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How To Deal With A Salesperson like Elinor Burkett

Did you catch the Oscars Sunday night? On what was a particularly well crafted evening of entertainment with a good mix of humor, tears and celebration came the truck driver persona of Elinor Burkett a la Kanye West at last year’s MTV awards.

It wasn’t her moment but she shoved her way onto the stage, interrupting and speaking over director Roger Williams while accepting his award for directing  “Music by Prudence.”  Rambling and incoherent she was determined to make herself known. She did, in a bad way.

Do you have an Elinor on your sales team?  You know, the one who screams, “That was my sale!” The one who makes everyone miserable.  The one who has to say to the salesperson while the customer is at the register, “I greeted them,” or “Oh you came back after you talked to your husband.”  They have to put the other person in their place like Ms. Burkett attempted to do to Mr. Williams.

The problem is for Ms. Burkett, the whole world was watching.  The problem for you is your whole store is watching. It is a big turnoff to any customer in earshot but especially the customer enduring the battle.  Nothing screams, “WE WORK ON COMMISSION!!” more than that behavior.

If you don’t have a commission system, bonus program or other incentive you never have to deal with this – too bad for you because no one is trying to be a superstar, make more money or move product.  You probably are kidding yourself they are great at “customer service.”

If you have an “ups” systems, which I recommend where each person gets one “up” to greet a customer and then moves to the bottom of the order whether they sell that customer or not, create some rules:

  • Once the customer walks out, you do not get credit for the sale.
  • Close ‘em or lose ‘em – no business cards given to customers to “ask for me.”
  • Never cut in on a sale unless the other person allows it privately first.
  • Never mention whose sale it is or commissions in front of a customer or both of you lose credit.

Final thought: sometimes customers don’t want the original salesperson, they are giving your business a second chance so it is usually better to allow them to decide whether to speak to someone new or the original.

Set the ground rules ahead of time and you’ll reduce the chances of having an Elinor Burkett barrel their way into a sale, ruining your customers’ experience, and giving customers something bad to remember you by. Or worse, telling their friends on Facebook or posting a video on YouTube.

For more tips how to manage a sales team in my new book, The Retail Doctor’s Guide to Growing Your Sales: How to Diagnose, Treat and Cure.

We Mean Business High On Tears – Not Results

There was a show on A & E last year that is still on the web, We Mean Business.  I should’ve realized the key word was mean.  Since I received contact from a guy who just saw it, I thought I’d share my thoughts about the show.

The gist is that Bill Rancic, winner of The Apprentice and a “tech guru” and “designer” have 48 hours to transform the attitude and the operations of a small independent business.  And they are all about the attitude – their own.

A & E's new show

A & E's Newest

From the moment they sweep into the shop everything is terrible and they have come from the mount to save the poor wayward fools at, in this case Berry Elegance.  The designer has to be the most annoying person ever seen on a business program.

Don’t take my word for it, look at their promos; which were worse!

I’ve done business makeovers for nearly twenty years, including for the Los Angeles Times.  They are never fun or easy but one thing I learned early on was that you don’t belittle people – especially in front of their employees.  Not here, that must be part of the “fun” of having a reality show purporting to show people how to manage their business.

What interests me about this show as well as Bravo’s, Tabatha’s Salon Takeover is that the “experts” come in, denigrate the shop, fill it with new fixtures and (since We Mean Business is sponsored by Dell – lots of new computers) they go on their way because they said that was what was truly needed.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am a big believer in sprucing up a shop. For Berry Elegance, it looks like they copied Godiva’s and it sure did look great!  Many of the ideas had merit including the use of color – if you could get past the condescension.

I think what will further distance viewers is to realize they don’t have the kind of money to pour into their business for new fixtures, signage, plasma screens, registers and computers.  And really, who needs to scan a barcode for a one-off shop that has very limited skus?  We’re talking a shop for chocolate dipped strawberries here.

They could have counseled her that a 5% online discount is worthless on a premium product. Instead of showing who’s eating them – how about trying to sell them with descriptive text?

And if you are going to have a blog Berry Elegance - especially if you are going to be on national television – update it for gosh sakes!  A & E visited them in June, the last post was March 13 – didn’t the “technology guru” think to look at their website at least once?

These reality show makeovers would lead small business owners to conclude the magic bullet is in the physical attributes of the store.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.

If you watch the follow-up clip on A & E’s site, you see how Amy, the co-owner of Berry Elegance is in just as much trouble as before but in a much nicer space.  In fact the employees and her co-owner Todd Jones have left Ms. Stipa to run the shop on her own.

Those great embroidered white chef’s aprons given as a parting gift from Bill and the gang? (Spot on Bill by the way!) Nowhere in sight.  She did hire a PR person to get in front of celebrities which got a large order – but at what expense?

The clip shows her ringing up a $6.50 sale.  Selling is a big problem for this owner which was ridiculed but largely unaddressed. My Five Parts To a Successful Sale retail sales training DVDs could help http://retaildoc.com/products/rxwhatyouget.htm .

