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Archive for March, 2010

Why People Quit Facebook: They’re Bad Neighbors

Facebook now has over 400 million members and is more popular than Google.  You’d think with all those members people would be happy. But I’m noticing frequently they simply don’t check their own page regularly.

I think Rod Dreber spoke for a lot of people when he said in a blog post last year, “I have no time for Facebook.  If I used it, I would broadcast irrelevant personal news, like the excitement we had late at night here last night, when a varmint invaded our chicken run and tried to make off with one of the hens (epic fail, but not without lots of lost feathers); and I would complain about my massive allergy attack that’s had me bedridden all day, as well as the return of the vertebra problem that’s made my left arm semi-numb. But who cares?”

Life is made up of little details.  Our parents kept up with neighbors by learning the minutia of their lives. Not in the big Nancy Grace sort of way but tiny joys and occassional challenges.

You’re not on Facebook only to see what you can get out of it, you should be on Facebook for what others can get out of it too.

In a disconnected world that demands we pay attention to everything, we have lost the little moments of sharing.  We don’t hold potlucks or fondue parties with our neighbors like the 50′s, but we can devote a few minutes a day to letting them know what you are up to.

Yes it is much easier with an iPhone or other PDA but it is a choice to think of keeping in touch with friends.  Just like it was a choice for your mother to strike up a conversation with the neighbors while she hung her laundry out to dry on the clothesline or your dad to make small talk at the Little League game.  They didn’t have to do it, they chose to stay connected.  That’s what made great neighborhoods – a bit of sharing.

Another reason some quit Facebook is, well let’s face it, our friends don’t see pictures of us meeting the President, or going backstage at the Oscars or doing something really amazing like bungie jumping the Golden Gate bridge; we’re just picking up the kids, or posting a quick video of a thunderstorm or the garden we’ve just planted. We aren’t as a rule sexy, particularly smart or all that special – that’s probably why we’re friends.

Yes its easy to quit and say it takes too much time or no one ever posts much, but move past that. What have you done to make it interesting for your friends to check their Facebook page?

Instead of just reading, comment on a picture or post – something more than: “Great!” or a thumbs up. Post a picture or a link to an interesting item and comment on why you are posting it.Share a one line review of a movie.

Instead of taking yet another quiz or building a farm, work on taking care of your friends and you’ll find you will have a vibrant community that both gives and receives.

7 Tips Any Retailer Can Learn From An Airport Shoe Shine Shop

I had just arrived at the Orlando airport yesterday when I spotted a shoe shine kiosk.  While I waited for my turn, it struck me the lessons shoe shine operators could teach any business:

1) Know who you are and who you aren’t.  Yes,they have customers waiting but that doesn’t mean they have gum ball machines or other irrelevant product.

2) Make it easy for customers to know what you do. Nothing is more frustrating to customers than guessing what a store carries. Nothing is more frustrating to managers than employees who don’t tell customers all the great programs or services they offer.  They shouldn’t have to – it should be obvious.

3) There are no counters, no walls and nothing to interfere with their interaction with their customers.  A shoe shine operator is completely exposed and focused. No shoes to shine = no food to eat. Simple.

4) Be visible in your community.  If shoe shine operators aren’t busy, they are engaging busy professionals by saying, “Want to look your best?” No 20% discounts and no “sales” – just thinking what their customers ultimately value and reminding them.

5) Engage your customers. There’s most always a banter from the person shining your shoes.  They know the more they connect, the higher the tip and more importantly, the sooner their customer will come back. Contrast that to the ice queens you meet in many businesses whether at the doctor’s office, the Macys or local hardware store where you hope you’ll never run into them again.

6) Hustle and focus. They never want someone to feel the wait is too long so they move quickly to do a great job and keep everyone happy.  Focusing only on the customer’s experience often means you need to give up going on break, a personal call, anything that will distract from the person standing in front of you – after all, they’re the ones that pay your salary.

7) Thank every one. Whether they are tipped well or not at all, shoe shine operators always thank – its their livelihood.

Oh and if you think I’m just talking about men who shine shoes, a woman I know has been at the Men’s Shoe Department nearly 20 years at Nordstroms in South Coast Plaza, CA after giving up her corporate gig. By using her sales abilities she makes more money, has less stress and more of a feeling of accomplishment when she goes home than she ever did as a financial executive.

A lesson about doing a great job you can be proud of that we can all use.

Family Run Small Businesses Don’t Have To Close

You can’t open a newspaper, turn on the TV, or go online without seeing a story of a venerable business calling it quits. Whether it’s the hardware store outside of Denver Colorado http://www.denverpost.com/economy/ci_14321403 or the gift store in Ann Arbor Michigan http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/the-end-of-an-era—the-john-leidy-shop-closes-after-58-years-in-business/. 

Newspapers love to do these types of stories about family businesses, that prided themselves on longevity, have chosen to close their doors.

That is foolish.

Frequently cited reasons are (in no particular order,) the economy, shoppers trading down, trading area not as vibrant as it once was, big boxes, and online shoppers.

Are you looking at the landscape for the luxury consumer and it doesn’t look like it did even five years ago? Have you dumbed down your offerings to try to meet a price point at the expense of more profitable items? Are customers just not coming in anymore?  There’s hope, but you have to work at it.

If your store has been around for generations, you have an abundance of goodwill in your community. That can be leveraged.

As an example, if you are a jewelry store, all those rings, watches and graduation gifts count for a lot, yet most jewelry stores are a time machine backward. Here’s what I mean.

When I go to jewelry store in 2010 it pretty much looks the way they did when I first visited them in the 1960s. Jewelry stores aren’t known for carrying a big retail footprint so why do jewelers want to segment every customer to one or two display cases?

