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The Conundrum of Choice

I used to advertise the heck out of the fact Toy House had the largest selection of toys under one roof of any store in the area. In our heyday we had over twice the selection of a Toys R Us and five times the selection of the Walmarts, Targets, and Kmarts of the world. Back in the 80’s and 90’s when bigger was better, this seemed to be the perfect calling card.

And it was—at least for drawing traffic.

Paradox of Choice cover.jpgSometimes, however, the super large selection was also a detriment to sales. Having too many options can lead to Analysis Paralysis. Barry Schwartz called this the Paradox of Choice (in the book by the same name).

While we like having freedom of choice, when we have too many choices, the process of selection bogs down.

I was thinking about this the other day while I was out shopping. I needed a closet deodorizer. The store I was in offered nine or ten different options. I had no clue. They all seemed to do about the same thing. I didn’t recognize any of the brands so I made my decision based on price.

I eliminated the most expensive item figuring that it probably wasn’t any better than the others, especially since it didn’t have a brand name I recognized. I threw out the least expensive item figuring the company probably cut corners to make it, so it likely wouldn’t be as effective or last as long. I then chose something toward the bottom of the prices left, figuring they were all similar, why spend any more?

Is that the way you want customers shopping in your store?

It was the perfect example of the paradox of choice. Had there only been two or three items, I would have studied the differences between them and chosen a product based on features and benefits. But with nine items, instead of seeing differences, I only saw similarities, so I based my decision on brand and price.

This is the Trader Joe’s philosophy …

Limit the selection to make it easier for the customer to choose based on the criteria of the product.

From this you could conclude that it is better to curate a great selection than to just offer more than your competitors. In many ways you would be right.

There is still something to be said, however, for having the largest selection. It is and always has been a traffic draw. Stores like Lowe’s, Home Depot, Staples, and JoAnn’s still rely on the perception of unlimited choices to drive their business.

The trick to making it work is having a staff that can curate your large selection that drew your customers in into a smaller selection from which they can make a choice.

I worked with my staff to do the following:

  • Ask questions why the customer wants a particular item. What are they trying to accomplish?
  • Curate our selection down to the two or three best “solutions”
  • Always show the best solution first, regardless of price or budget. Often a customer will bust the budget for the item that best fits her needs

When you have too many choices, while the traffic it draws is nice, you’re forcing your customers to shop based on brand and price (and often the lower prices win).

When you curate the choices, you help your customers shop based on features and benefits (and often the item offering the most benefits wins).

See the difference?

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS If you are a smaller store, by all means curate the selection in advance, but if you have the space, don’t be afraid to have several choices based on the different “solutions” they provide. Just make sure your staff knows how to curate the choices down for each individual customer. Remember, everyone walking through your door has a different problem to solve.

A Simple Game to Help You Improve Your Store

I was visiting a good friend and toy store owner in Lawrence, KS (The Toy Store – you should visit if you’re ever in the area) and she asked me, “Does visiting stores like mine make you miss being on the retail side?”

My answer was an immediate and definitive No.

Oh, I get inspired when I see fabulous stores done well like The Toy Store. I love walking through a store thinking, “I could have done that at Toy House.” But while visiting great stores and thinking about what I could have done is something that happens all the time, it isn’t the good stores that make me miss being a retailer.

It is the bad ones that get me going.

The game I play the most is inspired by the famous Dr. Seuss book, If I Ran the Zoo. When I walk through a bad retail store my mind quickly goes to, “If I ran this store, the first thing I would do is …”

It takes a lot of hubris to play a game like this. First, to call a retailer “bad” that is still open in today’s retail climate is fairly judgmental. Second, to think I could make it better takes another level of arrogance. Yet, it is a game and an arrogance I would actually encourage you to have.

It will only help your own business.

First, if you’re playing this game, you’re judging retailers against a standard—your own. Since we all think our store is pretty good, we measure all other stores against what we are doing. So it causes you to truly evaluate your own standards and find ways to raise your own bar.

Second, as you think about what you would do first with someone else’s business, you’re reinforcing what is working for your business. You’re most often going to focus on your own strengths, the things you do that set you apart. Keep that in mind the next time you’re putting together a marketing message. It is the things you do differently that will resonate most with potential new customers.

