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How to Make Networking Events Actually Pay Off

I was speaking about the power of networking to a group of baby product sellers. One of them pointed out that he had never seen a pregnant person at a networking event.

That pretty much sums up what most people get wrong about networking.

Raise your hand if you know someone who is pregnant…

That’s a lot of hands and a lot of people to whom he could have spoken and gotten results.

Sellers at Market

A BUYER IN A SEA OF SELLERS

A friend of mine was doing a keynote address prior to a networking event. He asked everyone who was hoping to sell something that night to raise their hands. Every hand in the room went up immediately.

He then asked who was there to buy… crickets…

He then delivered the most powerful message, “The first one of you who switches sides and becomes a ‘buyer’ will have the most successful evening.”

Anyone who has ever told you networking is a waste of time made this mistake. He or she went to an event hoping to find an end user and make a sale. Networking is about making connections, not making sales.

The first person who becomes a buyer instead of a seller is the one who will have the fullest dance card and make the most meaningful connections.

MAKING CONNECTIONS THAT COUNT

When I attend a networking event, my goal is to meet two new people and truly understand what they do. One of the best networkers I know keeps a stack of blank cards on her desk. Every morning she takes out the business cards she farmed at the previous night’s event and sends each person a handwritten card acknowledging their meeting.

Once I make a connection, I scour my own contacts to see if there is someone I know who might need their services. If I can refer someone to them, it solidifies the connection. It also creates a sense of reciprocity and they will look for a chance to send someone my way.

NETWORKING SUCCESS

Follow this simple plan and you’ll grow your network by leaps and bounds:

  • Meet two people and meet them well. Meet too many and you don’t have the time to get to know them enough to recommend them to your contacts.
  • Ask more than you answer. The best way to get to know people is to ask and listen. Only talk about yourself when directly asked.
  • Send a handwritten card the following day to the people you meet.
  • Refer someone to them for their services.

Growing your network raises awareness of your business. Growing your network gets you referral business. Growing your network helps you find new resources for your business. Growing your network introduces you to people who can help you grow personally and professionally.

Networking is a powerful tool for your business when you do it right. Now you know how to do it right. Put this in your retail toolbox right now.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I’m not good at handwritten cards, but I am a sucker when I get one. My immediate reaction is to think of the person who sent it as someone with their act together, with whom I hope to do business. That’s the reaction you’ll get when you force yourself into this habit.

PPS When I quit trying to be a seller, I also found I have a lot more fun at networking events. Everyone wants to talk to me. Everyone wants to meet with me. Plus, I meet a lot of interesting and fascinating people. It is amazing what a difference listening instead of talking can make.

You Aren’t as Well Known as You Think

Back in 2005 we hired a Statistics Class at a local university to do a study for us. They determined how to get a random sample size that would accurately reflect Jackson County and then called people to ask them one simple task…

checklist-154274_1280

“Name all the places you can think of in Jackson County that sell toys.”

The students would write down every store mentioned. Then they would say, “You mentioned…” and repeat the list back to the person. They would then ask, “Can you think of any more?” and repeat this until the person had thought of everyone.

Here are the results of how often the top six stores were mentioned.

  1. Toys R Us 84.1%
  2. Meijer 82.3%
  3. Wal-Mart 69.5%
  4. Toy House 64.8%
  5. K-Mart 59.1%
  6. Target 45.2%

Interesting that 35% of the population of Jackson County could not think of us even though we had been here 56 years at the time of the survey.

More interesting was that Wal-Mart had only just opened a few months before this survey was done. Was that 69.5% too high or too low seeing that they had just received about four months of wall-to-wall news coverage prior to opening?

Even more interesting was that less than half of our population thought of Target as a place that sold toys even though Target, nationally, is only behind Wal-Mart and Toys R Us in overall toy sales.

Most interesting of all was that not one single store broke the 90% (even with the 4% margin of error).

NOT EVERYONE KNOWS YOU’RE THERE

One takeaway from all this is the reminder that you have to keep marketing and advertising your business. You are not the Field of Dreams. People will not come. Mainly because they don’t even know you’re there.

35% of my hometown did not know that an award-winning store with one of the largest selection of toys in America was located right downtown in a brightly colored building for over 50 years.

YOU CAN’T REACH EVERYONE

Another takeaway is that no matter how hard you try, there will still be people who haven’t heard of you.

35% of my hometown could not name the toy store that runs radio ads every day, gets mentioned on TV every day, makes monthly appearances on radio and TV, is all over social media, and gets coverage in the local newspaper all the time.

35% of my hometown could not name the toy store whose logo is on the shirt of the guy who attends networking events, teaches classes at the local hospital and even wears his colors on his jacket all winter long.

