Home » Roy Williams » Page 6

Category: Roy Williams

The Sales Process Broken Down

This year I am leading my sales staff to water. Fortunately, they are not horses. They are drinking it up.

At our monthly team meeting I am breaking down the sales process into small, drinkable chunks.

In February we talked about Being Accessible. Customers don’t like to approach a crowd of employees, especially ones engaged in chatter. We talked about positioning, where to stand to be most approachable, how not to congregate. We walked around the store with a clipboard in hand. Customers would rather approach a sales associate who seems engaged in other activities, than one who seems poised to pounce. The goal for the staff was to practice being more accessible.

In March we Listened. Too many people listen, not to hear, but to find a moment to break into the conversation. We did activities centered around Listening skills including repeating back what the other person said. The staff separated into pairs and shared with each other their favorite reasons for working here. Then the other person had to repeat it back to them and present it to the group. (Note: this is also a great way to boost morale. I have twelve team members and each one had someone else tell the group why they like working here.) Our customers do not come in for a product so much as for a solution. If you don’t listen to the whole problem, you might sell them a product, but not the best solution. The goal for the month was to practice repeating back to the customer what she said.

Tomorrow we go inside Our Customer’s Mind. We’ll be exploring all the thoughts that may be going through a customer’s mind while she is in our store. Empathy is one of the strongest tools for creating long-term relationships. The purpose is to get an understanding of where she is so that we can relate to her on her terms. Each customer is unique and is coming from a unique point of view. Knowing this helps my staff understand the importance of Listening even more, and helps them fashion better questions. Our goal will be to empathize more with our customers and continue improving our listening (and questioning) skills.

I’m already working on May (Suggestive Selling) and June (Closing the Sale), too.

Too many companies look at training as a One-and-Done thing. Train the new person. Send them out. They’re good to go. I think we have to constantly be training. We have to constantly be trying to learn and improve. And we don’t have to be in a hurry. One step at at time.

Roy H. Williams once told me that what successful individuals and companies have in common is a long horizon. They look well beyond this week, month or even year. Not only am I planning out the training for this year, I’m already formulating my thoughts for next year’s theme.

If you’re in this for the long run, you need to make sure you’re planning out your training for the long run, too.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Send me an email and I’d be happy to share the activities we are doing to get these lessons across. If you want to plan your own meetings, I suggest you read Staff Meetings Everyone Wants to Attend (free download) and use the Staff Meetings Worksheet.

Setting Yourself Apart From the Pack

I read a fascinating book called Built to Sell by John Warrillow. The book is a business parable about a guy who owns an advertising agency and wants to sell it. His mentor shows him how to transform his business to make it salable.

Most retailers would dismiss the book because on the surface it doesn’t seem to apply. The first step is to limit your focus to only that which you do better and more profitable than anyone else so that you can create a turnkey operation. That doesn’t translate well to indie retail.

But there is a lesson hid inside there that we all can use.

Maybe you cannot change your product mix to become the leader of the pack, but you certainly can change your services. In fact, you can change them so radically that you become a category of one (another good business book worth reading).

Simply decide which customer subset you want to cater to, and then cater to them at the exclusion of all others.

Roy H. Williams calls this “choose who to lose”.

For instance, you could decide you only want to cater to the uber-rich. You’ll probably want to change some of your product, but to truly capture that customer you’ll have to totally change your services. Hours by appointment only. Red carpet ready and waiting to be rolled. Soft sofas and chairs for seating. Food and drinks served. A personal shopper to bring the items to the customer. Private showings for her and her friends at her penthouse.

Or you might be a toy store that caters to the daddy crowd. That might mean beer and pizza and big-screen TV’s, pre-wrapped gifts, diaper changing service, plenty of activities to keep the kids occupied until the game is over.

Do something like that and instead of the kids clamoring to go to the toy store, dad will be suggesting it during breakfast.

While it is getting more and more difficult to separate yourself just on the products you carry, this age of self-serve checkouts leaves you a ton of room to separate yourself from the pack by the services you offer.

Who are you willing to lose to win the heart (and pocketbook) of someone else?

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS We started with the bargain hunter. I don’t match prices or run coupons or special deals just to entice people in the door. Yes, we have a clearance sale to move out the dogs, but that’s it. We instead focus on customers looking for trust. There are plenty of them out there.