Third, even though it takes an arrogance to think you can make someone else’s business better, it also lends itself to humility because you get into a mindset of improvement. You get into a mindset of looking for things that can get better. You look more critically at your own business.

I encourage you to play this game. Get someone else to play it with you. Take your manager to visit a few stores to play this game. Then, in the middle of your discussion, change the name of the store you’re discussing to your store, and see how the ideas flow.

The good stores like The Toy Store are fun to visit. The stores that need some work, however, are the ones that get my juices flowing. They’ll get yours flowing, too, when you play this game.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS There is value from visiting great stores, too. I wrote a post about it here. Your best lessons come from the best and worst retailers you visit. Average stores can only teach you how to be like everyone else. Visit the best and worst retailers out there. Then apply what you learn. The desire to get better will keep you humble and grounded even as your store starts to rise.

Inefficiencies Can Derail the Experience

The line didn’t seem that long. I’ve been in longer lines waiting for food. The menu showed three lunch options, likely for efficiency’s sake. I expected the line to move along quite rapidly.

Twenty-five minutes later the line felt more like eternity.

There was one line and two windows (which is the most efficient way even if it “feels” longer). That wasn’t the problem. Shortly into our wait we saw the problem. Once you ordered at one of the two windows you had to wait to the side of the window until your tray arrived several minutes later.

With every group that ordered, I watched them do the dance with the next in lines as the food trays were shepherded out the window. Whose order was whose? Which way do I go? How do I get past the crowd at the window to get to the seating area? Where is the ketchup stand?

The hardest part was the watching and waiting, seeing there was a more efficient way.

With two windows it would have been easy to take the order at the first window and pick up the food at the second window. The line headed toward the first window anyway. The second window was closer to the ketchup and the seating. Those who had ordered wouldn’t feel like they were inconveniencing the line behind them while they waited for their food.

This was one place where an assembly line style of serving would have made total sense.

Here’s the kicker. I was standing in line at the lunch stand at Greenfield Village, part of the Henry Ford Museum campus. I’m pretty sure Henry Ford is kinda known for taking the assembly line concept to a whole new level?

One would think they could take some inspiration from the man whose name was on the building.

The lesson in all this is that you should always be looking at ways to improve what you do. Find the inefficiencies and decide whether they are better or worse for the customer. If worse, look around you for inspiration how to fix them.

Henry Ford got his inspiration for the assembly line from the Chicago meat cutters and their disassembly line. When I needed a better way to hire and train my staff I got my inspiration from the potter. When radio stations had unsold ad slots, they learned from the airlines “standby” passengers.

Your business has inefficiencies, some that quietly annoy your customers. The lunch line at Greenfield Village fortunately wasn’t enough to ruin an otherwise fabulous visit to a fabulous place, but it was enough to make me write about it. And that should be reason enough for you to find those annoyances in your business and clean them up.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS There is an ice cream place here in town with the same two-window inefficiency. A clerk leans through a tiny window to write your order on a scratch pad. Then you step to the side and wait while she takes the next person’s order. Two or three orders later, there is a crowd hovering around the window waiting to grab whatever cold creamy concoction might get thrust out. Order at one window, pick it up at the next. The fast food joints have all learned this. Why can’t the others?

PPS If you get a chance to visit Greenfield Village (and I highly recommend it!!) make sure you stop by the Working Farm. It doesn’t get the hype of the Model T Ride or Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park recreation, but it was my favorite stop in the village. (Just plan a few extra minutes for the lunch line near Main Street.)

Trying to Give Great Service is NOT the Same as Actually Doing It

Ever have that experience where you know what someone is trying to do, but they just keep missing the mark? You want to give them points for trying, but close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and atom bombs.

I had that experience last week at a Barnes & Noble store.

The store was having a sale. Several tables right inside the front door and up that middle aisle were clearly marked 50% off. A few tables on either side had new releases at 20% off. The staff was obviously pumped up for the sale.

I was greeted at the door by an associate who thanked me for coming in (good so far). She excitedly told me all about the sale (also good). But then she committed the one blunder too many sales associates do. She asked me,

“Is there anything I can help you find?”

I was just inside the door. My eyes had barely adjusted from the sunlight to the interior lights. I was greeted and told to browse all these tables for great deals. But before I could even approach the first table I was asked to stop browsing and start finding the item I came in to buy.

