Archive for the ‘Tips’ Category

Is Your Store Trying Your Customer’s Patience?

Thursday, September 8th, 2011

Is Your Store Trying Your Customer’s Patience?

(10 Very Basic Details If You’re Going to Give Customers a Decent Experience In Your Store)

By Rich Gordon aka Retail Rich

Every business screws up. Deliveries are late. Shipments are wrong. Someone misunderstands the customer. And in retailing, employees and shop owners test their customers patience . . .way too often!

It’s hard enough to get customers in your store these days, so why allow the little things add up to big things with customers as they make their rounds. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every month to get the customer excited or in the right frame of mind to buy a particular brand or product. If they have chosen your store to make that purchase in, that’s even better. So why should the slightest sign of frustration or irritation be placed on the customer, once they have made it into YOUR store?

I know retailers don’t necessarily mean to try the patience of their customers on purpose. Many of us out there have even convinced ourselves that customers don’t want good service. We just slowly but surely drop the ball with customers who walk in our store. We get busy. We get stressed and we make assumptions about customers based on our considerable experience, and before long our service is mediocre at best. Some of our bad habits and assumptions have become so ingrained in our daily activities we don’t even recognize them as problems anymore. Or maybe we feel like we have too many more important problems.

And then we carry on and worry about what the on-line retailers are doing to us. You need to ask yourself; if the things you do or don’t do in your store are part of the contributing factors that make customers want to sit home and order from their computer.

1. Conversations and complaint sessions at the checkout counter. Sales clerks, grocery clerks and their baggers who want to hold an entire conversation or complaint session with each other while they are checking “your” customers out. There is nothing professional about it and there is nothing polite about talking around or through the customers. They should not feel like they are listening in or intruding on a personal conversation. Customers don’t need to hear about Sally’s break-up with Brad, or grandma’s recuperation.

2. Some customers don’t need your help, but you can’t assume anything. Keep in mind that many customers have done their homework and know what they want. Your job is to determine how much help they want. If customers seem to know what they want and act a bit hurried, don’t run through every step of the sales process or the employee sales manual. Respect your customer’s time and help them get out as fast as they wish.

3. Employee huddles. Customers should not have to walk up to your people and feel like they are interrupting a conversation. If the employees suddenly go silent as the customer approaches and the employees both turn to the customer and stare, it’s just as bad. The customer should not feel like they are killing the party! They need to offer an apology such as “excuse us. What can we do for you.?”

4. Telling your employees what they should do or say to customers is not enough! You may have told your employees to say “Thank You.” If you have, give yourself one point. But if you have employees with poor attitudes or lame interpersonal skills, do you really think it’s still OK for them to give your customers one of those worthless rather forced and fake “thank you’s”? If your people can’t even act as though they appreciate your customers business, then maybe they should look at janitorial work, or work at a government job like being a postal counter worker. Leave the “people-skills” work for someone who can manufacture a sincere smile and “thank you”.

5. Hiring warm bodies isn’t near enough! If you are hiring teenagers whose parents have made them get a job and they don’t want to be in your store, or they have some kind of attitude, stop this practice immediately. Find someone else, or you may even be better off closed.

6. Conversations off the clock—still no good! If you have employees who have clocked out for whatever reason, they should not be allowed to stand around and carry on conversations with employees while customers are around and ignored. If they want to chat with their co-worker buddies, do it while the store is empty or go in the back room.

7. Customer and Phone Call Etiquette No employee should ever be talking to ANYONE on the phone while they are taking a customers money or credit card payment. The customer should have 100% of his or her attention and anyone on the phone should be put on hold. If it’s a friend on the phone, the phone should be hung up. Customers should not be made to feel like they are interrupting anything.

If your customers come up to approach your counter to ask your people for help and the phone rings as you have begun to talk, the phone caller DOES NOT come first. The caller did not take the time and trouble to come to your store. The customer in the store has dibbs. Excuse yourself and apologetically tell the customer you will need to call them back right away after taking their phone number.

