This Episode: Surprising Sales Lessons from the Farmers Market
There’s something special about a Saturday morning at the farmers market. The fresh air, the local flavor, the buzz of happy customers, and believe it or not, a masterclass in retail.
In this episode of Real Retail TV, I take you along for a walk through the market to spotlight 3 local vendors who are absolutely crushing it with simple, smart sales tactics.
Are you already doing any of these things? Got a fun success story or an idea you’re trying? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
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Hey, it’s Bob Negen. And this is another episode of Real Retail TV. Today, I’m here in the farmers market of my hometown of Grand Haven, Michigan, and I’m going to talk about three different things that three different people are using that you can apply to your business. So a farmer’s market.
Everybody, of course, knows what a farmer’s market is. But there’s three particular vendors at this farmer’s market that do things differently than most, that make a difference in their sales and make a difference in the customer experience. And I’m going to go through those for you right now so that you can apply them to your store. The first thing I want to talk about is joby, and Joby keeps longer hours than everyone.
The farmer’s market closes at 1:00 and usually about 12:30. Everybody starts packing up. And I understand people get here early, they work hard, they have to leave their farms early, early in the morning. But Joby stays late.
Joby stays till 6:00 sometimes when people get out of work. And I talked to Joby about it and I asked her, I said, do you do a lot of sales between the time when the last vendor leaves and you leave? And her reply was that she does almost as much, sometimes as much after the market closes as she does when the market is open and it’s filled with people the lessen longer hours pay. Second example Farmer John.
Farmer John is a great example of. Sample yourself when I talk to John about that. I mean John is he’s handed out peaches. You walk by, he’s slicing off a piece of peach, he’s giving you a little bit of apple, he’s letting you sample his wares.
And when I talked to him, he said that people who he samples account for about 25% of his business lesson. Yes sample. Yes so third example, third lesson is bundling. You see this farmer, they have baskets and the baskets are $4 each, 3 for 10.
So whenever you buy one thing or two things, they always say you can get a third thing for only $10. And bundling is a tremendous way to increase the average ticket and sell more stuff. So there you are, keep longer hours, you sample yourself, bundle for a bigger average ticket. All lessons from right here in the Grand Haven farmers market.
Your action item. Take this stuff, use it. Put it in action and make more money.