Heck, even 15% couldn’t name Toys R Us despite them spending billions on advertising.

You could sum it up simply as…

  • Always be farming for more customers
  • Not every seed planted will sprout

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS This post took a turn after I started it. It was supposed to be about the importance of Networking, especially as a low-cost marketing method. I’ll get to that soon enough. In the meantime, download my FREE eBook Main Street Marketing on a Shoestring Budget for six other ways you can get the word out about your business at little or no cost.

PPS The cool thing about the survey was that I quickly knew what the people of Jackson thought when they needed to buy toys. I knew where I stood and where everyone else in the market stood, too. That is some powerful information.

Changing Your Thinking on Coupons

I’m not a fan of coupons. There. I said it.

If you’ve downloaded my free eBook Main Street Marketing on a Shoestring Budget, you know I prefer giving away gift certificates with no strings attached – instead of coupons – to attract new customers.

I also fear that using coupons too much trains your customers to wait for the next coupon before they shop.

Lastly, I believe coupons are more geared toward the Transactional Customer than the Relational Customer (the latter whom should be your primary target in your advertising and marketing).

With all that said, coupons done right can be a valuable part of your tool box.

Retail Toolbox

DOING COUPONS THE RIGHT WAY

As I told you yesterday, the real key for coupons is to make them Rare and Special. Rare so that people jump on the deal when it happens and aren’t trained to wait for the next one to make their next purchase. Special so that the customer isn’t anticipating the next coupon and is more likely to act on the current one.

Rare and Special will increase your ROI because they will get more people to act on the current coupon. Your other big issue is delivery. How do you get those coupons into the right hands?

  • Newspaper Inserts – this is the preferred method of the big bog stores because they have the economy of scale for printing and delivering to get the best rates, and they don’t care who gets their coupons
  • Direct Mail – you can buy a list (and hope it is okay) or build your own. One takes money and has little return. One takes time but has a better return.
  • Postal Zip Codes – you can target zip codes instead of direct addresses for a little less per piece than direct mail
  • Email – easily the cheapest, easiest to share, but also most easily duplicated

Let’s look at that last one a little more closely…

KNOW YOUR GOAL

If your goal is to limit the coupon to “one per customer”, email can be tricky because it is easy for a customer to print out multiple copies and use them herself or give them to her friends. That’s the big question I always get about sending coupons via email. “But how will I track if a customer uses more than one?”

I always ask back, “Does it matter if a customer uses more than one?”

Your goal for any coupon should be to Drive Traffic and Increase Sales. That is what coupons do best. Where is the harm if a customer shares your coupon with others? Where is the harm if the customer makes multiple trips using multiple coupons? Don’t both of those Drive Traffic and Increase Sales?

If your goal is to Increase Profits, then a coupon isn’t your friend in the first place. Coupons won’t help your profit margin (I’ll show you the math later why “lower your price and make it up in volume” doesn’t really work), but they can increase your traffic and cash flow and give your sales staff the chance to increase average ticket sizes and items per transaction.

CHANGE YOUR THINKING

If you send out a coupon via email, you have to consider two things…

  1. It will be shared
  2. It will be printed/used multiple times

If your goal is to Drive Traffic and Increase Sales, sharing and printing multiple copies are both GOOD things. In fact you want to encourage that.

Encourage your email list peeps to share the coupon with as many people as they can. It increases your reach to people who might not yet know you and it gets your fans to promote your business for you. In fact, take it a step further and encourage social media sharing, too. Your goal should be to get the coupon to as many people as possible as cheaply as possible. That’s how to get the best ROI.

Encourage your email list peeps to use the coupon early and often, too. Every trip they make means another chance to deepen your relationship with them and turn them into fans. (If you sell a commodity item like food that people are buying weekly, simply put a tighter time limit on the coupon to keep the coupon Rare and Special). The reality is that you won’t get that many multiple trips. Unless your offer is incredibly compelling and you’re giving away half the store, the likelihood that a customer is going to shop your store twice in one week is fairly low to begin with.

Email is the cheapest way to deliver coupons. It also is one of the most powerful ways to get your fan base to help you reach more and more people. You just have to change your thinking from one of scarcity (“limit one per…”) to generosity (“use it early and often and share it with the world…”).

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS My final tip is to keep the coupon as simple as possible with as few rules and exceptions as possible. The easier it is to use, the happier your customers will be.

Coupons Aren’t Bad (When They are Rare and Special)

Back in the 90’s we started a direct mail newsletter for Toy House. We sent out a mailing every other month.

