Home » Presentations » Page 9

Category: Presentations

Anatomy of a Staff Meeting – Play Value

THE GOAL
Every staff meeting needs a goal. Not just any goal, but a big goal. Go big or go home.

This morning’s staff meeting goal was: This will be a successful meeting if we understand the importance of Play Value, how our toys offer Play Value and the special needs of Play Value.

THE TASK
After that, I needed an activity to get the points across. The first two parts of the goal were simply review. We talk about Play Value all the time. We talk about the three pillars of a great toy. We talk about the two different ways kids play – Directorial & Participatory – all the time.

Today’s meeting, however, was really about understanding the five different types of learning that toys offer kids of special needs. Cognitive, Communicative, Physical, Sensory, and Social/Emotional. I needed something big and memorable and visual that they could refer to later.

I came up with this.

I stood against the board and had a staff member trace my body. Then we talked about the five types as I drew shapes. Cognitive was a thought cloud coming up from the brain (yeah, okay, I wrote cognizant instead of cognitive – sue me). Communication was caption balloons coming from both sides of the mouth. Social/Emotional was a big heart in the chest. Sensory was two circles by each hand. Physical was trapezoids down by the legs.

The staff split into teams of two and went out to find a toy for each category. They presented their toys while I wrote each toy in the appropriate space. If there were any duplicates, that team had to go find a new toy. Pretty soon we had six toys for each category. And a huge visual. And a pattern of what kinds of toys fit each category. And a discussion of how to identify which category a customer’s request might fit in.

THE SURPRISE
Every meeting needs something unexpected. Since we already knew the first two parts of Play Value, I asked one person to get up and describe the three pillars. She nailed them and I gave her a $25 gas card. Two more questions, two more gas cards later, we had covered the basics. Not only did the gas cards delight the winners, it made the rest of the staff take notice that knowing this stuff was lucrative.

THE DEBRIEF
The discussion centered around recognizing the patterns of toys that fit each category of learning. We also discussed how to assess what a customer might want, what kinds of questions to ask. The visual of the big board with all the toys on it helped tremendously in the discussion.

THE ACTION PLAN
Since there were no assigned tasks with this meeting, I simply made a copy of the following picture for everyone to keep and put the big board in a prominent spot in our warehouse.

Is your staff having this much fun at your staff meetings?

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS You don’t need to sell toys to have fun meetings. But you do need to plan fun things. Don’t know how? Start with Staff Meetings Everyone Wants to Attend. Then download the Staff Meetings Worksheet. Then send me a note if you need more ideas.

Motivating Your Employees

This Friday I am doing a talk here in Jackson on motivating your employees. The talk is part of the Small Business Summit put on by OSB Community Bank and takes place at the Grand River Marketplace from 11:30am to 2pm. (Warning: the content of this presentation will make lesser minds explode).

You’re invited.

I am debating whether to put together another Freebie for you. I can certainly write up what I am going to say. My hesitation is that it will end up mostly being a book review. Well, two book reviews.

Much of my leadership style and much of how I motivate my team come from two books.

Drive by Daniel H. Pink
Maestro by Roger Nierenberg

Would you like to learn how to motivate your staff to their highest level of achievement and creativity? Read Drive.

Would you like to learn how to lead a team of high-achieving creatives? Read Maestro.

Would you like me to summarize my thoughts on the two books including how I use their approaches in real life in a new Freebie later this fall? Leave me a comment below (or on Facebook or Google+ or by email).

Hope to see you Friday.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Would you like me to give this presentation to your group? Send me an email. This presentation will knock the argyles right out of those wingtips.

We Need More Rock Stars

Not just any Rock Stars – we need Retail Rock Stars. You know the stores I’m talking about. The ones you would be most disappointed if they closed. The ones who always seem to have traffic and buzz and excitement. The ones you think should probably be in a book or something because of how they merchandise the store, how they treat the customer, how they participate in the community.