The problem with asking, “Is there anything I can help you find?” is it is the first cousin of, “Can I help you?” It causes a knee-jerk reaction that caused me to say, “No thanks, I’m just here to browse.”

Let me repeat that in case it wasn’t clear …

I just told a sales clerk out loud that I did NOT plan to buy anything, I only came in to browse.

I reinforced it in her ears and in my mind. I took buying off the table before I even began browsing.

Obviously the gal was trying to be helpful. In her mind she was giving me awesome customer service. The greeting and mentioning the sales table were a good start, but then she ruined it with a deal-killing question.

Worse yet, she didn’t realize she was asking this of a guy. When guys shop, once we get what we came for, we’re out of there. Browsing comes to a complete halt once we get what we wanted.

It would have been better if she left me to browse after mentioning the sale and then approached me later. Give me a moment to catch my breath and take in my surroundings. Give me a moment to plan a course of action. Give me a moment to collect my own thoughts.

Instead she pounced and turned me into a liar or a non-shopper—neither of which are good.

It wasn’t just her. Four times over the next ten minutes I had associates approach me and ask if I was finding everything okay. It was getting creepy. I almost wanted to walk away from the sale tables just to get away from them.

One even asked me if I wanted him to price out the book in my hand. It was clearly marked with the price, and the sign clearly said 50% off marked price. (I was in a bookstore so you would think he would assume I could read and do the simple math?)

In their minds, these associates were thinking they were giving me great customer service. Instead they were creeping me out. I knew it was a direction from above, too, because the manager approached me not once but twice with, “Are you finding everything okay?”

A LITTLE FOREPLAY FIRST

Here is where they were missing the boat. The first gal notwithstanding, the others all approached me while I was perusing the sale tables. That isn’t where I would expect to find what I came in to buy, so it wasn’t even an appropriate question there. The question would make more sense if I was scanning titles in a particular section.

Even then it would have been better if they first asked a question or said something to engage me in conversation. They could have used phrases like:

  • Who’s your favorite author?
  • What are you reading currently?
  • I see you were looking at a spy novel. Have you read the Red Sparrow trilogy?

I would have answered those questions. We would have had a dialogue, a conversation, the beginning of a relationship. I would have felt they were actually interested in my reading habits.

I would have believed they could do more than just point me to an item I already knew I wanted.

Isn’t that the point of selling? Isn’t your job to gain the trust of the customer and then help her solve problems? Anyone can lead a customer to a product they already knew they wanted. A true salesperson shows you the stuff you didn’t yet know you absolutely had to own.

You’ll never get there asking, “Are you finding everything okay?”

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I applaud them for trying. Unfortunately, without proper sales training, they’ll try this for several weeks, see no improvement and probably fall back into their old habits. Worse yet, they’ll think approaching the customer is overrated and pooh-pooh any further suggestions otherwise. “We tried that and it didn’t work.”

PPS I did actually engage the fifth time I was asked if I was finding everything. I told the guy they didn’t have my favorite game in stock. He asked which one? I told him Honga, one of the HABA games I sell. (It really is my favorite right now.) He looked it up and is going to bring a couple in now. So at least I got that out of the experience.

Competing with Amazon

I sit here typing about Amazon while millions of people are shopping on Amazon, taking advantage of the Amazon Prime Days specials. To say that Amazon disrupted the retail climate would be like saying Jesus got a few people to think differently about God.

Here is something Amazon didn’t do. It didn’t kill brick & mortar shopping. Sure, many stores closed and keep closing. Many stores keep opening, too.

Oh, everyone thought it would kill brick & mortar. That’s what we all heard behind the gnashing teeth of the worry mongers. But it didn’t happen. E-commerce was only 13% of all retail shopping in 2017 (source).

Some retailers learned how to adjust to the new retail climate. Some didn’t. Those that survived and thrived did it using one or more of these four tactics.

FIND NICHE PRODUCTS

In the early days, before everything was online, savvy retailers looked for products on which they didn’t have to compete online. Customizable products, hard-to-find products, bespoke products, and niche products from vendors who recognized the value of the brick & mortar seller filled these showrooms.

Unfortunately, as e-commerce expands, those products become harder and harder to find. Most new vendors now launch directly online (and through Amazon).