8. Stop making the same scheduling mistakes, if you really care! Take careful notes as to when your peak times of day happen or if your store has a rush after school or during rush hour. Write your schedules to handle these times. Scheduling too few employees to handle a rush. You not only run the risk of losing all the sales you don’t make, you also irritate or aggravate some customers who may find it less and less necessary to come by.

9. Insure your people know how to give back change correctly and they are actually doing it! Do NOT allow your people to give change without counting it back correctly. If they don’t know how to correctly make change—train them. Do not allow any transaction to take place of any kind without some words being spoken to the customer. After some kind words or a question such as what else can I do for you, if your employees can’t look at the customer straight in the eye and sincerely thank them for their business—get rid of them.

10. Being attentive to any customer who is in your store doesn’t mean you have to be right there. What kinds of attention and back flips do your customers have to go through to get your peoples attention in your store? It is the people on your staff who should determine when a customer might need help. It is not the job of the customer to come find your people and flag them down. If the customer has had to wait or take action to get your peoples attention, then the employee should apologize for the inattention.

If your customers are leaving your store in frustration or without a smile on their face from some kind of pleasant interaction with your people, you need to do some more work in your store with your people. Customers should not feel worse or be more stressed as a result of shopping in your brick and mortar store.

Customers are out there right now buying and looking for the very products and services offered in your store. These people have the money for the products and services you offer. Their wallets have not been locked shut. Some of them may be looking for a bargain, but they are ready to buy. Almost all of them are looking for some human connection. They are all looking for something to excite them and they are all looking for something they simply must have now. Yes, Apple sells products that people didn’t even know they wanted, but odds are your store does not. That’s OK. That’s why your store needs to be interesting, fresh, clean and extremely friendly and helpful. If you can’t do this, it’s going to be a heck of a lot tougher!

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What is a Good Retail Salesperson?

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011

What is a Good Retail Salesperson?

by Rich Gordon AKA Retail Rich

Do you have sales-clerks OR Do you have sales-people in your store?

Lets talk first about sales clerks. In my mind, they are there to do the normal day-to-day work in a retail establishment, which involves cleaning, putting out merchandise, ticketing it and ringing it up. This is NOT a salesperson. You most likely need salesclerks, but in this day and age, AND ECONOMY, you need them to be salespeople too! If you just have employees who are waiting for someone to buy something, then you have order-takers and they should be called order-takers. . . or maybe sales-clerks, but they ARE NOT salespeople and the real question is which do you have on your payroll? You need to understand just whom you have in your store!

A good salesperson caters to the store’s customers and works to help them in anyway possible. They don’t ignore the customer or find a reason to avoid them, or keep them waiting while they finish up a phone call to their boyfriend. They really do understand the importance of SERVING customers. They don’t consider it demeaning and they don’t considerate it an interruption to their daily tasks, of which taking care of customers is the most important.

A good salesperson does not stumble they’re way through a question that a customer asks about a given product, just because they are ignorant of product knowledge. Have you ever gone into a store and asked about a product, only to have the salesperson read off the product package, as if he’s providing you a valuable service? A good salesperson needs to know about the things he or she is selling. Customers are likely to see through the ignorance and walk away. As a result, your store loses their trust, perhaps permanently. As a retailer, product knowledge is important depending on what you are selling.

A good salesperson strives to greet every customer by name whenever possible. They are friendly and willing to listen. In fact they enjoy talking to people.

A good salesperson looks professional—like they belong in your store. They do not look like they are working a garage sale. A professional appearance is CRITICAL to your store’s image and brand. If you think about it, appearance does matter. Whether it’s the packaging on a product you purchase, or your company’s web site, people notice how things look. Whether you like it or not people care about how things look and make judgments about you and your store based on appearance. Looking the part, makes it easier for your customers to see who can help them, and it identifies them as the people within the store that they can count on to help. If you tell me that Walmart doesn’t have professional looking people, you’re right. They don’t. But you don’t have the lowest prices in town and you don’t cater to the lowest common denominator of customer’s. . . At least I hope not!