Buying Word-of-Mouth

I bought Word-of-Mouth advertising.

Paid just over $400 for it.

There are four different ways you can consistently get people to talk about you.

  • Over-the-Top Design
  • Over-the-Top Service
  • Over-the-Top Generosity
  • Sharing Secrets

Roy H. Williams taught me the first three. The fourth I figured out on my own.

Yesterday during our Fourth Friday Game Night we decided to play Charades. It was an easy decision. We needed a game to christen our brand new stage.

Why would we take valuable retail space and build a stage?

  • Puppet Shows
  • Story Times
  • Guest Performers
  • Charades
  • Dress-up Clothes
  • Staged Productions
  • General Play (who doesn’t love getting up on a stage just for fun?)
  • Word-of-Mouth
  • Because it is consistent with our Core Value of Having Fun

I spent $75 on the wood for the platforms, another $128 for the carpet, $25 for the poles, and $190 for the curtains. Total cost = $418.

People will talk.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS We still have a few details to finish such as a header above the curtain and the backdrop. Every time someone takes a photo of their precious one “performing”, the Toy House name and logo will be visible.

We used 2″ x 8″ boards and 3/4″ plywood to build the platform in 3 sections.

The carpet is simply stapled down using a carpet stapling gun generously loaned to us by Christoff’s Carpet & Floor Covering.
The curtains are held up with 1″ PVC pipe anchored to 2 walls. The section to the right is a “backstage” area designed for when we do performances.

Storytelling 101

“Tell more stories!” they shouted at you. “Stories sell!” they exclaimed. “It’s the best way to market yourself!” they bellowed. After the ringing in your ears faded, you said, “Okay, I have stories to tell.” You start telling them. But deep in the back of your mind, where you let few people enter, you’re wondering. Are my stories interesting? Are people even listening?

Seth Godin said it best today when he wrote, “Here’s how to know if you’re on the right track: if you stop a story in the middle, the audience will insist you finish it.”

Yes, your stories are interesting, but you might not be telling them right. How do you become a storyteller that has people on the edge of their seat waiting for the next line?

Jeff Sexton knows. He writes the best blogs about storytelling in an advertising sense that I’ve ever found. You could spend a day or two reading his past posts and learn more than you ever would on a college campus.

Roy H. Williams, is the master, well, um, the Wizard. He was nicknamed the Wizard of Ads and it stuck because it is true. His Wizard of Ads trilogy of books is to this day the most fascinating series of books I’ve ever read.

Here are some basics I’ve learned from these masters.

Start with something interesting. You need to hook the listener right away. You can fill in the background later (if at all).
Choose what to leave out. Details slow down the delivery and distract from the story. Cut out all the descriptions that aren’t absolutely necessary (which is like 95% of them).
Leave in the verbs. Stories need action. Action is excitement. Action makes people want to see what happens next.
Surprise me. If I already know how the story ends before I get to the second line, I’m outta here!
Tie the ending to the beginning. People want resolution to their stories. If you hooked me with an interesting opening, I want to know why that is important at the end.

Your writing is influenced by your reading. Read great books by great storytellers. Look for these clues in their writing. Mimic it in your own. Write. Write some more. Test it on your friends. Stop in mid-story and see what happens. Test again with new openings and new verbs. Write some more. Tell some more.

Soon your audience will be demanding you finish.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Some of my most powerful ads have been stories like these…

She almost fell out of the pew.  Her pastor actually called Toy House the Promised Land for kids.  Right there in front of a packed church.  The lady on her left leaned over and said, “You work there, don’t you?”  She nodded.  The lady leaned in again, “I love that place.” She couldn’t help but smile.  “Me too,” she whispered back.  It’s the promised land for kids and adults.  Just ask the lady sitting on your left.  Toy House and Baby Too is an impact partner of Home.fm.  We love to see you smile.