Niche products are still out there, though, Artisan works, hand-crafted items, impulse buys (no one does price comparisons on impulse items), and truly hand-sell items that need to be shown still sell best in specialty brick & mortar.

OUT-SERVICE AND OUT-SELL THEM

One area Amazon will never be able to compete with a top-level brick & mortar is Selling (and by Selling, I mean Serving the customer). Oh, hey, they do know a thing about being customer-friendly and customer-focused. But there is only so much you can do online. Having a customers-who-bought-this-also-bought-that section is not up-selling or, as I prefer, completing the sale.

Smart retailers sank extra money into training their employees, paying for better employees, and creating a culture where those people want to work. Their staff are rock stars and their customers become so loyal, they do all the marketing for these stores in terms of repeat and referral business.

OFFER NEW SERVICES

Some stores took the approach of offering services you cannot get from an online seller. Shoe stores have orthotic services. Book and game stores have lending libraries. Clothing stores offer custom-fittings and personal shoppers. Baby stores do car seat installations.

As a toy store, we were already offering programs such as a Teacher Loaner Program that allowed teachers to borrow items for free for a week in their classroom. We also already had layaway, gift-wrapping, delivery, assembly, and UPS shipping. As a team we were always looking for new ways to help the customer.

If a customer asked, “Can you do this …?” we pretty much said, “Yes!”

JOIN ‘EM

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Several retailers took this approach and started selling their own stuff on Amazon either as Merchant Fulfilled (MFN) where it comes out of your stock, or Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) where you send it to them to box up and ship out.

Some are making a killing at it. Some are augmenting the sales they lost. Some are using it to stay on top of trends and shifts in buying habits.

Some are losing money at it. The two downsides to “join ’em” are first, it often becomes its own business with its own rules needing its own time and energy, and second, you can get deep into it only to lose the line that made most of your cash flow.

The real point here is that the smart retailers (and vendors) adapted. They found new ways to work within the new climate. With any disruption in any industry there will always be winners and losers.  You can usually spot the losers because they are the ones gnashing their teeth. The winners are already plotting how to turn it to their advantage.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Our market share in 2007 was 16.5%. Amazon really hit its stride in toys around 2011-2012. By 2015, however, our market share had only dropped to 15.7%. Not quite the retail apocalypse the worry mongers were threatening.

9 Out of 10 People Don’t Recommend Your Store

I think a lot about Market Share. Maybe too much. I find it the most fascinating piece of data you can track because it tells you so much more about how you are performing than just sales, profits, or cash flow.

For one, it tells you how well you are competing in your market. If your share is growing, you’re obviously doing something right. If you’re losing share—even if your business is growing—you have a leak in your ship that needs fixing.

It also helps you focus your marketing. Once you realize that 9 out of 10 people in your area don’t shop in your store (results may vary but most indie retailers have less than 10% share of their market), you can hyper-focus your marketing on just one of those nine “people.” Win that one and you’ll double your sales.

Make the “one” the loudest voice in the crowd.

Let’s talk about those nine people for a moment.

I was at an event recently that had a panel of expecting moms. They were asked where they went for information to buy baby products. All six answered Friends and Online Reviews. None of them answered Sales Staff in a Store. None of them said Advertisements for Baby Stores. None of them mentioned Informational Fliers at the doctor’s office. Not one of them discussed Emails from brands or stores. They barely talked about Instagram influencers (and not in a positive way).

Friends and Online Reviews.

Even the online reviews didn’t get a favorable viewing. Most of the panel said they didn’t fully trust online reviews but would read the negative reviews in detail. They trusted most the information from friends who already had children.

From this panel you might conclude that the most important form of advertising for your business is the word-of-mouth referral from your happy customers. You would be right.

Yet nine out of ten people don’t refer your business to their friends. That’s a lot of friends telling their friends to go elsewhere. Not one member of our panel had visited an independent specialty baby store. Only a handful had gone to a Buy Buy Baby chain store. Most did their shopping/registering at Target because nine out of ten of their friends went there.

It didn’t help that there was only one indie specialty store in their town and it had a limited selection. I would have loved to see the responses of a panel like this in a town with a powerful indie store. I think Sales Staff at a Specialty Store might have made the list of trusted sources.