Retail Rock Stars change the landscape of a community. They become the focal point of the shopping center, whether downtown, in a strip or in a mall. Retail Rock Stars attract customers, but they also attract other retailers. People want to be around winners.

The best way to grow your business is to decide right now that you are going to be a Retail Rock Star in your community. You are going to be the retailer everyone wants to be like, to locate next to, to build a community around.

How? Decide what a Retail Rock Star store looks like and do it.

Merchandising? Yes! Displays that are fresh and ever changing and new and eye-catching.
Staffing? Yes! A friendly, helpful staff that will bend over backwards to delight your customers. And I mean BEND OVER BACKWARDS.
Products? Yes! The latest products, the newest innovations, the fresh-hot-off-the-presses stuff.

The Retail Rock Star does not have peeling paint on the side of the building, an old sign, a tired window display. The RRS does not have old lighting, faded carpets, and a tired, boring staff. The RRS does not have merchandise older than the store’s pet dog.

The RRS is a learning store, learning new techniques for marketing and merchandising and training. The RRS is a trying store, trying new things, measuring and tweaking.

These are the kinds of retailers I want to help build. These are the kinds of retailers this economy needs to get out of the current funk. These are the kinds of retailers your community needs to grow and attract people and business. Yes, your community needs you to become an RRS!

That is the goal of the new and improved Jackson Retail Success Academy.



A HISTORY OF THE JACKSON RETAIL SUCCESS ACADEMY

Six years ago Scott Fleming, then director of The Enterprise Group in Jackson County challenged a full alphabet of organizations with the task of supporting and keeping indie retailers in town. From that meeting the Greater Jackson Chamber of Commerce (GJCC), South Central Michigan Works (SCMW), Jackson DDA, Jackson Local First (JLF), Midtown Association of Jackson, Small Business Technology & Development Center (SBTDC), City of Jackson Economic Development, and The Enterprise Group developed the Jackson Retail Success Academy (JRSA).

JRSA was designed to help start-ups and new retailers with less than five years under their belt get the tools they needed for retail success. For the last five years we have been doing exactly that. Well, kinda…
A number of retailers that took the class closed. They found out while doing the math that their business model was flawed from the get-go and there wasn’t enough market in Jackson to make it. Others were just too deep in trouble to dig out of it. A handful of class members took it to the next level, but for some, the next level was to merely go from struggling to surviving.

Most importantly, we weren’t accomplishing the real goal – to turn Jackson into an indie retail haven, a place where indie retailers would not just survive but thrive. We kept looking for struggling retailers to take the class, super small retailers, the minnows in our pond. We were hoping to grow them into fish.

We were focused on the wrong crowd. Winners attract winners. We needed to spend more time trying to grow whales, not fish. We needed to create more Rock Stars.

Time to refocus.

The new and improved JRSA is starting over with a new focus. We are looking for the whales, the established indie retailers who want to go from surviving to thriving. The curriculum is pared down to the essentials of Rock Stardom. The instruction is updated to include thriving in this most challenging new era of retail where all the rules you knew before have changed.

This is not to say that start-ups and newbies are not welcome. They are. Gladly. The information is only as good as the effort you put toward using it.Anyone willing to put forth the effort will get the results they want. But my focus for JRSA will be to go whale-hunting.

The bait is pretty good.

-Phil Wrzesinskiwww.PhilsForum.com

PS The beauty of the new and improved JRSA is that it is easier to take on the road.  If you have a handful of retailers in your town that are on the verge of Rock Staardom, but just need that push to get over the edge, get in touch. I can cram all 20 hours of instruction into two days that, if your head doesn’t explode, will rock your world.

Business Boot Camp This Thursday

This Thursday, August 8, 2013, I will be holding a four-hour Business Boot Camp on Marketing and Advertising.

Four hours of world-class information on Branding and how to make yours stand out in the crowd.

