Home » Word of Mouth » Page 5

Category: Word of Mouth

From Your Customer’s Point of View

Legend has it the day before Disney Land opened, Walt and crew arrived to do a walk-through. Upon entering the gates, Walt immediately kneeled down at the front of the park. His entourage was curious as he begged them to kneel with him. Once everyone was kneeling, he explained that this was the height of the customer he was most concerned about pleasing and he wanted to see the park from their perspective.

Do you look at your business from your customer’s point of view?

I took a trip last weekend to the Upper Peninsula in Michigan. Took my son to see Michigan Technological University and my family to see Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. I snapped this picture of one of the lookout platforms.

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore Lookout Platform
Viewing window for little visitors at the lookout platform for Miner’s Castle at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

See the window built into the wall of the platform? They got this one right. This family-friendly park made sure the entire family had a view of Miner’s Castle and Lake Superior. No dangerous lifting of young children over the safety of the wall. No little ones complaining that they couldn’t see. No unhappy faces feeling forgotten or ignored.

Little things like that window make a huge difference in how someone views and remembers their experience.

Walt knew this. He built his park and empire by looking at how his best, most important customers would experience it. He made sure the people he wanted to impress the most would be impressed. He looked at everything through their eyes.

Have you done the same?

Have you asked these questions?

  • Who are my best customers?
  • What is their minimum expectation when they visit my store?
  • How can I design my store and its policies to make their experience even better?
  • How can I surprise and delight them even more?

I’ll bet Walt asked these questions. You should, too.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS One easy way to do this is to look at every single interaction your customer has with your store and ask just these two questions…

  1. What does the customer expect to happen here?
  2. What can I do that will surprise and delight them here?

It is a perspective that changes everything (for the better).

 

 

Newly Redesigned PhilsForum.com Website

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

It just went live a few minutes ago.

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

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

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

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

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

Every time an independent retailer grows, we all grow.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

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

Two New Social Media Platforms and How You Could Use Them

(Note: this post has been edited)
Video is HUGE. Go look at your news feed in Facebook and count what percentage of posts are videos.

Pretty high, isn’t it?

If you aren’t using videos – Vine, YouTube, iPhone videos loaded to Facebook, etc. – then you might not be reaching all the people you want to reach.

There are two new video services – Periscope and Blab – that might have some benefit to indie retailers. Here is a look at the two and how you can use them…

PERISCOPE

Periscope was launched by Twitter and is live, streaming video you do that allows for people to comment on your video as you’re streaming and send you love through the form of little hearts that float up your screen. The video can then be replayed for up to 24 hours before it disappears.

The upside… This is an easy way for you to do timely videos of things happening in your store in an interactive way. Simply send out a notice through your other social media channels (especially Twitter) that you’ll be doing a Periscope in a few minutes, then grab your phone and go live. Anyone watching you can post comments and questions that show up on your screen. It is kinda like having a FaceTime call with dozens of people at once.

One of the best applications I can see for this medium is behind-the-scenes looks at your business. People love to go behind the curtain. They love to see what is happening there. Best of all, they feel more attached to your store and more likely to share what they know when they feel like they got a peek into something not everyone else gets to see.

You could do Periscopes on products that have just come in.
You could do Periscopes on staff meetings.
You could do Periscopes on the process you go through to ship out an item.
You could do Periscopes on the prep work you put into having a big event at your store.

The downside… The videos are only up for a day. You might do some great footage, but you have to keep doing great footage to grow your presence. In fact, best practices in the early stages of this medium show that you should post something daily, even if it is only a 30-second post each day that says you’ll be back on Friday with a longer video. (Note: they do have ways for you to save the videos, but you do have to jump through a few extra hoops.)

BLAB

Unlike Periscope where only you talk and everyone else comments by typing, Blab is another live streaming video that allows for four people to be in the conversation at once. It kinda looks like Hollywood Squares with four boxes on the screen showing you and the three people you invited to sit in the conversation.

The upside… First, by having a true conversation, you can now invite experts into your social media world. Maybe you might interview a sales rep or one of your favorite vendors. Maybe you might use it to introduce new staff. Maybe you might use it to talk to someone who can talk more about your industry. For instance, since I sell toys, I could talk to a therapist about the value of play in a child’s life. Even better, you could invite your own fans to join in and talk about their experiences in your store.

