPERIENCE

The only truly bad experience in retail is when someone is put in a job that doesn’t match his or her personality traits. Fortunately, since you will be hiring for personality traits first and foremost, that won’t be an issue. Sure there will be applicants who worked at stores with lousy (or non-existent) training programs. Sure there will be applicants who worked at stores with low bars of expectations. Sure there will be applicants who worked for less-than-stellar managers who never recognized and developed the talent below them. None of those are deal killers if your applicant has the character traits you need. Just remember that you’ll have to break a few more bad habits early on.

GOOD EXPERIENCE

Some businesses have a reputation for high levels of service. That experience works in an applicant’s favor. If you have an applicant with the right character traits and five years of experience at Nordstrom’s – ka-ching! If you have an applicant with the right character traits who worked for a company who holds regular training exercises – ba-da-bing! If you have an applicant with the right character traits who moved up the ranks at a business known for service – rama-lama-ding-dong!

When we announced our closing I had several businesses reach out to ask about the availability of my staff because those businesses knew what I expected and how I trained my team. Many of my staff moved on to bigger and better things in part because of the reputation of our store.

Experience by itself is neither a good nor a bad thing. When you find someone with the right personality traits and the right kind of experience you will find some real superstars (if you can afford to pry them away from their current jobs). It is all about getting the right traits for the job first. Their experience only tells you how many more bad habits you may or may not need to break.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS The non-hypocritical part is when I explain what I did with my experience at Toy House including getting the store named “One of the 25 best independent stores in America” in the book Retail Superstars (George Whalin, Penguin 2009), winning the Entrepreneurial Vision Award in 2010, and how my Core Values of Fun, Helpful, Educational and Nostalgic were a perfect fit to toy retail (and a perfect fit to my new role as a Retail Educator).

Don’t Build Your Own Obstacles

We’ve all heard the phrase KISS – keep it simple, stupid. We’ve also been exposed to Occam’s Razor – the simpler explanation is most likely the better one. But still, as business owners, we forget that and build our own man-made obstacles to make our lives harder.

For example, I went to a restaurant in Phoenix call The Arrogant Butcher. By the name you would guess they were likely a steak house or possibly a BBQ joint. That was my expectation as I entered. Sure enough, the menu had a couple steaks and some ribs, but was dominated by seafood dishes. I asked my waitress what they were known for. She said the seafood. Their oysters were flown in fresh from California daily.

Image result for the arrogant butcher

I was already mentally halfway out the door, but decided to stick it out and give it a try.

Much to my delight, the seafood was delicious. The staff was friendly. The dessert was awesome.

But because of the name, if anything wasn’t up to par, the night would have been a huge disappointment. Because of the name, my expectations were completely different to the experience, and almost a deal killer. Because of the name, everything had to be surprisingly delightful.

I sat at the chef’s table and watched the cooks at work. None seemed arrogant. None looked like a butcher. I didn’t see a lot of steaks or ribs, but the oyster shucker never stopped shucking.

At the end of the night, I am happy to say they overcame my original disappointment. But they had to be perfect to do so, all because of the obstacle they put up all on their own.

Retail is hard enough as it is. Don’t make it harder on yourself. KISS.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I understand that good, fun, unique names are catchy and stand out. I drank beer and played guitar at a pub with Poison in the name. But when your name screams a certain expectation, you have to be exceptionally excellent at what you do if your actual brand doesn’t match that expectation. Few businesses pull that off consistently.

You’re Not Perfect

You’re not perfect. Far from it. Me, too. You will make mistakes. You will ruin someone’s Christmas. You will cause someone gray hairs. You will make someone miss an appointment because they had to deal with your carelessness.

You will have some problems that aren’t even your fault. Maybe your vendor screwed up or the customer had a completely unrealistic expectation even after you explained it for the third time. Maybe you get the good spouse, bad spouse routine.

No matter what type of retail, you are going to have the unhappy customer.

I believe two of my favorite companies – Ritz-Carlton and Zingerman’s Deli have it right.

(source unknown)

They both empower their entire staff to be able to take care of a customer’s problem. Everyone from the assistant bottle washer to the garden boy to the valet have authorization to take a customer’s wrongs and make them right.

It does beg the question… Would you leave the fate of your customer service reputation in the hands of your lowest paid employee?

Yes! If you train them right.

Here is the easy format for handling about 98.7% of your unhappy customers.

  1. Apologize. It doesn’t matter who is at fault. They are angry. They perceive you have slighted them in some way. Apologize to them. “I am really sorry that this happened.”
  2. Ask. Ask for a complete description of what happened and what went wrong from their perspective. Don’t interrupt. Let them say what is on their mind. Don’t assume you know what happened. Let them tell the whole story. Apologize again, if necessary.
  3. Amend. Make it right. The best way to make it right in their eyes is to ask, “What would you like us to do?” Most of the time, especially if you have done steps 1 and 2, they will ask for far less than what you are prepared to do. Do what they asked, and then a little more. Yes, even if you’re giving away the farm (figuratively, of course).
  4. Learn. Let your staff make the customer happy. Then have them report back to you what they did. As long as they made the customer happy, tell your staff, “Well done!” Then show them a better way to handle it the next time if necessary.

You have to train your staff to do this. It won’t happen overnight. You have to role play it at meetings. You have to spell it out in writing. You have to remind them that the store’s first and foremost goal is to have happy customers and their job is to make those customers happy. Your job is to teach them how.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Unhappy customers are people, too. Treat them with respect and dignity (apologize and listen fully to their complaints) and they become a lot less unhappy in very short time. In fact, they often become your best ambassadors.

