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My Second Favorite Retail Conversation

“He left Detroit 9am Christmas Eve. Someone, somewhere had to have the one toy his sweet little six-year-old wanted. Six cities, seven stores later he stood, travel-weary, across the counter from me. ‘I suppose you don’t have any Simon games, either.’ As I handed over the last of my Simon games he smiled and said, ‘God Bless You!’ Believe me, he already has. Merry Christmas from the Toy House in Downtown Jackson. We’re here to make you smile.”

That was the ad I ran as our whole Christmas ad campaign in both 2005 and 2007. The first time I ran it, we smashed every holiday sales record ever. The second time we pushed the bar even higher.

It is a powerful story. More importantly, it’s true. It happened at 4:05pm on Christmas Eve in 1980. It is one of those moments that sticks with you all your life.

Image result for original simon gameI was 14 years old. My parents hired me to stand behind a glass display case and help customers with hand-held electronic games like Simon and Coleco Football. Simon was the hot game that year. We could barely keep them in stock.

Shortly after Black Friday we were completely sold out. We took customers’ names and phone numbers in case we got another shipment in. As I recall, we did get a few in, but we had more names than we had product, so they were quickly snatched up.

On Christmas Eve my mom would always go through the layaway file to see if there were any large layaways not yet picked up. We closed at 5pm and didn’t want someone to miss out on having their gifts. Mom called one such customer who had forgotten he had even started a layaway. He told her to cancel it. He would be in after Christmas to get his deposit back. It was 4:02pm.

One of the items in that layaway was a Simon game. With less than an hour until we closed it was too late to call someone on our waiting list. Mom placed the box at my feet behind the counter and said, “See if you can sell this before we close.” It was 4:04pm.

At just that moment a large man walked through the front doors. One of our staff pointed him toward the glass cases. In my memory he was around 6ft 2in tall but with shoulders slumped by life. He looked tired and beaten when he pointed at the empty spot in our game case and said, “I suppose you don’t have any Simon games either.”

I told him, “This is your lucky day,” while reaching down by my feet to grab the last Simon game. I handed him his prize possession and he couldn’t stop saying, “God Bless You.” He said it over and over and over while leaning over the counter to hug me. Tears were running down his face. Soon we were both crying and hugging.

He told me his story. He and his wife had adopted their 6-year-old granddaughter earlier that year. All she wanted for Christmas was a Simon game. She had asked Santa several times. With all she had been through, he was going to do everything in his power to make her Christmas special. For weeks he checked every toy store in Detroit. No luck. On Christmas Eve he left Detroit, vowing not to return until he found a Simon game. He went to a couple toy stores north of town, then on to Lansing, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Battle Creek. At the Battle Creek store they told him that if anyone had one, it would be Toy House. God was shining down on both of us that day.

I tell you this story, but I could have told you four others almost exactly like it. This one just happened to be the first. It is the one I get the most choked up retelling.

You have stories like this, too. 

If you’ve worked in retail you have had these serendipitous moments where the whole world aligns just right. It is what keeps us going through the hard times. It is what reminds us of the difference we make.

The only question I have to ask is, Are you sharing those stories? If not, you should. That’s what gets your fan base fired up.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I call it my second favorite only because luck played such a big role. My first favorite was based more on what we did.

PPS Just to show you how powerful stories are, we ran that as our sole ad for our 2005 holiday campaign. It didn’t tell you our hours or our location. It didn’t tell you about Free Gift Wrapping or Layaway. It didn’t even talk about a product we were selling in 2005. But it did share the emotions and feelings of the Christmas spirit, with a heaping dose of Nostalgia thrown in. Check the boxes. Didn’t look or sound like an ad. Told a story. Made only one point. Spoke to the heart. Spoke to the tribe.

PPPS Yes, God has blessed me many times over.

Asking Questions, Playing Games, Laughing, and Learning

Occasionally I go back to my old blog posts to see how things have changed in retail. Sometimes I see how things have stayed the same. Here is something I wrote almost ten years ago on December 3, 2008 …

The best stores have a staff that listens, that repeats back what a customer says and asks questions to clarify everything so that there is no misunderstanding. We may not be the best listeners all the time, but we’re working on it. Would you be surprised to know that the last ten staff trainings were on communication?

