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Episodes
Wednesday Dec 11, 2019
Wednesday Dec 11, 2019
For the first eight feet in your store, nobody wants to talk to anybody. Your customers don't want to be barraged, "Hi, can I help you find something?" Your untrained employees don't want to go up there. That first eight feet is, some people call it the decompression zone. It's an area where you just let people have space to be able to peruse your store.
Basically, they've landed in an alien country. That's your store. They don't know the language. They've got to learn how the layout is, you name it, but we just need a space. We don't want to be jumped up with too much merchandise, and again, most of you have so much merchandise you don't know your turns. Just be very careful what you're looking at for buying for continuing into the holidays. Know your numbers. Know your category.
If you love what you heard on Retail Today, connect with Bob by visiting retaildoc.com or send a message to bob@retaildoc.com. Thanks for listening!
Tuesday Dec 10, 2019
Tuesday Dec 10, 2019
All you want to worry about when it comes to tagging and pricing shelves and products is, does the customer know how much this costs? Nothing drives me crazier than going into a brick and mortar store and I have to ask somebody the price, just shoot me. I am not buying from you, I will go from anyone else. Oh, well it's hard for us to price it. Get a price gun, and price it, or do a shelf talker. I walk in there, I just want to know what's the average price of something. I want to have a sense, I don't want to feel stupid. Oh, that's a million dollars. What an idiot you are, right? That's what the fear is, so the more you can get rid of that fear, I know how much this is, or you even say it's got a range. Even that would be better, but I don't think you have to go overboard and have a shelf talker and a price on it.
If you love what you heard on Retail Today, connect with Bob, by visiting RetailDoc.com, or send a message to Bob@RetailDoc.com. Thanks for listening.
If you love what you heard on Retail Today, connect with Bob by visiting retaildoc.com or send a message to bob@retaildoc.com. Thanks for listening!
Monday Dec 09, 2019
Monday Dec 09, 2019
On my site, on RetailDoc.com, you can take under, I think it's Retail 101, and you go down and you can see my resource center, and you can take the retail assessment, and one of the first questions is, are you taking money out of the business? And I can't tell you, like 90% of people answer that no. Well, that's silly, because you should take something out as a reward that you are the business owner. I don't care if it's only five bucks a week, I don't care if it's five a month. You have to at least get in the idea that I'm paying myself, because otherwise you just become this victim, and I'm not making any money, and I'm only paying my employees. And then everything just goes down. If you just accept that you have to pay yourself something. So set a goal for what you want to make. Get your profit margin in the right place. Limit your discounts and promotions. Get some retail sales training. Hire more people than you think you should. Train them well, hold them accountable, and you're going to be successful.
If you love what you heard on Retail Today, connect with Bob by visiting RetailDoc.com, or send a message to Bob@RetailDoc.com. Thanks for listening.
If you love what you heard on Retail Today, connect with Bob by visiting retaildoc.com or send a message to bob@retaildoc.com. Thanks for listening!
Sunday Dec 08, 2019
Sunday Dec 08, 2019
... about to 26, so about a dollar more. So, why is the difference? Well, quite simply they make money on revolving credit. They put it on the consumer. That's where we're going to make our 20, 30%. American Express says you want our card, you're going to have to pay a lot more money, and you have to pay it off. And that's how they make their money. They are making it by charging the merchants a little bit more.
But why would you want to do that? Because American Express holders are the most affluent customers, and you're probably not going to be making every one of American Express. My viewpoint, it was always a small amount who asked for it, but you're cutting your nose off to spite your face because there are people who would rather use that American Express and if you knew that, maybe you would be able to sell them more. So, there you go.
If you love what you heard on Retail Today, connect with Bob by visiting retaildoc.com or send a message to bob@retaildoc.com. Thanks for listening.
If you love what you heard on Retail Today, connect with Bob by visiting retaildoc.com or send a message to bob@retaildoc.com. Thanks for listening!