A good salesperson looks at each customer as having a “need” or “want”. A good salesperson wants to help discover just what that is, and believes if they can do so, the customer has the potential of buying multiple items.

A good salesperson helps the store’s management collect buyer preferences and information on each customer they work with, because they know that the more information the store has about them, the easier it will be to please the customer in the long run.

A good salesperson asks the customer if there is anything else they can help them with, and if the customer has found everything they came in for.

A good salesperson thanks the customer for their visit, and/or purchase. At Nordstrom’s, a good salesperson will walk around the sales-counter after the transaction has been completed and hands the purchase to the customer while thanking them for their business.

A good salesperson calls customers at times (after the sale) to insure they were happy with their purchase and satisfied with their visit to the store.

Selling is a service. A Salesperson is not there to push something on the customer they don’t want. A good salesperson is there to build trust and help the customer satisfy a want or a need with the knowledge they have about the products and the store. None of us want to be sold something. We all do want to be serviced.

If you do NOT have salespeople on your staff, it most likely is not the fault of your employees. You are the one who needs to make some changes. You hired them. If they don’t have the right personality for sales, whose fault is that? If they have been working for you for a while and you see them doing none of the above very well, they most likely need some training and some explanation of YOUR priorities where customers are concerned. Changes in staff behavior do not occur automatically or overnight, so you will need to be persistent and consistent. As you try to make changes, give your people a sense of why you’re doing the things your doing and some idea of what lies ahead. When employees have a boss who surprises or direction suddenly without warning, they get a bit nervous. People do like predictability and on what basis they’re being judged. If any of these issues sound like they have you and your store in their sights, I’m sorry, but YOU have some work to do!

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A Tale of Three Stores

Thursday, July 14th, 2011

A Tale of Three Stores

by Rich Gordon aka Retail Rich

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Charles Dickens was right, especially if he were referring to some retailers out there today.

I’ve been visiting a lot of stores lately, especially in Hawaii, St. Louis and the Washington D.C. area. And I’m here to tell you that there are plenty of retailers in all three cities who don’t belong in business. But this isn’t what I love to find. Finding poor retailers just makes me feel sad, and it makes me wonder how many people visit these stores only to think to themselves’, “no wonder I love buying on the internet”. The fact is, I love it when I find a really good retailer that actually “gets it” and it impresses the heck out of me.

I’ve decided as I’ve visited these stores that there is no way my wife or I will buy anything from any store that can’t acknowledge and make me feel sincerely welcomed in their store. They don’t know that I write a blog and that I have a broad retail background. All they know is that I’m a person who may be a potential customer within their store.

The first shop I entered in the Annapolis, Maryland area one Saturday failed right off the bat. I had to move out of the way of an employee who was hastily making a beeline for the backroom. No excuse me, good morning or even drop dead. Just an attitude of, “your in my way” as the employee moved from behind the counter. Judging from the age of this person, they were most likely an employee. It made me wonder just what the owner feels when their investment, their livelihood, in some cases their very identity is at the mercy of such a poor excuse for help, even if only for a day! By the way, this person never did say “hello” and they seemed distracted enough, I felt like I should be looking for the self-service checkout line. As I left, I heard a rather insincere shout out, from the clerk, “thanks”. I thought, thanks. . . For what? Thanks for not bothering me? If you couldn’t say anything to me the entire time I was in your store, why say thanks now that I was walking out the door? Then it hit me. . . The young indifferent girl was thanking me for leaving and not bothering her anymore. She might have had to ring me up or answer a question or something!

I got to thinking, what if the owner of this store had just invested in some new mobile messaging technology and I had been texted to entice me into the store? Could the owner be wondering why they weren’t getting a better response from their investment. Let me tell you. . .technology won’t solve this kind of problem!