Always Be Practicing

Besides writing this blog and doing workshops and seminars and presentations, I have a few hobbies. One is singing and playing guitar. Tonight I get to perform in front of tens of people at the Poison Frog Brewery.

I’ll be performing songs I’ve played hundreds of times in the last 30 years, including dozens of times the last two weeks. You would think by now I could just pick up the guitar and play a number of these songs without a lick of practice. You’d be right. But it wouldn’t be my best.

Are you practicing?

I know I could phone this performance in and still be somewhat entertaining. After all, beer is involved. I also know that the more I practice and prepare, the better I will sound and the more fun we will all have.

The same holds true for the presentations I’m doing next week. I’ll be talking about Word-of-Mouth, Customer Service and Advertising – all favorite topics of mine. I’ve been practicing for a couple weeks so that these talks will be favorites of my audience, too.

The same holds true for retailing, especially selling. You always have to be practicing if you want to stay sharp. You always have to be researching and finding out better ways to do what you’ve always done. Out of the 150 or so slides for my presentations next week, only two or three are exactly the same as when I first did these presentations. Things change and there is always a way to be better.

My high school homeroom teacher and swim coach, Mr. Pultz, had two key phrases that anyone who ever spent more than two minutes around him heard – “Can’t never did nothing,” and, “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” Are you preparing for the opportunities awaiting you in 2017, or are you just going to settle with something less than your best?

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Hope to see you tonight. Or next week. Or whenever you’re ready to take your game to the next level.

How Will You Measure 2017?

The New Year is here. Your New Year’s Resolutions are gone. The inventory has been counted. The mail carrier is complaining about all the catalogs weighing down his bag. You’re trying to make sense of what just happened in 2016. (Or just trying to forget what happened in 2016.) 2017 is here whether you’re ready or not.

The only real question you need to answer right now is…

How will you measure 2017?

Will it be by growth in top line sales or bottom line profits? Will it be by management of cash flow or expenses? Will it be by the number of days you actually take off? Will it be by the number of human resource headaches you have (or don’t have)?  Will it be by “likes” and “shares” and “comments” on social media?

You get to choose. You have to choose. You have to decide where to put your limited energies and resources. If the bottom line is good, you work on cash flow. If the money is good all around, you work on HR. If the staff isn’t giving you any hassles, you work on PR and social media. If all of them need a hand, decide which one is most critical (hint: cash flow) and go there.

PICK A PROBLEM, SET A GOAL

The key is to determine what you want to measure and – most importantly – how you’re going to measure it. It is that second part that gives you the  map to guide your decisions for the year.

Most businesses fail to set specific goals. They set vague ones like “grow profit”.  Then they forget all about those goals the very next morning as the day-to-day running of the business takes hold. But if you say “grow profit by $5,000” then you know you need to increase sales, decrease expenses, and/or increase profit margin. If you say, “grow profit by $5,000 through better control of expenses” you have an even clearer path.

The more specific your goal, the easier to plot the course. The more you make it known and talked about with your team, the more accountable you (and they) will be. The more you reward the team for reaching the milestones you set throughout the year, the more they will help you.

Roy H. Williams said it best, “What gets measured and rewarded, improves.”

The more specific you make your goal, the easier it is to draw a map that will get you there.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Once you’ve set your destination, do yourself a favor. Print it out and paste your goal somewhere in the back office area where you will see it daily. Tell your staff the goal and ask for their input on how to get there. Talk about your goal in every single meeting. Research new ways to reach your goal. Set up milestones to measure your progress. Hold yourself accountable to your goal. Reward yourself and your staff as you reach each milestone along the way.

PPS Not sure how to set your goals or need help with your map? Send me an email. As always, I’ll do whatever I can to help.

Issues in the Mid-90’s

Here is another treasure I found while cleaning out old folders and files. I can tell since this is in cursive that I wrote this in the mid-90’s. I went back and forth between cursive and Small Caps in my notes for many years until switching to Small Caps almost exclusively in the late 90’s. Here is what we were discussing at that time…

Here is the transcript of my chicken scratch above…

SERVICE

-Seen as lacking/not as strong as should be

-Change in “training” and emphasis on friendliness & service

-Promotion of all services

-More direct & noticeable push within community
–Toys for Tots
–Camps (?)
–Biking Safety
–Parenting/Safe Toys
–Books (Book of the Month Club)

-Addition of “child care” area

-Changing rooms for babies
–(Maybe revamp bathrooms?)

-Returning phone calls – special orders, etc.

-Emphasize Baby Registry

SALES

-Link sales to service*
–Camp day sign-up w/sale on sleeping bags
–BSA & Girl Scout promotions
–Bike Accessory sale w/Bike Safety Class

*Can have “sales” without being “gimmicky” by linking sales to services and promoting the service over the sale

 

Key takeaway… Two decades ago we were talking about how to do more for our customers – more services, more knowledge, and more activity – to get better sales. The late George Whalin once said, “A sale is what happens when you have served the customer.” Retail hasn’t changed much. Those rules still apply. Do more in your community. Do more for your customers. Tie your sales into servicing. It still works.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I found this note in a folder of old store manuals. Shout out to my sister, Laura, who wrote the first Employee Manual for Toy House back in the 80’s.