Conventional Wisdom at the time said we needed to include a coupon with each mailing to help us “track the effectiveness” of the mailing. So we included a $20 off a $100 purchase coupon in each mailing.

Coupons

Two things happened…

First, we never really were able to “track the effectiveness” of the newsletter, only the effectiveness of the coupon (which grew considerably in November, but waned in other months). It was hard to say whether the other articles were even read, let alone acted upon. In theory, we were told the coupon would mean that people would at least read the newsletter without throwing it away (although today I’m not sure if that was the case).

Second, we were training customers to save their big purchases until another coupon arrived. I would be showing a customer a new car seat and the first question was always, “When does your next coupon come out?”

Bed Bath and Beyond just announced that their coupon program was backfiring and causing them to lose profit as people just waited for the next coupon before they shopped. We learned that from sending out six a year. They send out one or more a week.

BEING RARE

We decided over a decade ago that sending out multiple coupons wasn’t the answer. We shifted the direct mail newsletter to email newsletters (no coupon) and shifted the coupon to a postcard mailed only in November. Our response to that direct mail piece doubled the ROI of any previous mailings because it was Rare and Special.

BEING SPECIAL

Even with that shift to a once-a-year coupon, we have seen our annual mailing become less and less effective over the years. Although it is Rare, it is no longer Special. It is a foregone conclusion.

Until this year.

We’ll be doing a different type of coupon this year for two reasons.

  • First, we need to make it Special again.
  • Second, we want to shift away from the expenses of direct mail, so it will be an email coupon.

We have already begun marketing to our customers the importance of being signed up to get our emails. We have already begun prepping them that something new is going to happen this year. We have already begun the buzz and excitement as our customers are wondering what will happen.

You can use coupons in your marketing tool box. Just remember that to be most effective, they have to be both Rare and Special.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I’ll tell you how we are going to manage an email coupon in an upcoming post. Make sure you and your fellow store owners have signed up to get this blog in your inbox.

The Need to Keep Raising the Bar

Bed Bath and Beyond just announced that their coupon strategy is backfiring and that their profits are hurting because everyone is waiting for the coupon to do their shopping.

Umm… yeah. When you send the coupon out every week and never enforce the exclusions or expiration date, you pretty much send out the message that everything in the store is always 20% off. Anyone paying full price in that store is either lazy or an idiot.

What used to be special is now considered the norm.

BBB faces a dilemma. They either have to drop the coupon program and wean customers off the 20% discount (a daunting and dangerous task), or raise the bar on the coupon program to make it special again.

They said in the article, “Bed Bath and Beyond says it plans to draw in more customers through marketing.”

Okay, but how? A bigger, deeper coupon every so often? (further eroding profits) or something else?

THE LESSON

If you are doing something special for your customers, eventually it goes from special to expected and the marketing pull from it will taper off. If it is a discount, that discount will have to grow over time to remain equally effective.

If you consistently go above and beyond your customers’ expectations, eventually they will come to expect it, meaning you’ll have to raise the bar even farther.

As you choose your marketing strategy, remember that the special things you do today will become the norm tomorrow. Make sure you have room to raise the bar when the effects start tapering off.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Surprise and Delight are the best tools for attracting new customers because you’ll never run out of new and fun and inexpensive ways to surprise and delight your customers. Check out these two Free Resources to get some ideas of things you can do to raise the bar and attract more customers – Generating Word of Mouth and Customer Service: From Weak to WOW!. I doubt either of these will be strategies employed by BBB (although they should).

Newly Redesigned PhilsForum.com Website

I told you I was working on a new version of my PhilsForum.com website.

It just went live a few minutes ago.

Everything is up and running except this blog (which should be migrated over by late Thursday).

In an effort to make it more search engine friendly, some of the pages you’re used to seeing have new names.

  • Freebies is now Free Resources and still includes links to free pdf’s you can download on a variety of topics
  • Speaker for Hire is now Hire Me to Speak and focuses on the top programs I am most often hired to do
  • Products is now Phil’s Books and focuses on my two books, Hiring and the Potter’s Wheel and Welcome to the Club Daddy
  • Media is now About Phil and yes, it is about me

You’ll also find a few fun things hidden here and there on the site including a page of radio ads I have run for Toy House and Baby Too.

Check it out and let me know if there are any issues with the site (tell me what browser/platform/device you’re using, please).

Every time an independent retailer grows, we all grow.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Supposedly all email subscribers will be migrated over, but I will be looking into it directly. You may get an email from me asking you to resubscribe to the new blog site. Just giving you a heads up.

Mrs. Hinkley Brought Me Doughnuts

I was unloading our delivery van when a car pulled up to side of the store. A window rolled down and a familiar face said, “Hey Phil, I brought you a little something.”