What is your earliest Christmas memory?  Mine was grandma and grandpa sitting on a bench handing my sister and me our gifts.  I was only three, but I tore open that package with the speed of a six-year-old.  A towel, a white, Raggedy Ann towel.  I smiled a big smile, unfolded my towel and plopped down.  I couldn’t figure out why my sister was crying.  After all, she got Raggedy Andy and he’s way cooler.  Merry Christmas from the Toy House in downtown Jackson.  We’re here to make you smile

Christmas Eve, nineteen sixty-five.  He didn’t know if he would make it.  Nine months of active duty, he missed his family.  And he was an uncle now.  His sister had a baby girl, a precious little child for which a stuffed animal from an airport gift shop just wouldn’t do.  When his dad picked him up in the family sedan, he asked, “We got time to stop by the Toy House?”  “Of course, son.  Welcome home.”  Merry Christmas from the Toy House in downtown Jackson, an impact partner of Home.fm. We love to see you smile.

Inspiration and Creativity

“Where do you get your inspiration for the ads you run on the radio?”
“Where do you get the creativity for the ads you run on the radio?”

I doubt a week goes by where I am not asked at least one of those questions.

My stock response is that’s the fun part of my job. Here is the real answer…


INSPIRATION

I love quotes. They inspire me. I type words into ThinkExist.com and just start reading. Sometimes a great quote is all I need to spark the engine.

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” -Pablo Picasso

I love to read. Fiction and non-fiction. Children’s books and adult books. I wrote an entire book on hiring because of this line in the children’s book Taran Wanderer (book #4 of The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander.)

“Before you learn the craft, you must first learn the clay.” -Annlaw Clay-Shaper

I listen. To music. To talk-radio. To interviews and podcasts. To comedians (I love comedians). I wrote a song after hearing a comedian’s routine about road signs when he said…

“I saw a sign along the highway that said ‘Gas Food’ and decided I was no longer hungry. Glad I didn’t stop. The next exit had a sign for a Gas Food Hospital.” (-unknown)


CREATIVITY

Is creativity something you’re born with, or something you learn? I think both. I think some people (like my sister) pop out of the womb with a talent that cannot be denied. I think the rest of us can learn creativity by learning to not be afraid of criticism and failure. I am bolstered by this quote…

“I haven’t failed. I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” -Thomas Edison

I am also bolstered in my ad writing by this little exercise Roy H. Williams, aka The Wizard of Ads made me do…

Quick, write down the percentage of your traffic that is repeat business. Customers who come in time and time again. Now write down how much of your traffic is referral business. Customers who are in because one of your repeat business customers told them to stop by. What is left?

When I did this, I wrote down 60% for the repeat, and 25% for the referral. That left only 15% of my traffic that is location/advertising driven. When your advertising only accounts for 15% of your traffic, you can take some more risks and be a little more crazy.

Creativity for most of us is like a muscle. The more you work it, the stronger it becomes. Writing this blog is like doing a dozen push-ups. Writing emails and Facebook posts is like taking a half-mile jog. Writing songs and books is like taking a spinning class or six. Writing a thirty-second ad that is interesting, tells a story, makes only one point, and connects emotionally is like doing 60-second planks ten times a day.

“I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” -Blaise Pascal

And one last quote…

“Now you know the rest of the story.” -Paul Harvey

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS One of my goals is to write a short story all from famous quotes by other people. That would sure take some creativity.

PPS I don’t know if my percentages of repeat and referral business are accurate. They probably aren’t. That’s quite okay by me. I got what I needed out of the exercise – to take more risks with my advertising. Consider it just one of those 10,000 ideas Edison learned from.

Showing Your Values

I am digging through old archives of our store. One of the Core Values of our business is Nostalgia. We are putting together a display of old pictures and old advertisements from the 1950’s and 1960’s.

Tim Miles wrote a great post on whether or not you should use how long you’ve been in business as part of your advertising. You know, phrases like “serving your family since 1979.”

My answer to that is… only if your start date has something to do with the Core Values of your store. What happened in 1979 that got you to start serving families? Why do you serve families? Why does 34 years of history mean anything?

Nostalgia is part of our culture. We sell toys and baby products, so we get customers for the birth, the birthdays, and Christmas. We’ve been selling toys for over 60 years so we have multiple generations of customers. Not a week goes by without at least one customer telling me about visiting the old store (we moved to our current location in 1967).

There are better ways to show Nostalgia than simply saying when we opened.

