Hey. It’s Bob. And, for the next two weeks, you are going to get clips from a Retail Success Summit titled ways to wow them. So for the next two weeks, you’re gonna several ways to wow your customers.
How you give them that kind of experience that makes them take notice, become more loyal, and spend more money. So but before we get to those clips, I want to invite you to our summer summit kickoff. It’s happening on June twelfth from twelve to three. There’s going to be, we’re gonna introduce some of our summit speakers.
We’re going to bring on some alumni from, previous summits. There’s gonna be prizes. There’s gonna be fun. There’s gonna be all the cool stuff we do here for you with you at whiz bang training.
So I hope that you’ll put that on your calendar.
I hope you’re gonna stay tuned the next two weeks because you’re gonna learn some great ways to wow And we’re gonna be talking right now about ways to wow them.
So this is the the whole idea of, really building a great customer experience. Now one of the metrics that we like to look at as retailers is dollars per square foot. It’s a measurement of efficiency. It’s a measurement of effectiveness.
But I’m gonna ask you to think about something a little different this time, and that is experience per square foot.
So how much amazing experience can you pack into the square footage in your store?
And this goes back to this whole idea of doing what your competition, particularly the big brands, the people who are trying to play the price game, this goes back to that. This whole idea of you doing the things that they won’t or can’t do, And this is these are examples of that.
Yeah. Their their competitive advantages are things like convenience and price and, you know, they carry twenty seven million styles of blue socks or whatever. You know, they have this vast assortment that they can carry.
You guys have the advantage when it comes to creating a really amazing experience. So really packing in that experience per square foot is a is a big thing. So we like to talk about the customer experience, using this model of the customer experience pyramid.
Do you wanna say anything about that?
Not yet.
But pretty soon.
Okay. Don’t worry. Well, I got something to say.
That’s true enough. That’s true enough. Okay. So we’ve got this great customer peer pyramid experience, philosophy, policy, staff store, and wow.
We’re gonna be spending quite a bit of time on wow today, but we really wanna start by talking about the bottom because you have to start at the bottom. It’s the foundational part of your customer experience, and that is really your philosophy. And, we’ve talked a lot about this this morning. We’ve spent, you know, honestly a huge chunk of the morning both in Bob’s keynotes and in the the strategic advantages program talking about this philosophies, these philosophies, these underlying components that really make a huge difference in your own mental state and also what your customers experience.
So one of the first philosophies is So, many of you have heard me talk about the rule of reciprocity, and the rule of reciprocity simply says givers get.
And if you’re not familiar with the rule of reciprocity, let me give you an example of the rule of reciprocity at work. So let’s just say Gee. No. Not you.
I wanna pick out a a male. So Lewis and I are walking towards a set of double doors here in the Midwest where it’s cold. You know, if you go to Las Vegas, there’s a door that goes from the outside to the inside because they don’t have that cold dynamic. But so Louis and I are walking towards a set of double doors, and I’ve never met Louis before.
But I’m a polite guy, and we’re in the same general area. So I step in front of Lewis, I open the door for Lewis, and Lewis walks through. What does Lewis do? Anybody?
He opens the second door for me. It would be a little awkward if Lewis sat there and waited for me to open the second door, wouldn’t it? Right? You see, I did something nice for Lewis.
Lewis feels the need to reciprocate, the need to give back.
And this is what the rule of reciprocity is. Social anthropologists contend that we as humans are the only species that proactively build webs of indebtedness.
And that’s what the rule of reciprocity is. And this is one of our competitive advantages is understanding that we give.
If you want to get your prospects attention, give them something.
If you want to get get your customers to be more loyal, give them. If you want your employees to give your team members to give your customers the kind of service that they deserve when they’re in your store? What can you give them? So the whole deal is ask, what would my customer want? Which is goes to the next slide, which is WWMCW, the acronym for what would my customer want.
And this is both a philosophy and a strategy.