The next store I entered had an older gentleman manning the front counter area. There was so much merchandise and general junk around the counter, the walls and the floor, that it appeared he had built a small fortress around himself so no customer could see him. What was he doing back there? Eating, sleeping, playing solitaire? No one could tell! Maybe he just wanted customers to feel more hesitant about peeking through the fortress and bugging him.

There were ceiling tiles missing and some of the ones that were there were stained from roof leaks in the past. I realized no one wants to pay for stained sales tiles and a store are usually at the mercy of the landlord. How about just painting them white again? It’s not a big deal! The floors weren’t much better looking, but the merchandise was packed on the shelves and the prices were full boat. I asked myself, why should I pay full price in this place for anything. When I couldn’t up with an answer, so I left.

My next store visit was a total accident. It was an affordable jewelry/gift shop. We weren’t in the market for either, but through the window it looked bright, interesting, clean and spacious and my curiosity got the best of me. Boy, was I glad I went in. My wallet wouldn’t necessarily agree, as it was lightened by a few hundred dollars over the next half hour.

Upon walking in, my wife and I were greeted immediately even though the store’s single salesclerk happened to be leaning over a jewelry counter talking to another customer. He enthusiastically told us, he would be with us as soon as possible.

After taking care of the other customer, the salesclerk engaged us in conversation, while being interrupted a couple of times by a phone caller. In both cases, the salesclerk excused himself and answered the phone, only to tell the caller he would need to take their name and number and call them back as soon as possible. This clerk understood that the person who has actually taken the time and trouble to go to your store comes first and foremost.. . . Hallelujah!

The amazing thing about this person was that after engaging us in conversation, he asked my wife if she was familiar with a particular new line of jewelry he had started to carry. He enthusiastically led her and I over to an attractive well-lighted counter. The jewelry involved silver and a variety of interchangeable precious and semi-precious stones. He explained the line as well as the catalogue and how the pricing worked. He provided just the right balance of creating interest, product information, genuine friendliness and helpfulness. He wasn’t pushy, but positive. He sensed when we wanted to be left alone to look and consider our possible purchase. He provided an incentive to purchase more, but provided the offer as information as opposed to some hard selling tactic.

In the end, my wife was happy and the store had a few hundred additional sales dollars added to the till. The clerk explained the warranty to us once again, as well as how to access any help. He handed us his business card and told us about the company website while capturing our contact information. He gave us a couple of care tips, while giving my wife a free polishing cloth. He thanked us for the business and recommended a good place to go eat lunch.

Good customer service starts with acknowledging there is a person in your store, not ignoring them or hoping they won’t bother you. Most owners know this, but they often have no clue as to what their people are really doing. Some owners understand the importance of customers, but still take them for granted, or they assume that if the customer wants something they’ll get the clerk or the storeowner. They deserve your respect and attention, especially over that of a phone caller. Everyone would do well to remember that customers are people who deserve your respect until they give you reason to think otherwise. They are people who have gone to the expense to drive, walk or both to your place of business and give you a shot at some of their hard earned money. They are physically at your place of business and you have invited them in by the mere fact that you are in business. If you don’t treat these people with basic respect and can’t talk to them and truly serve them, they will probably continue to shop, but possibly elsewhere. Maybe they’ll shop online, only you’ll never know what they did or how much they spent. They may spend less online or they might not, but you didn’t give them any reason to buy from you, not even “friendliness.”

This is the way it’s supposed to be. Which tale is your store closer to?

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Complacency…8 Important Retail Trouble Spots

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

Complacency…8 Important Retail Trouble Spots

By Rich Gordon

Complacency. . .What’s New and What Should Be New, In Your Store

I visited with a retailer a few weeks ago and asked her how things were going. She began venting to me about all of her to-do lists and all of the projects that she had been working on. She was working on a number of changes including some new fixtures, a new wall color and some new product lines. She told me she also needed to hire and train a couple of new people. I expected to hear her tell me also that business was really down and she was desperately trying to turn things around. But I was wrong!