Nine years and five months later I wrote …

Once again, a properly trained staff makes a huge difference. This team knew that by asking questions they could get to know the customer better. Getting to know the customer better allowed them to pull better pieces that more closely matched the customers’ needs.

I read that last line from the 2008 passage and immediately opened my 2008 file with the notes of all our staff meetings. (Yes, I have kept those notes all these years. You never know when you’ll need that info again.) Did I really do ten straight staff trainings on communication? Yes, indeed.

It started on January 14, 2008 with my favorite staff training activity of all time where we “raised the bar” and everyone had to go over it. On March 10th of that year we worked on how to communicate with customers “when something goes wrong”. On April 7th we focused on communication among team members so that we could pass customers to other sales people, make sure all areas of the store were covered, and have better communication between our buyers and our sellers.

When I got to October 20th, the memories hit me like a tsunami. I remember when I got the idea for this meeting. My Goal for the meeting was to help my team learn how to listen better, ask better questions, and decipher what customers were trying to say. As with all my staff meetings, it started with … This will be a successful meeting if my staff learned the importance of asking questions and understanding that even when the customer doesn’t know the name of the product, with a little work we can figure out exactly what they need.

I was awake one night flipping channels when the television show Whose Line is it Anyway? with Drew Carey came on. I knew instantly the Task that would lead us to our Goal.

The staff was split into two teams to play a series of four games.

The first game was called Questions. One person from each team squared off. They were each assigned a character and then they were given a product. The two then had to try to sell the product to the other person with two rules. First, they could only use questions. Second, they had to stay in character. The game went until one of the rules was broken.

The second game was Worst Ad Ever. Each person drew a product name out of a hat. They had to go find the product and then do the worst infomercial ever for that product. You might think this would be easy, silly, and pointless. The staff, however, found it to be a little more challenging. First, they had to know the product. You can’t act dumb about something until you are smart about it. Second, they learned more about each product that was featured. Mostly, though, they learned more about what not to say so that they would catch themselves and each other whenever they went into some Ron Popeil inspired pitch.

The third game was my favorite. I called it Santa’s Sack. Four people got up at once and drew product names out of a hat. Each person now had to pretend he or she was that product sitting in Santa’s Sack getting excited about the child who was about to receive them as a gift. They had to hold a conversation with each other about that excitement and their recipient without saying what product they were. The rest of the team had to guess the products.

Not only were they learning to talk about products based on what they did rather than what they were, they were tapping into the excitement that each item they sold was going to be a gift for someone special. They were learning to transfer that excitement onto the customer.

The last game was Toy Taboo. In the game Taboo you are given a word you need others to guess. You are also given a list of words you cannot say, words that are taboo. I created several cards with different products and related words they couldn’t say. For instance, LEGO was one word. The taboo words were Construction, Brick, Building, and Plastic. The lesson was simple, learn to describe toys in unique ways and you’ll be better at deciphering the descriptions our customers gave for toys they didn’t know the name.

We laughed a lot at that meeting. We laughed a lot at most of our meetings. We learned a lot, too.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I’m not sure if this is a post about communication or a post about staff trainings. I’ll let you decide.

PPS If you look at this post as a Staff Training post, one added benefit of the games we played was that it got everyone up and acting. When you have to act and perform and be goofy in front of your peers, you lose your fears of interacting with strangers.

PPPS If you look at this post as being about Communication, listening, asking questions, and clarifying are three amazing tools that will help you close more sales.

Friends With Benefits

Align yourself with charity. Pick one or two local organizations (or more if you’re up to it) that you feel strongly about. Do something special for them. Help them out. Be their friend and ally.

You’ll both benefit from the friendship.

Santa Paws 2015 #1

This is a picture of the Cascades Humane Society doing their annual Santa Paws event – pictures of your pet with Santa Claus. They called me a few weeks ago looking for a space to take the pictures. I have a stage. I love dogs – especially rescued dogs. I said yes.

They coordinate getting Santa here. They hire the photographer. They set up the backdrop. They sign up and schedule the photo shoots. They work the tables. They get the profits.