And in this room, I’m asking you to all really, really consider taking on that as your mantra. What would my customer want? You wanna be the store of choice in the world of infinite options? You want to be mighty on Main Street.
You can’t play by the same rules as everyone else. You have to be more like Bob and Susan and Steve in Yo Yo Universe and Maureen and what she did with her, you know, fashion rewind and what Russ did. We have to be different. We have to be more human.
Yeah. You you all have these philosophies right now.
Whether you know it or not, whether they are expressed or not, whether you have, identified them, they’re just part they’re how you think.
I think my customers are out to get me. That’s a philosophy. Not a good one, but it’s a philosophy. Right? It’s a it’s a way of thinking.
So one of the things you want to do initially is really start to root out what are the philosophies that I have in my business.
We just gave you two that we think are really great ways of thinking, but know that there are other things that are going on in your business.
And this goes back too to, you know, something that, you know, when I was telling when I was talking about stories.
Yeah.
The stories in your head. You know, the stories are, you know, my customers only only want the lowest price, or my customers are always trying to gain the system.
Yep.
Or I can’t find good people. So it really comes back to what are the stories. You know, it’s really mindset, skill set, and structure. What stories are you asking yourself, and how do those stories reflect in the way that you’re doing business, in your philosophies?
So Exactly.
So that’s the bottom level. That’s the foundational level when you start to think about your customer service.
The second level is your policies and your policies are really become a really direct reflection of those underlying philosophies. Right? Yep, I see heads nodding. Right? So if your philosophy is givers get, you know, you you’re you’re not holding tight to every single penny of every transaction.
You’re not saying no to people when they’re, you know, wanting to you to participate in a community event. You know, all of these things are, you know, your your WWMCW is your philosophy. You’re open when your customers want you to be open to shop. So all these different philosophies show up in your policies.
And I think that Maureen’s story this morning was a perfect story about how somebody changed a philosophy, and it really became WOWMCW, which changed to her return policy, which she amplified by that program, and that, you know, one thing that I didn’t share this morning, first time I ever did it, but is that she always doubles her sales on that week.
So it’s strategic also. Right? So she’s not she’s she’s not just giving away money, she’s doubling her sales. She does it the week before she typically goes on on clearance, so she’s doubling her sales. She’s not hurting her margins, and her customers love it. The community loves it. All of these things make sense financially.
You know, on whiz bang retailers, if you’re not a member of our Facebook group, I’d encourage you to join. There’s regularly, there’s threads where somebody is complaining about a customer having an unreasonable request.
And then half the group chimes in, oh, yeah. My customers hate me. There’s always somebody try trying to take advantage of me. But recognize this, that every time you don’t take care of your customers, Yes. You may win the transaction, but you lose the relationship.
And when you lose the relationship, you lose the life time value. So you could say, yep. I did a good job. Nobody’s taken advantage of me anymore, but you lose that customer. I’m looking at all of you in the pet industry. Oh my goodness. What a lifetime value.
Huge.
If somebody’s got three Great Danes, you know, they’re buying dog food.
Right? Consumables.
So, here’s the quote. And if you’re writing taking notes, please write this down. Please please imprint this in your brain. Never never let an incident create a customer unfriendly policy that punishes the many for the bad behavior of the few.
It’s human nature. Oh my gosh. That person wore those shoes six times. He doesn’t like it.
He just really wore those shoes for a special occasion.
I’m not gonna let anybody do that to me again. And then all of a sudden, you lose that customer. So we’re always looking at all of these in terms of relationships and the long arc of the relationships and the strategic value and the lifetime value of the relationships.
Absolutely. So the action item here is really take a look at your policies and ask yourself, are they reflection of the philosophies that I want to put out into the world?
Or maybe have some of this fear crept in? Has some of this lack of confidence crept in? And is that what I’m showing to the world in my policies?
So let’s keep coming back to this idea of stories and always look at the stories that are playing in your head. Always look at your beliefs. Always question them. That’s the way that you grow.