Change takes time; meaningful follow-ups are what are needed whenever a business makeover is completed.

There are pitfalls to any business whether it is new, old, successful or struggling.  What you have to remember about reality shows is they are designed to make it look easy and to hype the tears.

To help you get real results right now, you can find a few of my ideas how to market your business at http://retaildoc.com/articles/market-yourself-article.htm.

And if you are looking for a host of a reality show based on results and not hype, give me a call; the Retail Doctor makes house calls.

Mystery Shopping: Now Is The Time

five_guysxDid you catch the coverage of President Obama’s burger run to Five Guys in Washington a month or so ago?  USA Today did a great profile on the franchise here.

One of the big reasons Five Guys is wildly successful?  “To ensure quality control, Five Guys sends secret shoppers twice a week to all locations. The brothers also are on the road constantly visiting the restaurants.”  Five Guys knows you need to inspect what you expect.

High standards each and every day ensure the right employees do the right things. Training new employees to 100% and then making them work for managers who don’t run the shifts up to high standards is spinning your company’s wheels and lowering the brand perception in customers’ eyes. That means it destroys profits. There’s only one way to avoid that: an ongoing program of mystery shops.

The number one thing business owners tell me is, “I just need more customers.”  Wrong, you need them to return. You can’t attract your whole neighborhood to try you, deliver lousy results and expect just getting “more bodies in the door” will work.  You can burn through a neighborhood with bad word-of-mouth and, without mystery shoppers, never know it.

Five Guys franchise with 436 locations sees the value in nearly 50,000 shops in a year, shouldn’t you? Oh right, the money.

You might not blink at spending $500 per month in advertising, but balk at spending a fraction of that on measuring customers’ experience in your store.  That’s just plain dumb.  The profit comes from the people wanting to return, not the discount promotions you run to entice new shoppers.

And please, get out of the idea that mystery shops are a way to spy on employees for compliance.  That’s what they’ll think if you don’t present it correctly.  It’s also what many lesser services use as their logo. If you want to fire someone, you don’t need a mystery shop to prove it.

Here’s the thing, if you aren’t servicing your customers the way they believe you should, you open the door to competitors eager to take your business.  It’s not what your regulars tell you, its what the new customers tell you that matters most.

Benefits of mystery shops:images-2

  • Monitored and measured service performance
  • Improves customer retention
  • Makes employees aware of what is important in serving customers
  • Monitors facility conditions
  • Ensures product/service delivery quality.
  • Supports promotional programs
  • Allows for competitive analyses between locations
  • Identifies training needs and sales opportunities
  • Ensures positive customer relationships on the front line.
  • Enforces employee integrity and knowledge.
  • Supports hustle by employees to meet customers. See previous post.

But not all mystery shopping companies are the same. Far from it!  One client of mine told me how he found the shoppers had never even BEEN to his store. Another said she’d tried it but it “didn’t work.”  When I looked at her survey it came screaming off the page why it wasn’t successful because every question was subjective. “Did you feel valued as a guest?” “Did they attempt to meet your needs?” “Did you feel welcomed?” Shoot me.

What would feedback have looked like to the employee who got a low score on her shop? “Gee Sally, the customer didn’t feel valued as a guest. Try harder.”  Reminds me of the old days in chorus when the conductor yelled at us to “sing in tune.” If we knew how to do that, we would have done it.

Questions on a mystery shop need to be black and white. The server either did or didn’t say, “Good morning, good afternoon or good evening.”  ”Did the salesman describe a product using features  (it has) with the benefits (to the customer.)”  In addition, you need a narrative so compelling you can actually see the transaction in your store.

I work with clients to get their mystery shopper surveys just right and actionable. One client with 14 locations is now tops in her franchise; another’s average check continues to rise. Is it a mystery? Nope, a mystery shop.

To succeed in a recession, as competitors cry the blues and leave your market, you need to consistently provide clear expectations and demanding high standards of employees.  After all, your customers deserve, and pay for those.a0063-000060a

Cutting another shift or saving ten cents on freight is like a poor marksman looking at the edge of the target.  The real money is on the bull’s eye of selling the customer.

Learn more about the Retail Doctor’s mystery shopping secret weapon by contacting him.

From The Retail Doctor’s Guide To Growing Your Business to be published by Wiley & Sons mid-2010
© Bob Phibbs 2009

Family Business Manifesto: Why They Aren't Down On The Farm

Recently, I had a chance encounter with a person involved with the Virginia Cooperative Extension.  Some facts I learned shocked me but point up both the opportunity and what’s wrong with most family businesses today – not just Virginia farmers – and why the next generation wants no part of them.

farm_tractorThe Census of Agriculture is conducted by the National Agriculture Statistics Service of the USDA every 5 years and is where I got these figures.  As Joe Friday would say on Dragnet, “just the facts ma’am:”

*63% of VA farms are not profitable. There are a total of 47,000 farms in VA in 2007-farm operators reporting a net loss: 29,616.