We get the traffic. We get the goodwill. We get the customers telling us how nice it is that we are doing this for them. We get the social media exposure. We get exposed to everyone on their mailing list. We get our name mentioned in their press releases (and non-profit press releases get picked up far more often than for-profit press releases).

Our friendship with them brings benefits to both of us.

When you partner with a charity, you expand your reach. You get exposure to a crowd of generous people who love to give to charitable causes (can you think of a better demographic for the independent retailer?). You get touchy feely goodwill because you are helping out. You don’t just look like a greedy merchant. You strengthen your community (the better the non-profits do, the better everyone does).

Make friends with a charity or two. You’ll reap the benefits.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Your charity doesn’t have to be aligned with what you sell. We don’t sell pet toys or pet food. Pick charities based on a few different factors such as…

  • Do they have an active base of followers?
  • Do they want to “partner” with you (or simply have you do all the work)?
  • Do they align with your own personal core values?
  • Are they well-respected in the community?

Those are all good reasons for making friends.

Pump Up the Values

We took a look at our Core Values of Having Fun, Helpful, Educational and Nostalgic to see where we might be lacking. If you’ve read Understanding Your Brand then you know the importance of making sure your business shows your core values in everything you do.

Having Fun: We have toys out for demo all throughout the store. I lost count well north of fifty different items out for people to try. We have Story Time, Game Night and special events throughout the year. Yes, we are having fun.

Helpful: Free Giftwrapping, Free Layaway, Delivery & Assembly, Car Seat Installation, Personal Shoppers… Yeah, we have helpful covered, too.

Educational: Free classes on how to buy toys and baby products? Check. Signs throughout the store to educate customers on how to buy different types of toys? Check. Brochures on smart toy shopping? Check. Toys that are educational by nature? Check.

Nostalgic: Hmm… We have been in business since 1949, but just saying that doesn’t necessarily evoke feelings of nostalgia. At Christmas when we have the lights and decorations up, we get that warm, fuzzy nostalgic feeling, but what about the rest of the year? We celebrate birthdays by ringing a thirty-two pound brass bell. That is good, but we can do more.

Nostalgia is defined as a sentimental yearning of a past period. I am working on three new projects to add more Nostalgia into the store.

The first is a photo gallery of our old store along with some old toys produced locally (on loan from the local museum). The second is a milepost sign with directional arrows pointing toward real and fictional places that will take you back to fond memories. The third is a take on the Before I Die campaign that Candy Chang started in New Orleans. We will have chalkboards with the Before I die… statement as Candy did, along with chalkboards of My favorite toy was…

Sentimental yearnings of past periods.

Your business has Core Values. You have to play up those values in everything you do. Everything. Not only you will make your brand stand out in the crowd, you will attract a better breed of customers, customers who share your values.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Don’t know your Core Values? Do this worksheet. Figure out who you are and what you do to show those values. Then pump up the volume on the values not being shown as much. It might not make a difference today, but it will tomorrow. You are in business for tomorrow, aren’t you?

What is Your Story? (Here’s Mine)

My first official day of work at the Toy House came the day after my 14th birthday. With work permit in hand, I joined the team in November 1980 and took my place behind the glass counter that housed all of our handheld electronic games.

Games like Simon, Coleco Football, Speak & Spell and others.

My parents figured if anyone could explain these games to parents & grandparents, it would be a kid like me. And I was good at it. So good that I could play all the games upside down and backward (that’s how they were to me when I showed them to you) better than most of my friends could play them right side up.

What a perfect job – paid $3.35 an hour to play with games!

The hot toy that year was Simon by Milton Bradley. The old Simon with the round black body and four colored lights on top. We owned one at home and I was the champ there, too.

We sold tons of Simon games, as many as they would send us. By early December we were sold out. We started a waiting list in hopes that Milton Bradley would ship some more. They did, but still not enough to meet the demand.

Every day I looked at the empty spot on the shelf where Simon had sat.

The Christmas season flew by fast. It was finally Christmas Eve, my favorite day of the year. We stayed busy until about 3pm when my mom started calling people with big layaways still here. You’d be amazed how many people forget about their layaways until the very last moment.

One guy had completely forgotten and had already gone out and bought a whole bunch of other gifts for the kids. He told my mom to cancel his layaway, he’d be in to get his deposit back after Christmas.