So So isn’t somebody gonna take advantage of you if you have a return policy like Maureen’s where she said bring anything back?
You know what? For sure. She said flat out, she got stuff back on her buyback that she never has sold. Did not come from her store. She bought it back anyway.
Who cares?
So isn’t somebody gonna take advantage of me?
Of course.
I don’t I don’t know why she put my picture on this slot.
Because it’s you’re you’re the one that always like But a car say, well, am I right?
I mean, when you have the generous spirit, somebody’s gonna take advantage of you. But, again, it’s okay because we’re looking at the lifetime value of the relationship.
We’re looking at the spirit that we put ourselves out with. You know, corporate, how do you wanna be the store of choice? How do you wanna be mighty on Main Street?
Corporate retail has to behave differently. They don’t have to, but they do. This is your opportunity to play a different game.
Yeah. Like, you know, there’s a cute little store in the town where I live. Really, really cute little store. And, when I buy something, at the end, there’s this big long thing on the receipt that tells me how many things I can’t do with the merchandise that I just bought.
You can’t return it. You can’t exchange it. Only store on and on and on. And then the person makes a point of, like, reading it off to me.
This is true.
So so was it Like, how not to wow your customer.
So is it Dan? Is that right, sir? Was it Dan or Dan? So Dan came up to me. Now this is a great example, and this is my new pet peeve in policies.
So if if you believe anything that I say, believe me when I tell you this. Dan came up to me, at the break and said, Bob, we’re having a conversation.
What do you think about people charging three percent for using a credit card?
Wow. Well, I’m not.
Wow. Does it what would my customer look at I see heads bowing.
Right now, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, if you are charging people to use credit cards, stop that right now.
I’m serious. There’s four restaurants in Grand Haven that we do not go to. We never complained.
That’s the thing.
We just go away.
They’ll just go away. Eventually, they’re gonna just go away. Or they they leave your they leave your store upset, angry, annoyed. It’s the last thing. It’s the very last thing that happens.
Right?
You see that Build it into your pricing.
You know?
Yeah. People Build it into your pricing. They don’t complain. They just go away.
You know, I walked up to a taco shop that I wanted to try. There’s a big sign. I walked away. They could’ve had the best tacos in town. I don’t know. I’m never gonna know because I’m never going back. So that right there, for some of you, might be one of the most valuable things you get out of this conference because you’re losing customers in their lifetime value.
Yeah. You know, we we’ve had people all the time say, oh, but you wait. But, you know, it costs more when when they pay with a credit card. I’m like, I know.
Right.
Yeah. Yeah. But yeah.
I’m like We hope that some of you are gonna spend money with us here at the Retail Success Summit.
Not charging me.
Know you’re going to pay with credit cards. We take credit cards.
Right.
Gladly, all of them.
Like, what are you gonna start doing? Putting a line item? Like, you were here for fifteen minutes.
You’ve used fifteen cents of electricity.
You were here for an hour.
You cost more electricity.
Prices.
Make your customers happy.
Let your customers pay the way that they wanna pay. Yeah. There you go. Okay. Absolutely. Okay. There’s my rant.
I’m sorry.
I was gonna rant.
We didn’t even plan that, but there you go. Okay. So, the next step up in the pyramid is your staff, and they are the direct connection with your customer. Right? They are standing face to face, bringing the money in the cash register or not.
So they are really the direct reflection of your customer service. They’re the ones that have to implement your policies. They’re the ones that are going to reflect back the philosophies that they get from you, that they hear from you, whether they’re explicit or whether they just get the gist by what you’re saying about your customers. Right? They’re gonna be they’re gonna reflect back how you feel about them.
And I think that is important too because we’re gonna talk about that later on this afternoon, and this thread is being woven through this this whole conference.
But, if you don’t have great people, you’re not gonna be able to have a great business. It just is that, you know, if you don’t give them the skills, they’re not going to be great. They’re not gonna help you build the kind of business that you deserve. And in turn, you’re not gonna have the kind of life that you deserve because they’re always gonna be pestering you.