Just like Periscope, people can type in comments and show you real-time love by tapping the icon on the screen. You can respond to those comments and have a real, live conversation about your store with other people watching. The videos stay up longer than Periscope, too, and can even be uploaded to your YouTube channel.

The downside… This medium is more of a sitting-at-your-laptop-chatting medium than a wander-around-the-store-with-a-smartphone medium, which makes it more difficult to show off products, etc. It is more of a two-way conversation than a one-way talk with you picking and choosing which questions or comments to answer. It becomes less scripted, which can make it more fun and original (and less sales/preachy), but can also go in directions you never intended.

Both Periscope and Blab have some interesting applications. Whether they are right for your business is up to you. Just remember the most important thing about all social media – it is about connecting and creating networks more than it is about selling or pushing your message across.

If used right, both of these channels can grow your network and strengthen your relationships.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I am looking at both of them as ways to grow both Toy House and Phil’s Forum. Right now I currently use my Twitter handle @philtoyhouse purely for sharing this blog and Toy House newsletters. Since you use your Twitter account to sign in to both of these services, I am considering setting up separate Twitter accounts and using @philtoyhouse for just Toy House activity going forward. I’ll let you know soon what my new Twitter handle for this blog will be.

Free or Gift With Purchase?

You just got some free merchandise from one of your favorite vendors. It was a low cost item that you didn’t sell anyway. You want to give them away to your customers.

Do you give them away free, no strings attached, or do you only give them away free with a qualifying purchase?

FREE, NO STRINGS ATTACHED

The upside to simply giving them away is that you will surprise and delight your customers in an unexpected way. They will be talking about your generosity to their friends.

The downside is that you likely won’t garner any extra sales and you may end up giving them to people who don’t need them.

FREE GIFT WITH PURCHASE

The upside for GWP is that you are using the freebie to help close the sale of a related product. Plus, you are getting the freebie into the hands of someone most likely to use it.

The downside is that the only word of mouth it generates is them talking about the good deal they got (that others might not be so lucky to get).

Here are some questions to ask…

  • Do you want them to talk about your generosity or the deal they got?
  • Do you want to put them only into the hands of people who will use them?
  • Do you want to surprise & delight or close the sale?

Ask the right questions and you’ll get the right answer.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Door #3 is that we just sell them at a discounted price, take the profit and run. The only question is whether you can get more profit using the freebies as a marketing tool than you would by simply selling a low-cost item you didn’t want in the first place. My guess is marketing tool pays more dividends in the long run.

The One Loyalty Program You Need to Grow Your Business

Your brain has a gatekeeper. His name is Broca. He protects your brain from all the boring, mundane and predictable in the world.

Roy H. Williams, aka, The Wizard of Ads, was the first person to introduce me to Broca. Most advertisements fail because Broca saw them coming a mile away. But it isn’t just ads that Broca blocks.

Tell me all the mundane things you did yesterday. Bet you can’t remember them all.

Tell me all the surprising things that happened yesterday. Bet you nailed that list.

According to Roy, “Surprise is the foundation of delight.”

If you want to delight your customers, you have to do something surprising. If you want to make your customers’ experience memorable, you can’t be boring, mundane or predictable.

Strativity Group Inc. in a new survey, found that people who had been “delighted” by their favorite brand were more than twice as likely to be brand-loyal than those who weren’t delighted.

Another Royism… “If a person expected something to happen, and it happened, there can be no delight.”

  • If you give your customer less than she expects, she’s going to shred you.
  • If you give a customer exactly what she expects, at least she won’t shred you, but she won’t be loyal, either.
  • If you surprise a customer with more than what she expects, you’ll be memorable and she’ll be loyal.

Go ahead and surprise her. That’s the loyalty program you really should be offering.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS The easiest way to surprise and delight her is to evaluate all the interaction points a customer has with your store from the front door to the checkout and figure out exactly what she expects during each encounter. Then figure out what you can do that is a little bit more than she expects. It is far cheaper to you and more effective on her than any discount you might offer her.

PPS Need a head start on evaluating what she expects? Download the FREE e-book – Customer Service: From Weak to WOW!

Sometimes No Actually Does Mean Yes

No means No.  Most of the time I agree.

Here is where it doesn’t. When your No leads to their Yes.