It wasn’t a “little something”. It was Hinkley Doughnuts!! The number one rated doughnut in Michigan!!! Mrs. Hinkley herself was hand-delivering a few leftovers as she called them (a box of my favorites as I called them).

Jackson isn’t a small town. We’re a city of over 30,000 people and a community of over 150,000 people. It is easy to be an anonymous business owner here. But it pays better to not be so anonymous.

Sure, I’m a regular customer at Hinkley’s Bakery. In fact, I never plan big morning events unless it is a day Hinkley’s is open (they are only open Wed-Sat). I regularly buy a box for the break room at work. But I’m just one of hundreds of their regulars.

So why a box filled with all my favorites for free?

It is the relationship we have built over the years. I am crazy about shopping local and building relationships with my fellow local business owners. We talk and laugh and share stories and ideas. We get to know each other and each other’s families. We help each other out. We send business each other’s ways.

If you want to market yourself, the best place to start is to build a network among your fellow local independents. Introduce yourself every time you visit (and visit them often). Get to know them and they will get to know it you. Be generous with your time and resources. Send them business and they will send some your way, too.

It pays. (Excuse me while I go finish my doughnut.)

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I am getting really chummy with the owner of the downtown brewery right now, too. Yeah, that’s how I roll (pun intended).

Media Versus Network?

Social media is where it is at!
Social media is DEAD!
Social media is FREE!
Social media has NO ROI!
Businesses are expanding because of social media!
Businesses are wasting their money on social media!

SOCIAL MEDIA, social media, social media, BLAH blah blah.

Everyone has an opinion on whether Social Media is helping businesses grow or is just a waste of money. And everyone is wrong.

Why? They have the word wrong. Chances are, you do, too.

MEDIA VERSUS NETWORK

What happens if we changed the word media to the word network?

Media = an avenue through which you broadcast content and advertising
Network = a connection of people who can help each other out

Which word more accurately describes Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, et al? A network of connected people sharing with each other or a medium with people waiting to be told what to do or think?

Would you use Social differently if you saw it as a networking avenue instead of a medium onto which you broadcast your message?

Would you use Social differently if you were trying to connect to people and connect them to resources and other people instead of just telling your story?

Would you use Social differently if you saw it as a way to have two-way conversations and see how others could help you, rather than just a platform to tell them what you’re going to do?

Would you use Social differently if you were trying to help instead of just trying to sell?

Change the word and you’ll change your focus. Change your focus and you’ll change your effectiveness.

Social Media is DEAD. But the Social Network is alive and kicking!

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS The best way to grow your Network is TRUST. When you engage without selling, when you help and share without financial gain, when you ask more than you tell, when you show that you are listening, when you are real and genuine and not always “on message” then you will gain the trust of your network.

What I’ve Been Working On

Here’s what I’ve been working on (and why I haven’t posted in a while)…

NEW WEBSITE FOR TOY HOUSE

https://toyhouseonline.com

Our old website wasn’t mobile-friendly and needed a few upgrades to make it responsive to different platforms (computers, phones and tablets). Google is telling people that non-responsive sites are going to get knocked down in the search rankings soon.

Since we don’t sell online, I also wanted to focus the site more on making people to want to visit the store. More pictures of what you’ll find when you visit. More descriptions of the in-store services and events. More content telling you how much fun you’ll have when you get to the store.

To get the most out of your website, you have to know what you want your website to do. 

Finally, I wanted a website that I can change and update regularly. I spent the last several months learning how to use WordPress and built the site using their system.

The new site is up and working. The early returns have been promising. More tweaks including video are coming soon.

NEW WEBSITE FOR PHIL’S FORUM

This one isn’t done yet. Originally, I thought that after building the new Toy House site this one would be easy. I was wrong.

One of the key elements of building a website is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). With the Toy House site that was fairly easy. My goal was to make sure you find us in any search related to toys and Jackson, MI. Go ahead and search “toys Jackson” and see where you find us.

But PhilsForum.com is a different beast playing in a different sandbox.

If you search on such terms as…

  • RETAILER ADVICE
  • RETAIL SUCCESS
  • HELP FOR RETAILERS
  • RETAIL SPEAKER
  • RETAIL COACH
  • INDEPENDENT RETAILER

…you won’t find me on the first two to three pages in Google.

One of everyone’s favorite pages from my current site is the Freebies page. Yet if you search on RETAILER FREEBIES, you get fourteen pages of coupons before you find all the articles and notes I’ve uploaded for you.

If you search on RETAIL SPEAKER you won’t find me until page four behind a number of sites that won’t even get you a top-level, in-the-trenches retail speaker that routinely gets high praise for the talks he does.