Four hours of deconstructing the myths of Advertising, unlearning all those things uninformed advertising sales weasels people tried to teach you.

Four hours of unveiling the mistakes that even the big boys with billion-dollar budgets make every single day.

Four hours of clarifying how ads work, why ads work, where ads work and what you should do make yours work, too.

Four hours of making your ads more memorable, powerful, and effective without spending a penny more on your budget.

Four hours of getting you to think, laugh, and maybe even cry.

Four hours to turn your advertising around and make sure it performs to its best so that you can perform to your best.

Are you in?

Call the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce at (517) 782-8221 to sign up. Cost is only $99.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Yes, you get all that for $99. It should be $2000. At that price you would think there must be something to the class. You wouldn’t sign up – not in your budget – but you’d think the class was more valuable. Isn’t it funny how we give value to information based on what it costs?

If it makes you feel any better, what you will learn cost me thousands of dollars to learn. Plus, I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars testing it to know that it works. The Chamber and I are only charging a small fee because we want to see this spread.

Two More Freebies For You

Why do I give it away for free? It is part of my Core Values to be helpful.

Don’t get me wrong. I love getting paid to sell toys and baby products. I love getting paid to travel across the country and impart some of the lessons I’ve learned to a room full of peers.

I also love helping and sharing. I want my ideas and thoughts to spread farther and wider to help my friends and peers in the independent retail industry. Plus. more often than not, I’ve already been paid.

All of my Freebies are the notes written from presentations I have done. That is why they are short and sweet – so you can print them easily. I could make eBooks more like power points with full-page graphics, tight bullet points and simple messages spread out over 72 pages. But I would rather keep them down to seven pages or less so that I can use them as handouts. Short and sweet so you can print them at home and read later. Short and to the point for you to email and share with your friends.

Since I got paid to do the presentation, I have already been paid to write the eBook, too. Now we just need to spread the word.

Here are two new Freebies worth sharing.

Generating Word-of-Mouth – You know Word of Mouth is the best form of advertising. But do you know the five ways to generate it? Do you know how to get people to talk positively about your business? This Freebie shares all the secrets behind getting people to talk about you.

(Yes, I decided to put it under Great Marketing. Put your best stuff where the customers are most likely to see it.)

Making Your Ads Memorable – Most ads are ignored, because most ads are lousy. The truly remarkable ads are the ads most remembered. This Freebie will show you three things you can do to make your print and broadcast advertisements cut through the clutter and be seen, heard and remembered by your potential customers.

Enjoy!

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Some have argued that by giving it all away, no one will ever hire me to speak. Fair enough. Of course, the live explanations are always more fun and interesting and worth every penny. If they weren’t, I wouldn’t offer to do them.

What Do You Struggle to Train?

In a couple weeks I will be doing a workshop at the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association (ASTRA) Marketplace & Academy.  This is the big gathering of the specialty toy industry where many of the best independent toy stores will be attending.

The workshop I am doing is on Staff Meetings & Trainings Everyone Wants to Attend.  I will be teaching them the techniques I use to plan fun, interesting and sticky training events to teach my staff what they need to know.

The attendees of this workshop will be sitting at round tables and one of the activities will be for each table to develop a training event around a specific topic such as Closing the Sale, Answering the Telephone, Thinking Like a Boss, or What to do When Business is Slow.

I need your help.

I need about a dozen topics for this workshop. What topics do you struggle with? What topics do you wish you had a better training for? What topics do you wish someone could create a training event for you to use in your store?

Leave a comment or send me an email.  Anyone who offers a topic I use in the workshop will get a copy of the training we develop.

Thanks!

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I would also love to hear about the most fun, interesting or unique ways you have trained your staff on different topics. Send me pics if you have them. It is always better to have examples of what others have done when teaching this technique.

How Much Are You Investing in Your Business?

The Jackson County Chamber and I are teaming up to offer the best segments from the Jackson Retail Success Academy for all Jackson area businesses (and anyone willing to make the drive).