At 4:05pm, less than an hour from closing and too late to try calling people on our waiting list, my mom brought over a Simon game from his canceled layaway and laid it at my feet.

“See if you can sell this before we close,” she said.

I turned around a minute later and saw him. He was easily over six feet tall. In retrospect I figure he was in his mid-60’s but he felt so much older than that. The look on his face was tired and beaten. His shoulders were slumped in defeat.

He explained to me that he had left Detroit that morning because his six-year-old granddaughter he was raising only wanted one thing for Christmas. He had been to Ann Arbor, Lansing, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo and Battle Creek but no luck.

The gal in Battle Creek gave him directions to our store saying, “If anyone can help you, Toy House can.”

He pointed to the empty spot on the shelf and with a sadness in his voice said, “I suppose you don’t have any Simon games either.”

There are moments in your life when you know there must be some sort of greater power at work. Call it fate, call it destiny, call it Karma. Call it whatever you want, but I knew instantly I was in one of those moments. I felt it even before I leaned down to pick up the Simon game between my feet.

“Well, today is your lucky day!” I said as I handed him the last of our Simon games.

Thirty years of dust and defeat were shook off in that moment. He started crying, saying “God bless you, God bless you, God bless you.” He reached over the counter and gave me a bear hug.
I couldn’t help but join him in the moment. With tears now running down my own face we hugged and hugged as though we were long lost relatives. Still he repeated, “God bless you,” over and over.

As he left the store, he shouted “Merry Christmas!” to everyone within earshot, and I swear this old man had a dance in his step as he entered the parking lot.

I was fourteen years old at the time. Now I have thirty years of Christmas Eve memories at the Toy House. But none will ever replace that moment in time. I remember the details like it was yesterday.

God bless me?
Believe me, he already has!
Merry Christmas,

-Phil

Do You Believe in Santa?

I wrote this three years ago, but the question has come up again with my boys. Is Santa real? When Parker, now 10, was told by a classmate this fall that Santa isn’t real, he responded, “I know he’s real. My dad knows him!” So since I “know” Santa, I better tell you what I know about Santa…

My son, Parker, turned seven this fall, the age where doubt about Santa starts to creep in. Last week he told me that some kids in his class say that Santa isn’t real, that parents just “pretend to be Santa” and put out the gifts themselves.

I asked him, “What do you believe?” After some careful consideration he decided that he believed Santa was real.

After a lengthy discussion about video cameras, he decided that he wants to check the roof Christmas morning for sleigh tracks “just to be sure.” (Anyone have a tall ladder?)

I knew this conversation would come up at some time. I recall vividly the Christmas when I was six and my eight-year old sister and I started having our doubts. We decided one night, while sitting on my parents’ bed that we were just going to keep on believing in Santa because 1) if he was real, then we kept the faith and (hopefully) would be rewarded handsomely for it, 2) if he wasn’t real, there was no harm done, and 3) it was way more fun to believe in Santa than to not believe.

Funny thing is I still believe in Santa. No, it’s not because without Santa the Toy House wouldn’t be in business (although that helps).

I believe in Santa for the same reasons I believed in him at age six – to keep the faith, because there’s no harm in it, and it’s much more fun than not believing.

But there’s one more reason, one much more compelling reason that I believe in Santa. I have proof that he exists!

No, I haven’t seen him with my own eyes. Nor have I ever been to the North Pole. But I know he exists as surely as I know my own heart pumps in my chest. (I’ve never seen that, either.)
Some people say that it would be impossible for Santa to exist because he would have to be magic to accomplish all he does. Those same people say that magic doesn’t exist.

Oh, but I know it does. I’ve seen Christmas Magic happen before my very own eyes. Like my first Christmas Eve in 1980 when the travel-weary, broken-down man from Detroit showed up at the game counter looking for a Simon game just seconds after one had been returned. Or the customer in the early seventies who had his trunk frozen shut in an ice storm and needed my dad to help him out late one Christmas Eve. Or the time my father picked up the tab for all of his out-of-town nephews’ and nieces’ Christmas presents when his sister’s husband was dying from a brain tumor.