So wrong. . .in fact she’s coming off close to a record year. That really impressed me. Here she is talking about all of the improvements she needs to make and it’s not because she’s hurting or desperate. She wants to keep her store new, exciting and interesting. More importantly, she wants to keep her store relevant to her target customers. As a matter of fact she is trying to more narrowly focus her store to better appeal to her core customers. This is such a change in story and attitude from the one I usually hear and it is an important difference between average and mediocre retailers and aggressive, healthy and cutting edge retailers.

Great retailers are driven or compelled to keep improving and upgrading their physical store, their atmosphere and their product lines regardless of their sales. In fact, this attitude is what sets them apart to begin with. Complacency even while successful can be your worst enemy!

Year after year, even a successful company may keep doing what’s always worked for them, but over time they fail to realize that they’re slowly slipping and often becoming less relevant, and more and more ho-hum. . . boring!   Here are some things to consider along those lines:

1. Are you still hanging on to an old product line or product assortment that just isn’t performing like it used to do? Old loyalties die hard, but maybe it’s time to get more production out of the square footage your tying up with merchandise that just doesn’t cut the mustard any longer. Are your old product lines still relevant and important to your target customer? Do you know who exactly your target customer is and are they still excited about your store. Remember, it really is easier to adjust your product assortment and brands for your customers changing taste than it is to find new customers for old products and product lines.

2. When’s the last time you took a field trip to a few competitors you admire? Don’t go by yourself. Take a couple of other employees with you and split up. Each of you should at whatever you choose. Then get back together and exchange views and notes. You might even want to revisit the store after talking. If you’re visiting a chain store or a retailer with deep pockets, take a look at how you might be able to implement some of their ideas and presentations with budget that meets your needs.

3. Do you invest in new and interesting ways to display your merchandise? Yes, it cost more money, but it really is an important part of staying fresh and exciting to your customers, especially where you key bread and butter lines are concerned. If you’ve got product lines that are critical to your success then you must invest in them. You can’t afford to let its importance become lost in old, worn and outdated fixtures. New fixtures mean putting things in a new light and bringing attention to products in a different way. Putting new and state of the art products on old and tired fixtures or even old tired and uninteresting walls are like putting hot pants on mom or worse yet grandma. Can you imagine seeing the latest iPads displayed on a shelf up against some pegboard? Or can you imagine seeing a “Coach” purse locked up in an old dingy glass display case from the 60’s? The point is that if you don’t invest in new and inventive ways of showing your merchandise, you’ll pay a much higher price down the road.

4. Take an honest look at your store through the eye of the lens. Take a couple of dozen photos of your in 5-10’ sections. After you’ve taken them, either print them out or look at them closely in full screen size on your computer monitor. What do you see? Does each photo you have reflect the image you want of your store? Take some notes about every photo. Make note of the good things too. They may be worth reinforcing to your people or duplicating somewhere else in your store.

5. Are you bringing in new categories and lines to test and excite your target customer? The longer your business has been around, the more dangerous and easy it is for it to become passé or boring. Too often some retailers will bring in the old tried and true products year after year with just slight changes in presentation, signage or anything else, and they wonder why sales are lethargic and daily traffic is dropping off. (Yes, it must be the discount store down the street or it’s the economy.) You should constantly be thinking about what else you could do to excite and sell to your current customer base. There are always more possibilities and opportunities around than any of us are aware of, including me!

What if a new direct competitor opened up across the street from you? What would you do? Remember one of the things about new stores. They’re fresh and they offer little surprises. They’re clean, bright and all new and shiny. Customers are always ready to check something out like that. What would you do? Then my next question is, why should you wait only until that happens. You’ve got to keep your store fresh and interesting all the time!