Saturday Dec 07, 2019
Saturday Dec 07, 2019
Google has been doing an awful lot of updates on their websites and they are looking at whether you are relevant to what people are searching for, and if you're not, they're dropping off. So I would encourage you to look at your Google stats and if you don't know what that is, go into Google My Business and then you can have somebody help you with looking at your numbers. But Google has done a big job and there have been two big updates this year that have affected an awful lot of retailers and service providers like myself. So what may have worked a year or two ago is not going to work now. So somebody clicks to your site and they click right off. Google says, "Oh, this isn't enough information, I'm not going to show this again." So that happens more and more, or they go to somebody else's site and they spend some time. You're going to be on that second page or worse, you'd just be on the number five and nobody really goes below number five when it comes to Search.
If you love what you heard on Retail Today, connect with Bob by visiting retaildoc.com or send a message to bob@retaildoc.com. Thanks for listening.
If you love what you heard on Retail Today, connect with Bob by visiting retaildoc.com or send a message to bob@retaildoc.com. Thanks for listening!
Friday Dec 06, 2019
Friday Dec 06, 2019
We're coming into the money months, and you have about one more month to figure out how to sell, whether you want to use my sales direct online training, you want to try to read my book, or you're going to wing it, you have about a month left to get those add on sales. And that's a matter of training, and if somebody is not, or won't, or can't, or fill in the blank, won't support you, then now is your time to tune up your crew and give them written warnings.
I'm a big believer in don't just fire somebody willy nilly. Write it out. Here's what you did, here's what the service level you need to do is. If this happens again, you'll be gone or [inaudible 00:00:31] and then follow through with it. You know that first time you fire someone and you're like, Oh my God, I know their whole story. You'll find your whole crew is going to listen to what you have to say. And when that happens, then you can turn the corner. Until you do that though, until hurts bad enough to change, you'll probably just call your buddies and say how Amazon is ruining you and, at the end of the day, don't do that.
If you love what you heard on Retail Today, connect with Bob by visiting retaildoc.com, or send a message to bob@retaildoc.com. Thanks for listening.
If you love what you heard on Retail Today, connect with Bob by visiting retaildoc.com or send a message to bob@retaildoc.com. Thanks for listening!
Thursday Dec 05, 2019
Thursday Dec 05, 2019
Everybody loves talking about the retail apocalypse. It's a great clickbait, gets people to look. Please don't be those people doing local stories about how it hurts to be you, and how business is off, and how no one's coming in. That doesn't serve you well at all. That makes you sound like a loser. You're your public voice to anyone who interviews you or wants to do a story is business is great. We're expanding. We're doing these things on social media. We're committed to being in business like we have been for the last 75 years, and that brings people to you and they want to find out what you're doing to have that energy behind it. And then maybe you'll actually believe it in here, and you'll actually change. So there you go. I'm Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doc. Thanks for joining me this week and hope you have a great busy weekend.
If you love what you heard on Retail Today, connect with Bob by visiting RetailDoc.com. Or send a message to Bob@RetailDoc.com. Thanks for listening.
If you love what you heard on Retail Today, connect with Bob by visiting retaildoc.com or send a message to bob@retaildoc.com. Thanks for listening!
Wednesday Dec 04, 2019
Wednesday Dec 04, 2019
Yeah, the one thing that I find, like if you're a hot tub dealer, "Oh, we're going to be in the backyard outdoor space, so we'll put in a barbecue." It's like, let's just have this orphan little barbecue in the middle of all these hot tubs and say we're in the outdoor space. No, you have to commit to it. You have to buy enough that it looks like, "Oh, it's a store within a store. Oh, this is a barbecue place." Then, you have to make it, arrange the merchandise in such a way that it looks like somebody's patio, and it gets people's attention. It looks like it is seamless between the hot tub and the patio world.