Three classes. Three four-hour days. $250 investment in your business (or $99 per class if you cannot make all three or are not a retailer.)

Inventory Management and Financial Health for Retailers
Thursday, June 27 (9am to 1pm) 

Every retailer knows that Cash is King. But do you know how to get more cash in your business to grow your kingdom?

This Business Boot Camp is designed strictly to help retailers understand how to manage inventory and expenses and, most importantly, your cash. You will learn simple formulas that the smart retailers use to keep the checkbook fat and happy. You will learn the Do’s and Don’t’s for keeping your inventory fresh and moving. You will find out where your cash is hiding and how to get more of it.

We will discuss things like Open-To-Buy programs, financial statements, the proper numbers to measure, how to price your products for profit, and the simplest way to get the most out of the inventory you sell.

Yes, there will be math. The important math. The kind of math you have to do if you want to be successful. What will surprise you is how quickly and easily you will learn the math and see the results.

(Note: to get the most out of this Business Boot Camp bring your previous fiscal year’s Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss statement. You will not be asked to share, but it will help you do your own math.)

Shareworthy Customer Service for Small Businesses
Thursday, July 11 (9am to 1pm)

We all know Word-of-Mouth is the best form of advertising. But do you know how to get people to talk about your company?

This Business Boot Camp will teach you the fundamentals behind generating Word-of-Mouth from your customer base. You will learn how to exceed customer expectations in such a way that they have to tell someone else. You will learn how to create a culture in your business that wants to delight your customers at every turn and raise the bar of Customer Service so high that you turn clients into evangelists.

Whether you are a retailer, a service provider, or any type of business, you will walk away with four ways to generate word-of-mouth, a new approach to hiring and training, at least one planned staff training, and a better understanding of what it takes to offer Customer Service that makes people want to talk.

Word-of-Mouth is still the most powerful form of advertising. This Business Boot Camp will be one you will be talking about for a long time.

Branding and Advertising: Reaching New Customers in Today’s Market
Thursday, August 8 (9am to 1pm)

The advertising that got you results yesterday isn’t working today. Today’s market just can’t be reached. Or can it?

This Business Boot Camp will teach you the fundamentals of marketing that work in any day and age and how to apply those to this day and age. You will learn what moves the needle in advertising and how to craft a message that gets your potential clients to take action. You will learn the biggest myths of advertising and how even the largest companies throw good money away every single day. You will learn how to get the most out of your advertising budget (even if it close to zero).

Advertising cannot fix your business, but if you have a good business model, you will learn techniques that will grow your business the right way and keep it growing for years, no matter what kind of business you run.

Contact the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce to sign up. It will be the best twelve hours you spend on your business this summer!

Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS If you are struggling in any one of these areas, you should sign up for that one class Ninety-nine dollars for four hours of top-level, hands-on instruction is the kind of no-brainer investment you know you should make for your business.

PPS If you don’t think you need any of these classes then you should definitely sign up for all three. Last night as I did a presentation for the Quincy Chamber of Commerce, one of the organizers lamented that it was only the businesses who were already doing well that showed up. I reminded her that was why they were doing well. They kept showing up.

I Did Some Showrooming

Showrooming (verb): The act of going into a store to see a product and collect information, then buying it from a different source cheaper.

It is the new bad thing that will be the demise of brick & mortar stores trying to compete with Internet warehouses with low overhead in tax-friendly states with minimum wage order pickers. It is the new approach by Amazon to steal your customers away.

Except it is not all that new.

People have been shopping around for a better price for years. Customers have been going into stores to see items, get information, and get advice only to turn around and buy the item somewhere else cheaper ever since the day the second caveman opened a competing spear store. Grog undercut Brug’s prices and showrooming began.

It just hasn’t been as brazen until now. We all have experienced the customer who asked us questions, picked our brains, then snapped a pic of the barcode and left. That customer is no different than the catalog shopper of the last century, no different than Brug’s brother-in-law who went to Grog’s store first.