6. Have you graded your housekeeping and general appearance? Are you waiting until the one hole in the carpet enlarges and meets up with the other hole in the carpeting? Are you still looking up at the stains on the ceiling tile and blaming the landlord for that old leak two years ago? You say that landlord won’t replace the tiles so you’re at his mercy? Ever heard of some fresh white paint. Paint the tiles. Don’t worry about who’s responsibility it is, worry instead about the image your convey! Maybe the landlord will at least reimburse you for the paint, but don’t wait—as Nike says, “just do it!” I’m sure that like a lot of retailers many of you feel that you can’t afford to replace carpeting or fixtures or invest in some new lighting, considering the economy. And yes, you do need to watch expenses very closely, but I also feel that you can’t necessarily afford not to change it! If you’ve been thinking for a while now that you need to update, repaint, or replace some things in your store, the odds are that you’re probably way overdue.

More than two-thirds of consumers say they have avoided a place of business based on its external appearance. We’re talking about its presentation from the street. More than 80 percent of consumers admit they have shopped only once at a location and never returned because it did not meet their expectations. A full one-third have not returned to a place because it was perceived as “dirty.” Statistics Source: Morpace Market Research & Consulting, Omnibus Survey

7. What have you been doing the same way forever? What have you always had behind the counter? Why? What kind of shopping bags do you provide? Why? Could they be better. . .different, have a message, be more classy? Go over every step that you’ve taught your people when completing the transaction at your POS terminal. What could be changed and made more efficient? Question everything you do and how it might be done faster or better, or why you do it at all. Why is everything placed around your counter as it is? What could make it better for your customers? Everything you do that involves the customer should be revisited. How can it be better for the customer? How can it be more fun, more pleasant, and more efficient? If it doesn’t benefit the customer, ask yourself how important it is to begin with?

8. Have a long overdue conversation with your staff about what they believe and what they do to make customer service great for your customers. Have this conversation with everyone present so each employee can hear and challenge the answers. Is everyone on the same page about what good or great customer service is? What is your viewpoint vs. your staff’s view of great customer service? Ask for examples of what they’ve done, what they’ve seen and what they’ve heard regarding customer service? Do you keep growing and developing your staff so they don’t drift from tried and true to tired and through? Complacency with regard to customer service is a business killer and indifferent or poor customer service is still the leading reason by far, for customers who leave and never return.

In Conclusion:

Having a retail store can be compared to being an artist. When you work in the same space and environment on a daily basis, you begin to not see it. . . .not really, not as customers see it. It really is a matter of perspective. If you’re a painter, with a 50’ long painting, you’re too close to the painting and you lose the big picture. Your view is highly skewed. In both cases, you can only see the big picture when you stand back and observe the store, or the canvas at a distance. Even then you may not be looking at things honestly and critically. I guarantee you, based on what I see, either retailers are not looking at their stores honestly and critically because they’re too close to the situation, or they have some really poor standards and they are in denial. In a challenging retail business climate, you can certainly make the case for reducing expenses, but scaling back improvement can come at a painful price. If you are oblivious or unwilling to adapt to a changing customer or a more challenging competitive environment, you will pay a heavy price!

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10 Retail Promotional Ideas

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

10 Retail Promotional Ideas

By Rich Gordon a.k.a. RetailRich

Use the Power Of A Handful of Merchants You Can Work With

Print up some cards on plastic or heavy paper featuring your store a handful of other merchants. Call it whatever you want i.e First Timers Card, Thank You Card, Great DealZ. With the logo of each merchant on the card, offer a special discount for the next purchase at each of the merchants on the card. Each merchant draws a line through their logo with a special color pen as the offer is acted on. As a bonus, after the card has been used at all participating merchants, the card can be entered into a drawing for a special prize. By the way, don’t forget to promote you efforts with a banner and handout in each bag. The idea here is your customers are being introduced to a store they may not have been to yet, or possibly generally haven’t shopped. And the other store’s, are hopefully sending you customers that haven’t been to your store before. Just remember, someone has to get the bowl rolling and take the initiative!