So, my thoughts are, commit to enough merchandise. How are we going to make a store within a store with it? How are you going to sell it? Then, know your numbers. If you're going to buy in $300,000 worth of product how soon does it have to sell for it to make your money back? At the end of the day great merchants, I think, are smart. Know your numbers and make an educated guess but, ultimately, that's why you're an entrepreneur. You're willing to do that work, you know your numbers, and then when you decide maybe you just say that, "I've seen this, I'd use this, I love this, I can passionately sell it because selling is nothing more than transference feeling. I can sell it so I can get my crew to sell it. Well, that's great, but if it's just like, "Oh, we're going to start carrying jewelry. Why?
So, a lot of times I think retailers go through and think if we just added more merch we would be more successful. In this day and age that's rarely the case. Most of you need to cut down your number of SKUs, make the merch more compelling, and make Instagramable displays so that the merch actually goes out the door instead of just sits on your wall or your tables. I hope that helps.
If you love what you heard on Retail Today connect with Bob by visiting retaildoc.com, or send a message to Bob@retaildoc.com. Thanks for listening.
If you love what you heard on Retail Today, connect with Bob by visiting retaildoc.com or send a message to bob@retaildoc.com. Thanks for listening!
Tuesday Dec 03, 2019
Tuesday Dec 03, 2019
This idea that you're going to hire someone who is already trained, and a great salesperson frequently, to me, falls on the floor. Because ultimately, great salespeople are made, not found. You can train anybody. Again, you can use my online system salesrx.com. $195 a month for starting with five users, and I will teach you, I guarantee you, exactly how to create rapport, how to discover the shopper, engage the stranger, and ultimately make the sale. You can have anyone go through that and we can teach them that. You can also pay me several times more than that and I'll come train your crew, but the reality is, unless you're willing to focus on creating a salesperson, you're just hoping, and the problem with hoping that you're going to get a great salesperson is, maybe you get a great salesperson that worked for a competitor and I don't know what your business is, and you say, "Oh, they're all trained."
Well, I used to be in the coffee business and we would tell people, do not hire people from Starbucks. Do not hire people from Starbucks. And invariably we'd have, the franchisee would say, "Hey, I just hired my new manager from Starbucks."
It's like, okay. And the problem was they were trained to Starbucks standards, so when they came to your store, they're going to bring your store basically to Starbucks standards, which probably doesn't work for an independent little coffee house. And so a lot of times there was a lot of miscommunication. There was a lot of friction because they were trained in one system. And you're saying, "Oh, it's compatible."
It isn't. Usually, a lot of times you're bringing bad service and you're bringing bad habits from another business onto yours. So great salespeople are made. They aren't found.
If you love what you heard on Retail Today, connect with Bob by visiting retaildoc.com. Or, send a message to bob@retaildoc.com. Thanks for listening.
If you love what you heard on Retail Today, connect with Bob by visiting retaildoc.com or send a message to bob@retaildoc.com. Thanks for listening!
Monday Dec 02, 2019
Monday Dec 02, 2019
The reality is that you may be ascribing events to your store that really aren't connected, and a lot of retailers do that. "Oh, the reason I'm not successful is because of Amazon." You're a farm stand. "Oh, well it's because everybody's on Amazon."
We put all this other stuff to other things. There's an awful lot that you can do as you concentrate on your four walls and you have a branded experience. Then, you have regular communication with people who've given you money. This isn’t somebody who's just signed a little guest book - these are your regular customers. You have a list of them. If you haven't started a list now is always a good time, of email, and you're talking to them once a week and you're making sure that you hold onto them. As I like to say, brand their “But…” When they sit down they can't think of going anywhere else for the products that you carry except going to you, and that takes a lot of work. I won't kid you.
You can do Facebook Live videos. You could do a blog about how to select the perfect gift this holiday season. There's a million things you can do. At the end of the day it doesn't matter because all you can do is your four walls, and you can change all that with a person walking in the door in the next hour.
If you love what you heard on Retail Today, connect with Bob by visiting retaildoc.com or send a message to bob@retaildoc.com. Thanks for listening!