As it is, the lesson for all of us is simple. You have to give that one out of the ten such an amazing experience that her voice drowns out the other nine when the subject comes up where to shop.

Conversely, you cannot allow one bad experience to walk out your door. You’ll be dead to her circle of friends. Yeah, you might have to eat some crow from time to time, but it is better to eat the crow now to get the chance to eat the filet later.

Retail is not a money game. It is a game of the heart. Win your customers’ hearts and the money will follow.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Not sure how to calculate your Market Share? Check out the Market Share Diagnostic Tool. It will not only show you how to calculate your Market Share, it will tell you why this is the second most important part of your business to track.

Removing Barriers and Obstacles the Toledo Museum of Art Way

I could probably go back through the records of Toy House and tell you when the first nice Saturday of spring hit every year. You know the day. After a long winter, it is finally sunny and warm enough to not need a coat.

We never had much traffic on that first nice Saturday. People were doing yard work, taking down Christmas lights they had unplugged months before, and pumping air into bike tires that hadn’t seen pavement since Halloween. Our busiest part of the store was the back door where the air compressor sat.

It was the cold, rainy Saturday that followed that was usually our best day.

Last Saturday was one of those cold, rainy days. The temperature hit 41 degrees for the high. The rain was steady all day. I did the other thing you do on cold, rainy spring days when your shopping is done. I went to the Toledo Museum of Art.

If you’re in the area, I highly recommend the TMA. The museum has a fabulous collection including a couple Van Gohs, a couple Renoirs, some amazing sculptures, and a fascinating glass display. It’s fairly easy to find, too. There is a nice parking lot behind the museum that has several covered spaces (perfect on a rainy day) near the back door entrance.

We crossed the street, checked our umbrella and coats, and spent a couple hours lost in the amazement of art. There were docents and security guards at every turn (sometimes it was hard to tell one from the other as they all seemed to know everything about everything) to make the trip more enjoyable.

All of this was quite impressive for a museum where admission is free and parking is only $8.

But before you think this is just a plug for a museum, I want to tell you the part of the story that blew me away. Here are the three key factors to remember so far. It was raining. We walked in the back door. We checked our umbrella because umbrellas are not allowed in the museum.

For those of you not familiar with Toledo, OH, it is known as Glass City. Owens-Corning and Libbey Glass both have their origins here and a long history with Toledo. One of the coolest parts of any trip to the Toledo Museum of Art is right out the front door and across the street at the Glass Pavilion.

Here you can see a demonstration on glass blowing and some of the most beautiful works of glass you can imagine.

Our dilemma was that it was raining and our umbrella was downstairs by the back door.

I stood staring out the front door through the rain to the Glass Pavilion, at which point a security guard handed me a large red golf-style umbrella with the words “Toledo Museum of Art” printed on it. He had a whole rack of them by the door. Across the street I could see a similar rack inside the door of the Glass Pavilion.

We grabbed an umbrella and off we went.

Without the umbrella, we might not have made that trek. It would have involved heading out the back door and walking around a massive building in the rain. Or it would have involved putting raincoats to the test. Not everyone at the museum had a raincoat that day.

Yet the museum director had the foresight to recognize this obstacle, order a bunch of umbrellas, and make it easier for patrons to enjoy all aspects of the museum.

The lesson in this is to look at your business with the same eye. Look for the obstacles and barriers that keep people from shopping at your store. Is it your hours? Is it your location? Is it your lack of parking? Is it your restrictive return policy or the limitations on how people can pay?

The more barriers you can remove, the better.

Change your hours to better accommodate the times your best customers can shop. If parking is an issue, create valet parking (get your neighboring businesses to pitch in because they’ll reap the benefits, too). Change your policies to make it easier for customers to pay.

Every barrier you remove adds to your bottom line—no matter what it costs.

Why? Because of the word-of-mouth. Do things no one else is doing to make it easier for your customers and they will tell their friends. Do the same thing everyone else is doing and there is nothing to say.

In fact, the two questions you should be constantly asking are:

  • What barriers or obstacles keep my store from getting more shoppers and buyers?
  • Does this new policy/procedure/campaign/tool/tech/program make it easier or harder for customers to shop and buy?

The Toledo Museum of Art filled my cold, rainy Saturday with a warm, sunny rainbow of surprise and delight with a simple red umbrella. What can you do for your customers?