For instance, here is a radio ad we ran back in 2006 about an event that happened in 1965…

Christmas Eve, nineteen sixty-five. He didn’t know if he would make it. Nine months of active duty, he missed his family. And he was an uncle now. His sister had a baby girl, a precious little child for which a stuffed animal from an airport gift shop just wouldn’t do. As his dad picked him up in the family sedan, he asked, “We got time to stop by the Toy House?”  “Of course, son.  Welcome home.” Merry Christmas from the Toy House in downtown Jackson where Christmas magic happens.

True story? Check.
Speaks to the heart? Check.
Consistent with our Core Value of Nostalgia? Check.
Lets people know we’ve been in business a really long time without just saying the date? Check.

Roy H. Williams said branding is every single interaction a customer has with your business plus how she feels about it. Control the interactions, build them around your Core Values, and you control the feelings.

Are you showing your Core Values both in the store and in your ads? You should. It works.
-Phil Wrzesinski
PS Nostalgia is a powerful emotion. We tend to get a far stronger response from our Nostalgic ads and Nostalgic posts on Facebook than anything else we do. Of all your Core Values, you need to find the one that resonates most deeply with your customers, then build your message from that value. One way to find out is to post messages and pictures to your Facebook page showing different values and see what gets the best response.

No Ads or Better Ads?

The most common complaint about television and radio is that there are too many ads. If that was really true, Satellite radio and premium TV would have killed advertising-sponsored broadcast media. They haven’t and it doesn’t look like they will.

But the complaint still sits there and begs the question… Is the problem that there are too many ads or is the problem that most of the ads on the air today suck?

We don’t complain about too many ads during the Super Bowl even though there are more ads than any other sporting event of the year. Instead we watch closer. We critique the ads, rate them, show them to our friends, go watch them on youtube, and read what others have to say about them. We don’t complain because most of the ads are better than what we normally get.

The truth is that most ads do suck. Most ads are boring, unoffensive drivel that doesn’t move the needle. Heck, it doesn’t even get you to pay attention and listen.

It doesn’t have to be that way. At least not for your ads. You can start producing better ads right now and something amazing will happen. Your ads will not only work better, they will stand out head and shoulders above the rest of the noise.

Roy H. Williams, aka The Wizard of Ads, wrote two pieces about creating ads that anyone who advertises should have taped to their wall. The first was posted back in 2009 and is every bit as relevant today. The second was just published in last week’s Monday Morning Memo.

Bookmark them. Read them. Print them. Read them again. Follow them. Your ads will stand out. Your ads will work harder than ever before. Your ads will never be part of the too many ads on the air complaint. Instead, your fans will be saying, “I wish more people advertised like you do.”

That means they are paying attention and listening.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Soon I will be launching a new eBook in the Freebies section on simple ways you can make your ads stand out amid the clutter. Think of it as a companion piece to the two Roy articles above (that I read regularly, over and over and over.)

PPS Before you start crafting your message, however, I highly recommend you read what Tim Miles wrote here first. He’s one smart cookie. His clients do better than industry averages across the board.

Why Your Ads Go Viral

I just watched an interesting TEDTalk about Why Videos Go Viral from Kevin Allocca, a YouTube Trendwatcher (yes, he watches YouTube videos as a profession).

He explains there are three things that make a video go viral.

  • Tastemakers
  • Participation
  • Unexpectedness

The same three things are true of your advertisements.

TASTEMAKERS

If someone of importance takes note of your video – a “tastemaker” whom people follow – then others will take note. In advertising, you have to speak to the people who influence the decision.

McDonald’s has made a mint by advertising to the backseat influencers. A clown and funny characters and toys have been so effective at reaching this audience that people concerned about our children’s health have pushed to ban the golden arches from putting toys in their Happy Meals.

We have a local bra store that advertises on the local sports talk show. Yes, she advertises bras and lingerie on a radio show heavily skewed towards men.  Her message? “Guy, are you tired of hearing your wife complain about her bra not fitting? Send her to Bras That Fit.”

They are speaking to the influencers, the tastemakers.

Your ads should be targeted to the tastemakers, the people who have the influence to send customers your way. Sometimes that is the customer herself, but sometimes it is someone within her circle that has the power to influence her. Let me ask you what would be more effective? A radio ad to a woman about bras, or her husband saying, “Honey, you’ve been complaining so much about your bras. Why don’t you try out that store…?”