Offer a Free Class

Offer a free lesson or class on make-up, scrapbooking, sewing, hair styling, gardening, or a home improvement task or even how to get more effective use out of a product or product line you are selling. The options are limited only by your imagination. When customers get to learn how to get the best use out of your products they’re more likely to buy more and also become more connected to your business.

Offer An Ongoing Deal Based on Temperature (train your customers to follow it)

Do it in recordings for calls on hold. Do it with handouts all summer. Do it on banners and in your window. Do it on your tweets, facebook and your website. Do what you ask?

Promote the fact that on any day when the temperature is above _______(you decide) all merchandise will be ____% off. You can also limit it to a particular type of merchandise such as shorts for apparel stores. Do this with regularity and people will begin to remember and seek you out on those hot days. You can do the same thing in the winter too!

Advertising in School Newspapers

Work on creating a few ads over the summer for the next school year designed to go into the school newspapers in your area. You might even offer a donation to some school fundraiser in return for each sale. Students are customers of tomorrow and if you have products that appeal to them now, promote you and your store to them today.

Ever Consider Offering Business’s Own Really Sharp Looking T-Shirt?

Have any creative friends or do you know an artist? Maybe you’ll need to go to a local junior college and ask the instructor if anyone would be interested in designing a really sharp t-shirt. Maybe you can make a competition out of it.

Once you have a great t-shirt, consider making it a free gift with purchase. You might value the shirt at $20.00-$25.00 and you could offer it with any $50.00 purchase or more. The customer gets a decent shirt for free , that has real value in their eyes (especially if its really sharp artwork or possibly a funny design or slogan). If it’s done well, your customers are advertising your store when they wear the shirt and your avoiding lowering your price or losing as much margin as you might have if you offered a $20-$25.00 discount. It all comes down to a healthy bottom line and a cheaper form of advertising.

Free, After The Sale Service

Consider a FREE offer on after sales service – cleaning or maintenance of the purchased product at your store. You provide additional value without discounting your product and you introduce your store’s service aspects possibly for the first time.

How About Cross Marketing With a Printer?

What if you had a gourmet chocolate store or a women’s accessory shop and you convinced a printer that he should include a coupon for your store (s) right in the middle of the notepads that he sold. I believe the value and popularity of his notepads would go up over time as would the sales in your store!

Offer a Late Night Sale

If your store is in a heavily trafficked area at night or you or near a location with a lot of workers who get off later in the evening, think about a special event that is late at night. The idea here is that you may be introducing your store to a whole new group of customers. If you have the budget, try late night radio ads leading up to the event, which are cheaper time slots. Consider a band or a disk jockey for music on the parking lot, with a search-light as well. . a late night on location radio broadcast make be a good idea as well. It all comes down to the type of store you have and where your store is, but it’s worth considering.

Consider a Mother-in Law or Father-in Law Sale

Print up special gift certificates with a face value worth at least $20-$50 dollars. Promote the time period the coupons are good via all traditional channels you can think of. But offer the coupons to your buyers for anywhere from 10%-25% off. The buyer benefits because the recipient won’t know the coupon was purchased at a discount. The recipient of the Mother-in Law or Father-In Law certificate feels obligated to go into your store and use their certificate. Have a very generous expiration date on the certificate. Those that never are redeemed for one reason or another are money in your pocket. Those certificates that are used may mean some new customers introduced to your store. Just keep in mind these certificates purchased at a discount are out there floating around when it comes to future sales on merchandise.

WIIFMC

What’s In It For My Customers? WIIFMC should be your motto. You should be asking it as a part of almost everything you do. If it doesn’t bring the customer back again, it may not be worth your time and attention. If it doesn’t really benefit and bring back the customer, it probably won’t help your bottom line, your banker, your family or your investors (if any). It really is all bout your customer.

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