There is a toy company that just put it out to the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association (ASTRA) that they said No to Amazon. That’s a pretty big deal. That’s a lot of volume in one place that they turned down. That’s a lot of sales missed.

They said no to an opportunity for more sales and more money. And many, many more stores that had maybe been on the fence about carrying their product just said Yes to them.

We’re talking about Trust. Trust is the most critical element you have to earn to grow your customer base and increase customer loyalty. In Tom Wanek’s book Currencies That Buy Credibility, one of those currencies you can pay is Opportunity.

When you are willing to turn down opportunities just to stay true to who you are, you earn trust. When you put your mission ahead of profits, you earn trust. When you say, “No, we won’t do it that way even though it might be (easier, more lucrative, more profitable),” you earn trust.

Tom brings up the Toyota-founded company Scion that makes those funky, weird-looking vehicles. Scion could sell tons more vehicles than they do, but they don’t want to be a mass-market company. So instead of ramping up production, they limit it and scale it back so that their vehicles remain rare and funky. Their customer base, having seen them forego opportunity to remain true to the original mission, has a level of trust far higher than otherwise.

There are certain toys every year that I just say No to. Why? Because they don’t have the Play Value that is so necessary for children. Could I sell a whole bunch of these other toys? Sure. They have shelf-appeal and advertising behind them. But if I spent decades talking about Play Value and then started selling these toys, I would lose all credibility the moment I put those toys on the shelf.

When you say No, you mean No. But sometimes your No leads to another person’s Yes.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS The picture above is a product called Baby Paper. Yes, I plan to order it. They earned my trust. I want to repay it. That was my initial reaction and it will be your customer’s initial reaction when they see you turn down opportunities just to remain loyal to your mission and your current customer base. Not only will I order, I’ll tell others like me to order. Not only will your loyal customers remain loyal, they’ll bring others like them to the table. That is what Trust does.

Would You Ever Admit You Weren’t the Best?

Avis did.

Avis ran a whole ad campaign for several years based on the fact that they were NOT the number one company in their industry.

We’re number two. We try harder.

They stood naked to the world. We are not number one. That admission was enough to garner a whole lot of trust. Any company willing to admit something like that so boldly shows that they have nothing to hide.

The Currency they were spending was Reputation and Prestige. They put their reputation and prestige on the line, told everyone their warts, and used it to their advantage. End result? Their market share rose from 10% to 35%!!

Admitting your flaws or shortcomings may seem counter intuitive to getting people to trust you, but in reality, it can be one of your most powerful tools to earning that trust. They say honesty is the best policy, right?

Being honest about your flaws is simply the right thing to do. Admitting when you made a mistake wins the heart of the customer. They know you made a mistake. You know you made a mistake. Trying to cover it up or ignore it only builds distrust and resentment.

Everything and everybody and every business has flaws. No one and nothing is perfect. When you try to show that you are perfect to everyone, they see right through you. They know there is a downside. They will be looking for the downside whether you tell them or not. So go first. Tell them the downside to doing business with you before they start looking. Tell them the downside to the product you’re trying to sell them. The upside of telling them the downside is that they are more willing to trust everything else you say.

  1. Admit your mistakes and shortcomings.
  2. Tell them the downside.

Building trust doesn’t cost as much as you think. You just have to spend the right currencies.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Patagonia is another example Tom Wanek used in his book. They were a multi-million dollar company when the owner realized his company wasn’t lined up with his own personal values of being environmentally conscious. He totally revamped the company and lost a lot of business in the process. But he gained a lot of trust, too. That trust is what led him back from the brink. His customer base basically said, “Anyone willing to take so much heat and so many financial losses to run his company in a way he could be proud is someone I can trust to do what he says he’ll do.”

PPS You don’t need business examples to know this is true. The media and celebrity world give you all the examples you’ll ever need. Admit the scandal and people forgive you. Deny the scandal and the storm never blows over.

You Have to Pay for Trust

She doesn’t trust you. She has been burned by many retailers before you. If you want her to trust you, you better be ready to pay for that trust. You better be ready to show her what you are willing to sacrifice to earn her trust.

Are you willing to give up money to earn her trust?

Are you willing to give up power and control to earn her trust?

Are you willing to give up time and energy to earn her trust?

Are you willing to give up opportunities to earn her trust?