Every time I hear of a family that has been “adopted”, or I read about the community Christmas Dinners, or I watch the outpouring of the community into the red buckets of the Salvation Army, the boxes for Toys for Tots, or the Food Drives all over town, I know that Christmas Magic exists.

You see, Christmas Magic is all about the Spirit of Giving, with no greater example than the gift given to us all over 2000 years ago.

And since Christmas Magic exists, then so does the magician who keeps the Spirit of Giving alive.

Call him Santa Claus, St. Nicholas, Kris Kringle, or whatever you want. He’s as real as anything. Just as you can’t see your heart beating in your chest, you can still feel the pulsating rhythm that gives you life. And deep down in that heart lies the feeling of joy called the Spirit of Giving.
That, my friends, is where you’ll find Santa.

Merry Christmas and Happy Shopping!

Phil Wrzesinski
12/20/05

Happy Black Friday?

Sometimes I wonder if we are taking Thursday off to celebrate Thanksgiving or the beginning of Christmas Shopping.

It seems that there is more talk about Black Friday in the news than the turkey celebrations on Thursday. In fact, the only time I see the word “Thanksgiving” is when they announce another store like K-Mart planning to be open that day.

Has it come to be that the thing for which we are most thankful is getting up at 3am to grab a doorbuster special?

I hate to be the mythbuster, but I’m going to let you in on some little retail secrets. My fellow retailers might not be happy that I’m sharing these. They might blackball me like those magicians that gave away their secrets on Fox TV. But here it goes…

Black Friday Myth #1: These are the best deals you will see this shopping season. Reality: Yes, there are some big bargains, but most of those were carefully orchestrated to make you think you are getting a bigger deal than you actually are. These “deals” are planned months in advance. The true deals are the “panic deals” that happen when stores panic because sales aren’t as strong as they hoped. Usually these start the week before Christmas. This year, they’ll start as early as December 1.

Black Friday Myth #2: This is the busiest day of the year. Reality: Although it is a busy shopping day, the two Saturdays before Christmas always outpace Black Friday in terms of actual dollars being spent. Don’t ever underestimate the power of the procrastinators.

Black Friday Myth #3: This is the day that all retailers get back to profitability. Reality: Some retailers won’t ever get back to being profitable this year. And with the price-slashing we are seeing, there may be some serious casualties after the dust settles. It’s hard to make a profit when you give everything away below cost.

Black Friday Myth #4: The earlier a business opens, the more business it will do. Reality: Where you shop has less to do with the hours, than with the products. If Kohl’s doesn’t have what you want, you won’t be there at midnight. This whole notion that K-Mart by being open Thursday, or some of the stores opening at 3am or even midnight will gain some big advantage over the competition is ridiculous. The stores that will have the best Black Fridays will be the stores with the best products, services and values. And service is hard to do when the staff is tired and grumpy at missing out on their own Thanksgiving festivities. Ever wonder why the stores that open the earliest have the highest staff turnover rate? I love my staff way too much to ever do something like that to them. We’ll open at our regular hours and do plenty of business without any gimmicks or stunts, just smart products, good values, and great service.

Speaking of early hours…

Black Friday Myth #5: The early hours are always worth it. Reality: If you like waiting in long lines, fighting huge crowds, getting pushed and shoved only to be one person too late to get the item you wanted, then more power to you. I like to calculate the cost of my time versus the price of an item.

I hope I haven’t burst anyone’s bubbles. It’s not like I’m trying to convince you that Santa Claus isn’t real. (He is real. Want proof ? Click here!) Despite what I have said above, I love Black Friday. It is a fun day filled with wonderful customers and experiences and, oh yeah, a whole lot of business. But there is so much more for which we should be thankful.

So as I tuck in for the night this Thanksgiving day, I will tip my hat to those of you who plan to confront the cold, blustery pre-dawn darkness to fight the coffee-starved crowds for deals, contrived or otherwise. Many of you brave soldiers tell me that it is the thrill of the conquest that drags you out of bed while others slumber peacefully. To you, I say go forth and conquer.

My staff and I will be well-rested and waiting here at the Toy House at 9:30am with a fresh pot of coffee brewing just for you.

Happy Black Friday and Thanksgiving, too!

-Phil