You know? They’re gonna ask you that same question for the four hundredth time. You’re gonna be putting out fires all of the time. And we’re gonna talk a lot about this idea of training.
And I mentioned the the store in Grand Haven earlier.
You know? The woman cared. The owner cared.
She didn’t care enough or she didn’t know enough have the or she didn’t have the skills to train them to do the what they needed to do.
So Exactly. So to build this culture, this great culture of service, your goal needs to be a team of superstars.
Okay? Not one superstar.
Three kind of middle in employees and a couple that are like really horrible and need to get fired. Right?
Well, let me ask you a question.
Laughing because some of you have taken quite a few minutes.
Right? So so let me ask a question. How many of you have somebody that needs to go on your team right now?
Alright. Good. Good. So this is this is this is great. This is great.
So, Bill Atkins, who came here for many, many years with his brother Carl, there was a joke at Carl’s company that whenever they would come to Grand Rapids from New Jersey, somebody would always lose their job And when they got back.
Now so but now this this is a serious thing. So all of you, raise your hand again. Raise it high. Okay? Now keep it there for a second because I want you to feel this.
Right? I want you to feel this. I want you to sit in this for oh, did I want you to sit in this for the rest of this two days because then when you go home, there’s gonna be a moment while you’re sitting there and you’re gonna go, okay. That’s right. And then you’re gonna go back and do what you need to do to build the kind of team you need to have. Right?
So we there’s all again, what are the stories? This all the stories are, I don’t feel like hiring somebody again, dah dah dah dah dah.
They’re holding me hostage. They’re holding me. One that knows how to you fill in the blank here. Right?
So good. So I I think there’s about twenty people losing their jobs here in the next week.
Congratulations to all of you. Well, I I I wanna say one more thing here real quickly.
So, one of my favorite books is this very old timey book called The Dynamic Rules of Prosperity by Catherine Ponder. And, I mean, it’s a it’s an old timey woo woo self development book. But one of the dynamic laws of Old timey. That’s Old timey.
I’m kind of an old timey guy.
But one of the the dynamic rules of prosperity is the vacuum law of prosperity. Prosperity. Yeah. Meaning something good can’t come in until something until there is space for it.
And if you’re if you’ve got ten lines on your schedule and they’re all filled, there’s never going to be the vacuum that will allow you to put that next great person on it. Right? So the vacuum law of prosperity when it comes to writing your schedule is if somebody doesn’t believe belong on your schedule, get them off your schedule, create that vacuum, and when that person’s gone, all of a sudden, what are you gonna do? You’re gonna go find that next great person.
So Exactly.
This is important, guys. Like, not just a few superstars, not just one. You need everybody on your team to be fantastic.
Because sure as shooting, the next big customer Speaking of old timing.
Sure as shooting. Sure as shooting.
Sorry.
You know, the the next great customer, potential brand new awesome lifetime value customer walks into your store, who do they get?
They get the really lousy employee that you should have fired two months ago, And then you lose that lifetime value, and that person didn’t get a great experience in your store.
So this is your this is your goal, a team full of superstars. Now you gotta start with great raw material. You wanna hire great people, and then you have to train them.
And one of the biggest things that you one of the biggest mind shifts, maybe for you, but almost certainly for people on your team, is this idea about selling, and selling is bad or selling is tricky or selling is sleazy somehow.
That old, you know, adage of the used car salesman selling kind of feeling.
No. Great selling is great customer service.
So this is absolutely the one of the things you need to teach them is how to get every single person to the perfect purchase. This is how you deliver great experience in your store. This is when you when the engagement o meter is all the way over in the bright green it’s when people are getting this experience.