Before I can build the new site, I have a lot of SEO work to do including coming up with a new name for the Freebies – something based on the words you would likely use to search for that information.

Some of those Freebies are ready for an upgrade, too. Stay posted and I’ll let you know here when the new site goes live (and where you can find the new Freebies).

NEW BOOK ON ADVERTISING MESSAGES

Back in the spring I asked for your submissions for a new book I planned to write this summer. I didn’t get as many submissions as I hoped, but I did get enough to put the book together, albeit in a slightly different format than originally planned. (You can still submit your business for inclusion.)

As soon as I get the new PhilsForum.com site up and running, I’ll tackle this project. (Believe me, I’ve already been formatting chapters in my head on this and am getting excited at how the finished product is going to turn out.)

I’ll be back to blogging soon. In the meantime, start asking yourself these questions…

  • What do you want to accomplish in the next twelve months?
  • What is holding you back?
  • What are your competitors doing better than you?

Those are the questions I hope to explore with you this fall.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS When the new PhilsForum.com site is done, this blogspot blog will go away. I’ll archive all the old blogs onto the new site so the content will still be there. If you’re a subscriber, don’t worry. I’m already looking at how to seamlessly transfer you over to the new blog so that you continue to get this info in your inbox. But if you’re getting this through your RSS feed, I’ll let you know when it is time to change over to the new feed.

PPS Also get ready for a discussion about your online presence. I’ve learned a ton over the last few months building new websites that I look forward to sharing with you.

The Chasm Between Early Adopters and Early Majority

Back in 1962, Everett Rogers introduced us to the Diffusion of Innovations that shows how people enter the market for any given idea, product or service. There are five groups of people who look at new ideas and products distinctively different. The percentages shown are consistent across the board in study after study. Here is a quick definition of these groups through the prism of the smart phone industry.

Innovators: They don’t find what they want on the market so they make it. They didn’t get what they wanted from the new iPhone 5S so they hacked into the programming and made their own apps and programs.

Early Adopters: They want the newest, latest, most unique. They loved the iPhone 5S, couldn’t wait to get their hands on it. Yet, there they were standing in line one year later for the iPhone 6+ because it was newer and more unique.

Early Majority: They want the new, too… but only after it has been proven to work. They prefer tried and true over new and unique. They bought the iPhone 5S, but three to six months after it launched and have proven itself. They’ll get an iPhone 6 eventually, but probably not until it is time to upgrade.

Late Majority: Unlike the Early Majority, these people are waiting until it feels like everyone has one. They will only buy the iPhone 5S because they found a great deal on it, and figured they might as well join the crowd.

Laggards: They aren’t buying a smart phone. They don’t need one. Oh, they might get one, but only after all other options are completely gone. They will buy the iPhone 5S when they have no other choice.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR MARKETING

The chasm you see in the chart is the monumental mind-shift that takes place between the Early Adopters (EA) and the Early Majority (EM).  The EA want their product now. They want “new and unique” and don’t care how much it costs. They’ll pay full retail to get it first. To them, the words “tried and true” are the kiss of death. The EM’s, however, live for the words “tried and true”. They want the proven item, the easily available item, the commodity.

If you try to market to the EA’s, you will completely turn off the EM’s. Words like new, innovative and unique are scary to the EM’s. If you try to market to the EM’s, you will completely turn off the EA’s who don’t care about tried and true.  In other words, you have to choose which of these two groups to market, then make sure your message and your offerings are tailored to that group. If you try to reach both, you’ll reach neither.

If you try to market to the Late Majority (LM) or Laggards, you’re just a fool. The LM’s only want the commodity at a discount. The Laggards don’t want it at all and only buy it as a means of last resort at the cheapest price.

You can look at the five groups like this…

  • The Innovators push the development of the product forward. 
  • The Early Adopters buy that new product as soon as it is available. 
  • The Early Majority buys the commodity version of that product. 
  • The Late Majority buys the discounted commodity version of that product. 
  • The Laggard only buys the discounted commodity version and only when forced to buy it.

The profit margin, therefore, is in selling to the EA’s. The volume is in selling to the EM’s. Everyone else is a race to the bottom that you can’t  (don’t want to) win. The choice is yours, but it is definitely a choice you have to make. Otherwise you will be stuck in the chasm between the two with ineffective marketing to both of them.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS One other thought I have been having on this topic… My toy and baby customers turn over so fast that even the tried and true product to me can often feel new and innovative and unique to a brand new mom-to-be. In other words, if you have a fast-changing market, don’t throw out the tried-and-true products just yet. They may be new and unique to your new base.