*95% of all farms in VA gross less than $250,000 in sales which is the volume necessary to support a “farming family of four above the poverty line.”

*86% of farms gross less than $40,000, the level of sales commonly described as “small farms.”

* Most farms are very small and getting smaller. About three-quarters of the farms in VA in 2007 are less than the average size (171 acres…down from 181 in 2002)

From another USDA publication we find, “Operators of new farms were more likely to be engaged in occupations other than farming and to derive income from non-farm sources.”

From the comments of attendees after my presentations in the last several years and from news stories,  it appears a lot of business owners are in the same boat as Virginia farmers.  Many are small and getting smaller, unable to make a profit and unable to support a family so owners take on other jobs to support their family business.

Of course kids don’t want to pick up a family business making $40,000 a year! Would you? They are looking for prosperity, for profits, for the good life – not a job pulling in less than a Starbucks manager.

The classic way of building wealth has been to find a need ahead of time and then fill it – that is innovation. Think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs creating the personal computer industry. Look at Jeff Bezos at Amazon seeing the future of Internet retailing or eBay’s Pierre Omidyar’s prescient view of customers trading online. But the race to build a better mousetrap has stagnated with the recession.

Entrepreneurs around the world are trying to decide what’s the next “big thing” because nothing on the horizon is that innovative.

In a world where everything from insurance to banking, from real estate to Wall Street seems to have been built as a house of cards, how will we build wealth? The days of expecting a 20% return on anything from our houses to stock may be way in the future.

Stop looking across the fence America!  The opportunity is right here, right now, with your family business.

american gothicAmerican family businesses must get back to basics and get smarter about becoming profitable. The endless promotions of low-price and discounting that has eroded the businessman’s reason to invest in America has got to be reversed.

That may mean you need to get outside help with technology, modern management practices of how to get a decent ROI on your investment of time or taking a financial class at your community college.  But it is up to the older generation to fix their businesses if they want to attract the young.

It hurts when I hear people say they don’t take a salary from their family business. That means they have all of the problems but none of the financial rewards. The reason kids don’t want to be a part of most family businesses is because they see all of the work and none of the benefits.  It’s like they’d always have the baby in dirty diapers, never the child going off to college.

The opportunity has dried up in many segments of the economy – the grass isn’t any greener in New York or Seattle than in your community.

You want your family business to provide something for your kids?  Make sure they see the upside – profits, not the downside.

Learn how to make your business more profitable.

© Bob Phibbs 2009

Retail Management Are You Thinking Like A Customer Or Merchant?

Writing the manuscript for The Retail Doctor’s Guide To Growing Your Business (being published by Wiley & Sons in mid-2010) is forcing me to examine why so many businesses are not profitable.  In years past, it was OK for owners to joke about it.  This year, no one is laughing.

Whenever I look at a business that is not making money I find it usually is from owners or managers thinking like a customer or employee rather than a merchant.General Store

It starts with not pricing correctly.  ”Oh, I wouldn’t pay that much for this item.”  Knowing how much something costs somehow devalues its worth in their eyes. Since most owners or managers have never taken a course on pricing or examined their financials, they may mark it up less than keystone.  (One guy at a recent speech sheepishly admitted he purchased an item at $10 and priced it at $15.)  But in a declining economy, merch should be marked up keystone (that’s double) + a few bucks so the business is profitable. That’s what merchants do.

It continues with employee flexibility.  Instead of a set schedule a manager can knock out in an hour or so, the manger lets employees give them their availability week by week and then try to plug that into a schedule.  This results in hours and hours of wasted time with store coverage compromised. Merchants come up with a set schedule based on demand, then fill it based on ability to sell the merch.  That allows the managers much more time to train, monitor and sell on the floor.friendship_1

It shows up in marketing and promotions with endless freebies, 2-4-1s or discounts.  One local gift store offered free gift wrapping on Feb. 14. The busiest day of the year for them when people would have paid anything to have someone wrap their gift, they gave it away.

How did they come to that decision? They thought how great it would feel for a customer. As a customer, imagine a florist giving away free same-day delivery on Mother’s Day, a Christmas ornament store offering 2-4-1 on ornaments December 21 or a wine store offering 25% off champagne December 31.  Wouldn’t that be great?  But that intent to “get” like a customer instead of “lose” like a merchant damages profits.

This problem extends into management when we don’t write people up for being late, rudeness or their inability to perform the job.  Thinking like an employee cripples managers from doing their job as a merchant. We want to be “nice,” “liked,” “popular.”  I had a boss one time say, “You’re only as good as your last sale.” Brutal. He was a merchant.

Understanding the different mindset of a merchant versus a customer should help you when a tough decision needs to be made, ask: “sales-rx-webAm I thinking like a merchant looking to profitability, or like a customer or employee looking to be nice?”

Be profitable, be a merchant.

Learn how to sell your merch with Sales RX: Five Parts To A Successful Sale

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