Don't Call Me, I'll Call You

...Isn't the motto of the local Ulta store. I called them recently asking for a certain type of mascara and the store employee told me, "I don't know if we have it. Call me back in 10 minutes." Unbelievable.

It was almost like I was calling to see if a friend can come over and play. Remember when you were 8 and you'd call a friend and they'd say, "Let me ask my mom. Call me back in 10 minutes."

I chalked up this experience to lack of employee training at the store. Certainly if the owner (or someone who felt ownership) answered they would have said, "Let me check and call you back. What's your number?"

It brings up a point about being in sales - your customers are doing YOU the favor, not the reverse. No matter how hard you work to provide your customer with what he/she needs, how much you have to go out of your way for them or how many strings you have to pull - they are still doing you a favor. Keep that in mind.

Pride Goeth Before a Fall & Other Ways to Increase Sales

As a business owner you have pride in what you do, right? Maybe not the boastful, in your face, "talk to the hand" kind of pride - but strong confidence in your work and products.

And I know we struggle with infusing the same pride into our employees. To them, it's "just a job" but to us it's our life. There's a gazillion management books (and I love reading them) on ways to create engaged employees who take pride in their work.

Have you ever thought about how to instill the same pride in your customers? Wouldn't it be great if your customers were proud to say they worked with you? Or proud that they used your product? And bragged about it or flaunted it!

Some companies market themselves on this very principle - to evoke status and pride within their customers. Rolex, BMW, and David Yurman are a few examples of high end products that people are proud to have. Recently I was interviewed for a SmartMoney article about the Martha Stewart brand being sold in J.C. Penney stores. Experts argue that if customers have confidence in what they are buying then they don't need a brand name.

Here are products and services I'm proud to use and why:

• My dentist and physician. (They are different people!). I've been going to both of them for 15 years. Both have had the same hygienist/nurse the entire time. Both doctors are involved in the community and I read about the philanthropic things they do in local publications. This makes me proud.
  


• Kwik Kar Oil Change. One time I went in for a State Inspection and I didn't have my current insurance card. It was because I had been in a car accident and just gotten my car back without replacing all my glove box contents. The mechanic called my insurance company and verified my insurance was current and then proceed to inspect my car. This saved me tons of time and made me proud.
  


• Scott Tissue. I can always find a coupon to use when buying it to save $.50 - $1.00 plus they participate in Box Tops for Education, which means they donate $.10 for every package I buy to my kids' school. This makes me proud.
  

Instill pride in your customers by:

• Being involved in your community


• Going way out of your way for them


• Providing a good deal on price


• Showing social responsibility

How You Can Make Customers Feel Like It's Black Friday Every Day of the Week

1. Be too busy to greet your customers when they enter your place of business.
2. Make sure customers have to wait to make their purchase or talk to you about their needs.
3. Let your phone ring 5 or 6 times - don't be in a hurry to answer it. Better yet, let calls go to voicemail so you can listen to them later.
4. Make sure people feel anxious and in a hurry when they arrive at your place of business. Let them know that you have other things to do.
5. Put off training new employees on how to help customers or how to make customer needs a priority. After all, your employees have a particular job to do and don't need to be sidetracked by helping customers or clients.
6. Be rigid with your product or service offerings. You really don't have time to accommodate any special client needs.

I'm glad Black Friday is only one day a year. Make sure it doesn't last any longer than one day at your business.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sales Formula that Will Work

We all want to know "THE" formula to boost sales. There are so many formula options with combinations of Facebook pages, twitter, advertising, direct mail, brochures, event sponsorships, phone calls, promotional products, blogging, websites...and the list goes on.

If you just knew the right formula to invest your time and money then life would be good!

Here's the only formula that I know will work: consistency. Select 2 or 3 ways to market (or more if you can) and do them consistently over time. Quantity of your messages is just as important as the quality of your messages. Don't blow your entire marketing budget on one big campaign. Instead, do several smaller campaigns consistently over time.

So...

If you use Facebook to market your business, use it consistently.
If you do direct mail mail outs to market your business, do it consistently.
If you advertise to increase your sales, do it consistently.

And don't forget, you must do a good job and/or produce a good product - consistently.

Why You Need Mad Customers

Today my family ate lunch at one of our favorite after-church restaurants and I ordered "the usual." This time it wasn't cooked properly. It's a fish dish and initially I thought the fish was bad. Then I realized that the fish wasn't bad -it was still raw (and it's not a sushi restaurant!). Without going into the details, I didn't like the way the restaurant handled my complaint. They handled it poorly. I could have caused a big scene and made demands on the manager and wait staff. Instead I'm choosing to do what will affect the restaurant's bottom line the most - I won't ever go back.

Just because you don't have customers complaining doesn't mean you have happy customers. If customers are yelling at you, at least they are still talking to you and you might have an opportunity to win them back over. And they may even have valid complaints that your "silent but deadly" customers never told you.

Keep this in mind the next time one of your customers gets angry with you.

How Not Feeding the Seagulls Can Increase Sales

On a recent trip to Panama City Beach in Florida I saw this sign, "Please...Don't Feed The Seagulls." It was posted near our restaurant table where we had a beautiful ocean view.

Guess what this sign made me think about? Yep- feeding the seagulls. I probably wouldn't have thought about throwing food out to the birds, but seeing the sign all of a sudden gave me the idea of feeding them!

And come to find out, I'm probably not the only one.

In his book, Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, Martin Lindstrom introduces the concept of neuromarketing. Using brain scans scientists monitor brain responses to certain products and ads. In an extensive 3 year study he researched the effects of cigarette warning labels and anti-smoking ads on smokers' behavior. While smokers claimed that warning labels were effective in curbing their smoking habits, it was discovered that anti-smoking ads stimulated an area of the smokers' brains called the nucleus accumbens, also known as the "craving spot." In other words, cigarette warning labels didn't deter smoking. Instead the labels actually increased a smoker's physical craving to smoke and encouraged them to light up.

As a business trying to jazz up your sales Lindstrom's study tells me this:

• What customers say they want isn't always what they really want.


• A suggestion you make to a customer can have the opposite effect of what you intended.


• Your customer may not truly know why he/she bought from you.


• Focus groups and customer surveys may be a waste of time (gasp!)

Be mindful of what you are selling. Your customers do have choices - they can buy from you or someone else. However, it's up to you to decide what your services include and what your product offerings are. Allowing your customers to totally dictate how your product works or service is delivered can actually decrease your sales.

What Shopping Malls Won't Tell You

I enjoyed being interviewed by Jonnelle Marte about my recent mall shopping experience a few weeks ago. The article is called 10 Things Shopping Malls Won't Tell You and was published in SmartMoney.

After reading her article it's hard to figure out what a shopping mall can do to generate more traffic. I've found that many times retail employees don't know much about the products in the store and sometimes don't really care to help me. So it's better for me to do my research online about what I'm buying and then take the next easiest step and just buy what I need online.

But I do feel nostalgic for the shopping malls of the 80's. It was fun to get dressed up with my girlfriends and go hang out for the day or take a mother/daughter trip to a mall a little out of the way.

My first job was at a retail store in the mall. I worked there all through high school and one summer during college. The mall was always busy and I took my job seriously. It was tiring being on your feet all day, dealing with customers of all types, having a boss that was burned out and then getting up the next day and doing the exact same thing. Seems like that may be how malls feel now - tired and worn out.