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS The fact it was hard to tell a docent from a security guard because everyone seemed to have so much knowledge was just icing on the cake. I like how the director of this museum thinks.

PPS If your neighborhood shops think valet parking is a good idea, take the lead on this issue and make sure the valet stand is close to your front door and associated with you. That way you reap the full benefits.

Making the “Experience” Over-the-Top

Last night my bracket got busted. As a diehard University of Michigan Wolverine fan, my NCAA tournament bracket lasts until the Wolverines bow out. (I know, I know. I shouldn’t always pick them to win it all, but then I would have to root for them to lose, and I can’t do that.)

Brackets for the NCAA tournament are fun. They are also an easy tool to implement for a promotion or event in your store.

One year we had a “March Games Madness” where every Friday at Game Night we played four games and voted on the best. After four weeks we had a “Final Four” and in week five we crowned a champion. We had brackets for people to fill out and seedings for the games. Not only was it fun and attracted a decent (and returning) crowd, it gave us fodder for social media marketing. (This game is a “Final Four Game.”)

Another year we set an unofficial world record for having the most people playing the game Snake Oil at one time.

At a Breyer Horse event we had a stick-horse obstacle course complete with a bale of hay and a water element.

For our Disney Princess Day we had a quartet from the local symphony play Disney songs on our stage.

Go big or go home.

Put some kind of Wow Factor into your events and two things will happen. First, your events will get customers talking about your store, coming back more often, and bringing their friends with them.

Second, and more importantly, you will separate yourself from the influence of negative experiences at other brick & mortar stores.

It doesn’t just have to be an event, either. Go big in other ways. I knew a jewelry store that had a $30K diamond engagement ring and special “throne” to sit in to try it on. I just visited a toy store recently with an eight-foot tall Steiff giraffe that sells for $20K.

Take the money from your advertising budget if you have to for a splash item because that’s what those two pieces represent.

Go big in your services, too. Serve food/drinks. Have valet parking. Do a coat check. Have expert demos. Have someone with a large golf umbrella walk customers to their cars on rainy days.

Those are the actions that set you apart, that insulate you from being lumped in with all the other retailers out there. Your toughest competitors now are not the other stores that sell what you sell. Your toughest competitors are the horrible experiences people have at other brick & mortar stores that keep them from shopping in any brick & mortar.

Set yourself apart and you become a category all to yourself, insulated from those negative experiences that drive people away.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Actions speak louder than words. Do these things. Don’t advertise these things. Talking about them makes them less special. Just doing it and letting your customers talk about it is what sets you apart. (Yes, you should advertise your event, but don’t give away all the surprises in how you’re going over-the-top. In time, your customers will be showing up just to see what crazy stunt you’re going to pull off this time.)

A Tale of Two Cashiers

It was the best of cashiers, it was the worst of cashiers …

I did something foolish. I went out shopping on Saturday, December 15th last year. Yep, that Saturday. One of the two or three busiest days of the year. My staff and I used to love those Saturdays at Toy House. We were always pumped up and ready to have all kinds of fun with the crowds of people.

Not this gal.

I waited in line as expected. Placed my items on the belt. Waited some more. When it was finally my turn I said to the cashier a joyful, “Hello. How are you?”

In the most monotonous, apathetic voice she could muster, she answered, “I’m here.”

That was it. She didn’t say anything more until she had rung up all my purchases and asked, “Mperks, bottle slips, or coupons?”

No “Hello.” No “Thank you.” No “Fine, thanks.” She didn’t even say those phrases I really hate at checkout like, “Are you ready to check out?” or “Did you find everything?” Heck, by this point I would have taken any kind of interaction. She didn’t even say, “No problem,” when I thanked her for ringing me up.

Any excitement I had for the upcoming holiday was quickly Grinched out in her doom and gloom. I walked back to my car somewhat deflated and dejected.

Fast forward to yesterday. Same chain, different store. I was greeted with, “Hi, how are you today? Looks like you have a pretty good shopping list here.”

By the time she had finished ringing me up, we knew each other’s names, I knew some of her past work history. I knew why she was working where she was and what she “just loved” about working for them. We talked about my purchases. We laughed about the shopping bags that wouldn’t separate from each other easily.