It really you know, I mean, just think about your own experience as a shopper. When you go into a store and you’re engaged correctly, the probability that you buy more bet buy better hot quality goods, leave the store happy, tell your friends about it, goes way, way, way up. Yet so many people aren’t engaging in that sales training. So as Susan can tell you, when she came to work at the Mackinac kite company, Steve and I were not very good merchants, were we, dear?
You had some really good parts that you there are things you did really well.
There were things that we did really, really well. And you know, one of the things that we did really, really well is we did we’re really, really good at customer focused selling. That’s what allowed us to stay in business. It was the Lacy Book of Sailing technique.
Sales technique.
Yes.
Exactly. How many of you have experienced yourself, not in your own store, but have experienced, when you’ve gone into a store and have had a perfect purchase? Let me see see your hands. So have you had this experience before? I hope so. Right? How many of you think that fifty percent of the time you go shop at other stores, you get a perfect purchase experience?
Fifty percent, anybody?
Seventy five?
Nobody. Yeah.
It’s How about how about twenty five percent of the time?
You think twenty five how many? Twenty five percent of the time you get a good how about ten percent of the time?
Okay. Most people are saying ten percent.
You guys Oh, think about that.
You guys, all you have to do is this, and you’re better than ninety percent of the competition.
That’s right, though.
True. This is true.
So you, you know, so what what what are we talking about here? As I talked about in the morning. So being so good they can’t ignore you is being fundamentally strong. It’s building out your training programs. You know, the scenes we’ve got what do you have, Andy? Forty hours of training on the Retail Sales Academy plus?
You said so forty hours. I mean, that’s focus on training. That is the kind of focus. This is why we want to, you know, to so being fundamentally strong, doing that work, but then doing what the big brands can’t or won’t do. An online brand can’t do that.
Your big brand of brick and mortar won’t do that.
This is a competition. You know? There’s a book called the Blue Ocean Strategy, and a blue ocean is where nobody can compete with you. Red oceans are where the blood is in the water, and everybody is trying to beat each other up on price. Blue ocean is where you are so good they can’t ignore you.
So Yeah.
Blue ocean, ninety percent of the people won’t teach this.
It’s not hard. There are six steps.
It it is absolutely critical. This is the crux of the customer experience with your staff right here. It’s these six steps.
It’s super it’s super mechanical.
Everybody can do it. Anybody can do it.
Introverts can do it. Extroverts can do it.
You know, you can teach anybody to do this, and this is how you deliver great experience in your store.
Real quickly, we don’t need to go through the six steps to the perfect purchase, but I do wanna reflect on something that you just said. We hired a kid in Grand Haven who was six. He’s a a incredibly successful, executive in Chicago right now. But when we hired him, his name was Nick. He be became one of our yo yo pros. He took a year off of college to become a yo yo pro. And, Susan was like, I don’t think he’s gonna be any good.
Yeah. We hired him. He was, like, sixteen years old.
And, you know, he’s just kinda shy. He’s a little awkward. He’s kinda nerdy. Most of our great salespeople were, you know, big, get bold, and talk to people, and throw stuff around, and he wasn’t that way.
But I’ll tell you what, with some training, he was we used to call those people silent but deadly. How many of you have some silent but deadly salespeople? Right? They don’t they’re not they’re not there’s not a ton of, personality on the floor.
But when you look at the sales statistics at the end of the week, you go, oh my goodness. This person’s bringing the cash into the register.
Because they do this.
They did because they understand.
They have this they have a great process and you can teach it. And this is how you deliver great customer experience.
We can help you with the Retail Sales Academy where Bob can teach your people the perfect purchase and we’ll talk more about that later on. But, so listen to this. This is I put this in here because I really love what Sharon said about this. She says, I use the Retail Sales Academy to train all our retail staff. It changes the way they perceive selling.
It’s huge.
If they don’t think that selling is a good thing we’ve been talking about beliefs and mindset so often today.
If you can’t change that mindset, you’re you’re not gonna get them to do those six steps and deliver that amazing customer experience.
So that’s what we’re trying to do.