For example, why am I still asked the “Pinpoint” approach? You know, “Can help you find something?” Then taken to the one display case of offerings? I may only see 10% of their offerings because their salesclerk has decided it was most efficient for me to look at what I came in for, rather than exploring the whole store. That’s a huge lost opportunity. You don’t know who I may need to buy something for some day.

The best retailers display multiple items together so customers are intrigued to stop, consider and browse. That means changing the way you display things so more of your store is shown in more places. Yes, you’ll have to hear employees say, “They keep moving things on me.” To them I say, “Deal with it if you want a job.”

The other approach I call the “Museum.” That’s where the employee says, “Look around and let me know if you’d like to see anything.” That expects customers to do all the work. Guess what, they won’t and will leave.

With Facebook and all the other social media sites, it is clear customers are responding to friends and trusting their advice. If you’re still expecting customers to come to the mount and have you efficiently explain a setting, you’re missing it. That means changing the way you approach selling your fine jewelry.

Both of those approaches are conducted behind large glass counters where the employee is literally the keeper of the keys. I call it storming the castle. Major banks, hotels and retailers have cut their counters in half, now more like desks than anything. The days of rows of cases that isolate are over. That means changing the way you setup your store.

Along with that is the approach many boutique retailers are using to sell from the side, rather than in front of the customer. It would mean unlocking a case and coming around the counter to build trust with the customer. Not hard in theory to do but try it, it your employees will fight the change.

To compete in 2010 you’ve got to ask the hard questions and then find the answers. Generations of Americans have owned their own jewelry, hardware, and gift stores and generations to come will as well. But it’s not going to get easier – you can’t blame someone else for you not being successful. You have to question. You have to think. And yes you have to be willing to risk trying new things.

As your competitors shutter their doors and online sites proliferate, it doesn’t have to be you that goes out of business.

It does if you’re not willing to change. And maybe that’s what this article is really all about: the willingness to change, to risk; to realize we’re not going back to the go-go 80s the flamboyant 90s or the home-equity fueled 2000′s. Know whatever future we have in retail will be determined by people like you who look at the way they’ve always done business and say, “how about if we…?”  They don’t take the easy way out, they don’t leave their community hanging, and they don’t find the media to announce, “We’re outta here,” but rather, “We’re here to stay.”

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Best-selling author and speaker Bob Phibbs has helped thousands of independent businesses compete and has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Entrepreneur magazine. His new book, The Retail Doctor’s Guide to Growing Your Business (Wiley & Sons) has received advance praise from both Inc. magazine and USA Today and can be ordered at http://www.retaildoc.com/guide.

©Bob Phibbs 2010

Motivation: Stop Peeing In Your Own Hat

My buddy Steve Strauss at USA Today gave seven tips for how to create a viral video on the American Express OPEN forum.  You can read his full post here.  I took it as a challenge – how far would I go to get my point across?  Could I make a video that would go viral and grow my exposure on the ‘net, be a bit shocking and controversial but be true to my brand? I had to find out.

Taking the challenge, I made the video about this post which you can watch here.  If you’ve seen the video, read on, if not, please watch it.

You have a problem with the city, or a customer takes advantage of you or a couple of your employees quit with no warning. It happens.  For most of us, we brush ourselves off and move on. But what if you can’t? What if you let those situations stack up inside of you?  That’s what I’m talking about today; making yourself miserable.  I call it, peeing in your own hat. What does it sound like?

  • “They’re all on the Internet. They get all the information from me and then go buy from someone else.”
  • “Local government doesn’t do enough for small business to attract customers to my shop.”
  • “Why should I spend a lot of time training employees, they’ll just leave in a couple of months anyway?”
  • “If it weren’t for bad luck I wouldn’t have any luck at all.”
  • “Customers are all idiots.”

When I use the verb “peeing” it metaphorically references a bodily function of getting rid of the waste, the negative, the worthless. Yes we all do it to some degree, what I’m talking about is what happens when you hold on and dwell on it, like some type of grudge collector.

A buddy of mine said he couldn’t get past the idea or the visual and asked, “Why would you want to pee in your own hat to begin with?” That common sense question is obvious to outsiders but may not be so clear to the person doing it.

That waste product, that negative energy starts to define who you are. It becomes a buffer against the real world that includes ups and downs, struggles and triumphs; it becomes a loser’s limp to allow yourself not to change.

At some level it has to make them feel better but it makes for a downward cycle of low self-esteem (often masked with cynicism,) high turnover of employees, low profits for the business, and a miserable shopping experience for customers.

It provides comfort that its not your fault something is wrong. But it also leads you to be in denial about how others look at you.

We smell it on you. And we avoid you.

In a broader sense I could be talking about your partner, your child, your parents, any number of things where it is, “us against the world,” we are a victim.  Even your employees.

A blog post I wrote about mindset was picked up by retail-sucks.com and I received over fifty responses about how I was wrong and retail is terrible, they can’t change and they won’t change. Check out their site to see all the angry stories about how awful their life is. It gives a false illusion of safety.

No employer would want anyone that was so focused on what was bad about their job. When you’re 18 to 25 and have all the natural hope and promise of youth reduced to anger, suspicion and feeling of being “done in by the man,” it can make you very callous; I know, I’ve fallen into it at times myself.

And whether you are a business owner, manager or employee, because misery loves company, you tend to seek out other people who feel the same way. The danger is that you accept this hive mentality of being a victim, instead of breaking through to be proactive and change those circumstances.

Want to get over peeing in your own hat? Tell others about this occurrence, watch the video and ask them to call you on it.

In that way, you can let any negative energy dissipate instead of ferment and move on to find solutions rather than reveling in waste.

What are some examples you have seen of someone, metaphorically speaking, peeing in their own hat?

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