Are you willing to put your reputation and prestige on the line to earn her trust?

Are you willing to risk safety and well-being to earn her trust?

These are the six Currencies that buy Credibility as outlined by Tom Wanek in his book of the same name. If you want her to trust you, she needs to know that you are willing to pay one (or more) of these prices.

If you are willing to pay the price, you will not only earn her trust, you’ll earn her loyalty. You will not only earn her business, you will earn access to her network. When your customers trust you, you have built a recession-proof, competition-proof business. 

Just remember that trust is fragile and easily broken. And actions speak louder than words.

We’ll explore all six of these prices to pay in upcoming posts.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Tom’s book has some great examples. I plan to add a few examples of my own. Some of these, you are already doing (but might not realize it). Some of these are things you would do if asked. Some of these are things you would do if you knew what a difference it would make. Some of these are things you’ll say No Way!  That’s okay. Just remember that the more you’re willing to sacrifice for the customer, the more she will trust you.

Do Your Customers Trust You?

I’ve plowed my parking lot clean. I’ve held open the front door for my customer. I’ve greeted her with a genuine hello and thanks for coming in. I’ve avoided the dreaded Can I help you? phrase.

Those are the easy obstacles to remove.

The biggest obstacle is a lack of trust. A new customer sails in on cargo ship full of cynicism the first time she visits you.

It is easy to see why.

Many retailers, especially the biggest among us, have forsaken that trust time and time again. The bait & switch. The mark-it-up-to-mark-it-down. The everything-must-be-locked-because-we-think-you’re-a-thief displays. The 4.5 font fine print. The No’s (no returns, no refunds, no touching, no opening the package, no exceptions). The because-one-customer-burned-us-once-you-all-have-to-pay policies. The too-good-to-be-true offers that weren’t. The defects. The lost orders. The wrong orders. The lack of trained employees. The lack of employees who care. The lack of employees, period.

The list goes on and on.

You might not do anything on that list, but your customer has experienced it somewhere so she believes every retailer is out to screw her either on purpose or through their own ineptness. That is her reality so that is her expectation.


THE BAR IS REALLY LOW

The only good news is that since her expectation is pretty low, it doesn’t take much to exceed that expectation and start to build up that trust. The bad news is that it only takes one slip up, one time where you acted like all those other stores, for her to lump you in with the worst of them.

Even if you only do the most minimum of transgressions, you get treated like the worst offender ever. And unlike the big box stores, the indie retailer has to fight twice as hard for a second chance.

It makes you wonder why anyone would want to be in our profession in the first place.

Trust, however, is the single most powerful tool you can use to grow your business. Trust trumps sales and discounts because trust creates loyalty, customers that will pay your price and have your back at the same time. Trust trumps huge advertising campaigns because without trust, your message falls on deaf ears. Trust trumps technology because even the most advanced systems cannot fix a broken heart.

But Trust can be bought.

Tom Wanek wrote the defining book on the topic – Currencies That Buy Credibility. Over the next few posts, I’ll show you how you can build trust in your customers’ hearts by spending one of six different currencies Tom spells out in his book.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS This Wednesday the students in my Jackson Retail Success Academy class will get all six currencies at once, along with a few other lessons on Marketing & Advertising. One of these days I’m going to get Tom up here to Jackson to talk about it directly. In the meantime, keep your eyes out for an announcement about how you can partake in shortened versions of JRSA later this year.

What Kind of Candy are You Giving Out?

There was a house on the next block that gave out full size candy – Milky Ways, Snickers, Butterfingers and M&M’s. My friend Peter and I spent one Halloween changing into multiple costumes and running up the street to that house at least five times.

There was another house on the street we just avoided. Stingy old man who gave out only one single piece of that orange/brown wrapped tootsie roll wannabe. Wasn’t worth the hassle to go to Mr Stingy’s.

Are you the Mrs. Generous House that everyone goes to multiple times or are you the Mr. Stingy House that everyone ignores?

Depends on the candy you’re giving out.

This Halloween is a good time to think about how you can be more generous this holiday season. Word gets around quickly where Mr. Stingy and Mrs. Generous live.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Generosity is one of those gifts that comes back to you in droves. It is one of the key drivers of Word-of-Mouth advertising. You need to incorporate it into your way of doing business.

PPS Happy Halloween!!