Those customers are simply Transactional Customers. They look at each shopping event as a singular activity. They do all the research they can on the product, then they go off on a hunt to find the best price. If you don’t have the best price, you don’t make the sale.

I’ve done it. You have, too. You have looked at an item in a store then bought it elsewhere cheaper. We all have a Transactional side in our shopping habits on certain categories.

I think where the frustration lies is that we believe that just because she entered our store, she is our customer. No she isn’t! She isn’t your customer until she decides to make a purchase from you. It is up to you to get her to that point. And even when she makes that purchase, she still isn’t your customer. You have to earn it over and over and over again.

So if we want to combat this new (old) threat, the first step is to recognize that she is not your customer until the transaction is completed. She never was and won’t be unless you get her to buy. It is called closing the sale and it is something we all need to improve.

Of course, closing the sale has changed since Grog’s day. Let’s quit complaining about showrooming and start learning new ways to close the sale. Okay?

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I talk a little about closing the sale in my free download Customer Service: From Weak to WOW!  I am doing a presentation on Selling in a Showrooming World at the ABC Spring Educational Conference in a couple weeks.  Look for the free eBook to land sometime after that.

Everything I Possibly Can

I went to Manistee, MI and did a full day workshop on Shareworthy Customer Service (thanks, Tim, for that wonderful word). Part of my contract was to visit stores the day before and the day after the event to get a feel for the town and give them some one-on-one time after the workshop.

One of the stores I visited was a shoe store called Snyder’s (you can see the co-owner “Shoe Man Dan” in the video in the link up above). Even though it was off-season for this primarily summer resort kind of town, Snyder’s was hopping. The store was busy. The staff was engaged. The displays were fresh and brightly lit.

This was a store that got it. This was a store that understood the importance of building relationships, keeping the store updated, doing retail the way it needs to be done. For a store doing this well, I was curious what they were hoping to learn in my workshop.

I asked Jill, the manager, what she hoped to learn. She said…

“Everything I possibly can.”

Here was the best retailer on River Street, the shining star of retail in Manistee, and they were sending one owner and two managers to a day-long customer service workshop. In an interview after the workshop, Dan was asked if he planned to implement any of the strategies I talked about. His answer?

“Everything I possibly can.”

Now you know why they are the shining star. They are always striving to be better.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Yes, I bought a pair of shoes from them.

Two Days to Take Your Customer Service to Shareworthy Levels

I’ve written about Wizard of Ads partner – the incomparable Professor Tim Miles.

He wrote the e-book on Shareworthy Customer Service. He also wrote a book called Good Company. He’s tall. He’s smart. He makes up (really cool) words. And he knows more about how to improve your Customer Service than most people walking this planet.

In fact, he is teaching it to businesses all around this planet right now and they are posting growth numbers that would make you blush.

I’ve done my own writing about Customer Service. Most of you have already downloaded my free e-book Customer Service: From Weak to WOW! Some of you have seen the live presentation. Many of you have found new ways to raise the bar in your business because of it.

Tim likes what I’m doing to raise the bar.  I like what Tim’s doing to take the bar galactic.  So we are combining forces and taking what we know to Wizard Academy!

Announcing a new class!

January 29-30, 2013
Austin, Texas

Two full days of instruction from two likable guys who have been transforming businesses through better customer service for years.  (Click the link above to read a full course description.)
Two full days of a true Wizard Academy experience (which in its own right is more than worth the price of admission.)
Two full days of learning what, why, where, who and how to make your customers’ experience so memorable they write books about you and your company (and you don’t have to give either of us the credit!)

Go sign up.  The investment is deep.  The return is deeper.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS  If you’re one of the first people to sign up for the class, you get FREE LODGING on campus at Wizard Academy.  That is soooo worth it! Soooooooo worth it!! Soooooooooooo worth it!!!