PARTICIPATION

What do the Harlem Shake, NYAN Cat, and the Friday Song all have in common? Besides millions of views, they have thousands of knockoffs and spin-offs, and copycats. They have audience participation.

People love to be involved. People love to be included. People love to be loved. In fact, the most seductive word in the English language is a three letter word and it doesn’t include an X.  The most seductive word is…

YOU

Do your ads speak directly to the customer (or influencer)? Do your ads talk about the customer twice as much as they talk about your company? Do your ads include the customer as an insider, as a participant? Can your customer see herself doing what you want her to do? When you talk more about her than you do yourself; when you paint a picture of her doing what you want her to do, when you include her as part of you, then you are creating participatory ads.

UNEXPECTEDNESS

How many times have you watched a video and wished you had those three minutes back? You aren’t sharing those videos. There has to be something exciting and unexpected for you to hit the share button.

Let’s face it. The expected is so… boring. The expected is so cliche, uninspiring, blah, blah, blah. We are bombarded with thousands of advertising messages a day. We have learned to filter anything that looks or sounds like an ad. We have learned to ignore the mundane. We have learned to pass over the unexciting.

Your ads need to be unexpected, too.

The most effective radio ad I ever ran started with these words… “I couldn’t believe it. They were taking customers into the men’s bathroom…”

After hearing that, you know everyone wanted to hear more. Can you say something totally unexpected to get their attention? Can you then tie that into one interesting point? Can you surprise and excite and delight people in a way that makes them want to hit the share button?

The same principles that make a video go viral also affect the effectiveness of your advertising. You might not get a few million views, but if you follow Kevin’s advice, you can make your advertising budget a heck of a lot more powerful without spending a penny more.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Roy H. Williams, aka The Wizard of Ads, calls this the Impact Quotient of your ads. Here is a free download called How Ads Work Part 2 that I wrote to give you examples of how to make your ads more memorable and impactful.

Pendulum Made Easier to Understand

I’ve talked about this new book by Roy H. Williams and Michael R. Drew called Pendulum. It really has been an eye-opener for me to understanding how advertising, marketing and selling has changed over the last couple decades.

The hard part is trying to explain it. The elevator pitch takes too many floors. Although I read the book in one sitting – I was already pumped up about it, having seen the presentation by Roy twice and by Michael once – most people are looking for a simpler, quicker way to understand this swing between a Me and a We generation.

Thanks to the folks at PendulumInAction, here is a simple graphic that explains it quite well.

Click to get complete graphic…

Thanks Leigh Jeffery for putting this together!

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Warning: Reading and understanding Pendulum can be hazardous to your mental well-being. Often readers are left with a feeling of dizziness, followed by a frustration caused by instantly seeing evidence of this pendulum swing all around you even when you are not looking.

Reading List (Short Version)

For some reason, I have found myself recommending the same three books over and over the past couple weeks. So before anyone else asks, here are those three books.

Why We Buy by Paco Underhill – Buy this book if you want to be better at merchandising your store. Buy this book if you want to think about merchandising and traffic patterns and aisle widths and aisle lengths and sight lines in a whole new light. Buy this book if you want to read fascinating case studies about retail successes and failures at merchandising. Buy this book if you have any plans at all to change the layout or design of your store.

Drive by Daniel H. Pink – Buy this book if you want to understand how people are motivated to do their best work. Buy this book if you want to find different ways other than money to reward your staff. Buy this book if you want to find ways to make your trainings stick better. Buy this book if you want your staff to work harder.

Pendulum by Michael R Drew and Roy H Williams – Buy this book if you think the world has changed dramatically over the past ten years. Buy this book if you want to see what the next thirty years will look like. Buy this book if you want to know why your advertising that worked in the past isn’t working today. Buy this book if you want to see how society changes every 40 years from one extreme to another and how to navigate each of these extremes.

It will be the best reading you do all year.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I purposefully did NOT include links to any of these books.

  1. Print out this list (or keep it on your phone) and walk into your local bookstore (if you still have one). 
  2. Order these books through the local store. 
  3. While you are there, browse the business section for one more book that catches your eye. 
  4. Buy that book, too.  
  5. Then buy one more book, just for fun.  

You are as good as you read.