It was a generally pleasant conversation that ended with, “Thank you for coming in. Hope to see you again.”

I’ve shopped this chain all my life and never once been asked to come back like that. 

According to a John Gattorna study published in 2008, the leading cause for customers to switch stores isn’t product or price. It is indifference. Here are his numbers:

  • 4% Natural attrition (moved away, passed on, etc)
  • 5% Referred to a competitor by their friend
  • 9% Competitive reasons (e.g. price)
  • 14% Product/service dissatisfaction
  • 68% Perceived Indifference

If the “I’m here” cashier had worked for me, she would no longer be “here”. If you can’t be happy and enthused for the busiest time of the year, you don’t belong in retail. At the same time, I would be doing everything in my power to encourage more conversations between my cashiers and customers like the “Hope to see you again,” cashier. I actually do hope I see her again.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Notice how I didn’t mention anything about their efficiency or skill with the actual cash register and bagging? I have had horrible baggers, slow movers, and cashiers not trained well enough to know even the simple procedures at this chain. But the two that stood out the most were both because of their attitude. 

PPS One of the cashiers was a Baby Boomer. The other was a Millennial. Guess which was which?

Another Phrase You Need to Quit Using

One downside to being a speaker for the retail industry is that there aren’t a lot of speaking opportunities in December. (It is also an upside in that I had a lot more time around the holidays, but I digress.) With all that free time, I took on the project of replacing the cabinets in my friend’s kitchen. He had a broken cabinet, plus wanted to do some simple remodeling and moving of appliances. It was a fun project.

One day shortly after finishing that project, I happened to be walking through the cabinet section at Lowe’s with my girlfriend. We were talking about some of the cabinets we might have chosen for the project.

A sales clerk approached us and asked, “Are you finding everything okay?”

“Yes, we are. Thanks.” I cringed as I said it because it rolled off my lips without a moment’s hesitation. It was as knee-jerk a reaction as “Just looking,” or “I’m fine. How are you?”

The annoying thing is that I often asked that same question of customers at Toy House. I often got the same response. Until I learned a better way.

We all know not to ask a customer, “Can I help you?” Now asking the customer, “Are you finding everything okay?” is the new no-no.

Why? Because the knee-jerk response kills the conversation with the finality of a Clint Eastwood Smith & Wesson.

OTHER WAYS TO OPEN

There are a whole bunch of other ways the salesperson could have opened the conversation.

He could have used a question about the product we were admiring …

“Are you admiring that set for the color or the style?” I would have answered color. My girlfriend would have answered style. And we would be talking.

He could have led with a feature …

“Have you seen the new soft-close drawers on that unit? You have to try it.” I would have opened a drawer and he would have had the opening (both figurative and literal) to talk to me about features and benefits.

He could have used a personal statement …

“You’re looking at my favorite style. I’ve been dreaming of remodeling our kitchen with those. What style would you put in your dream kitchen?” We probably would have talked for several minutes.

He could have even led with his name …

“Hi guys. I’m Carl, your kitchen remodel expert.” I would have responded, “Hi, Carl.” I might have even taken his card.

The point here is that there are many ways Carl could have opened a conversation that might have led to a sale. Big sales like kitchen cabinets rarely just happen out of the blue. They take time and effort, and a relationship you build with the customer first.

“Are you finding everything okay?” implies that the customer is in control, you don’t really want to help unless absolutely necessary, and a relationship isn’t even on the salesperson’s mind. The customer really only has to give you one of two responses—Yes or No. If she says Yes, you’re out of the game before you even got in. If she says No, there still is no guarantee she’s going to ask for your help because she still doesn’t know or trust you.

Half the time she will lie and tell you Yes when she means No just to not have to deal with you.

The next time you and your staff get together for training, work on alternate openings to “Are you finding everything okay?” and strike that phrase from your vocabulary. It will help you convert more customers into relationships which will lead to more sales.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Sure, I wasn’t in the market for cabinets that night. The salesman didn’t know that. And with that opening he was never going to find out. The opening of the relationship is not only crucial to making today’s sale, it also sets the foundation for a long-term relationship and customer loyalty. For more ways to meet and greet your customers, check out the FREE eBook The Meet-and-Greet: Building a Long-Term Relationship with Your Customers.