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How To Use iPhone4 – This Changes Everything About Selling Your Products

Let me just say it out-loud – if you sell anything to anyone – you are an idiot (is that too strong?) if you don’t run out and get an iPhone4 today, right now. And no, they didn’t pay me to say that.

Don’t care if you already have a Verizon account. Don’t care if you use a Blackberry. Don’t care if you own stock in Microsoft.

And the higher the price of the items you sell, the stupider you are if you don’t get it NOW. Ok, I’m a bit opinionated on these. Stay with me…

Forget all of the other bells and whistles. You have the ability in the palm of your hand to make a personal introduction, followup or product video in minutes using the iMovie app. Easily, professionally and you can email them right away.

Here are four I just created.

One for a nursery talking about their fresh tomatoes for the day:

iPhone4 Example for a Farm Stand with Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor®

One for a Buick Dealer following up for a customer:

iPhone4 Example For Buick by Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor®

One for any salesperson who has to followup after speaking on the phone:

iPhone4 Example Following Up with Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor®

Last one for a landscaper or professional Gardener talking to a client about a problem;

iPhone4 Example Landscaper / Gardener with Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor®

Do you see how impressive this looks? How immediate? How out of the ordinary, knock your socks off fantastic this is?

I’ve done testimonial videos for years with my Flip camera. Yes it was convenient but NOTHING like this. I can add titles, transitions and music quickly and easily.

Imagine the look on your customer’s face when it is you talking to them directly right in front of their home before you go back to the office?

Sure I could get hung up with a few clipped words or a few transitions. But the door has opened for anyone to quickly and easily make youself standout.

How could you use it in your business? Think about it and put in the comments below please.

Oh yeah, and don’t worry about your competition finding out, they’ll still be hung-up on the cost of the data plan as you steal their customers right and left!

For more ways to make your business standout, check my new book from Wiley & Sons, The Retail Doctor’s Guide to Growing Your Business.

Pricing Apathy – Why You’re Not A Profitable Business

This is an excerpt from my new book, The Retail Doctor’s Guide to Growing Your Business (Wiley & Sons)

Since many owners or managers have never taken a course on pricing or they “feel bad about charging too much,” they tend to mark up less than necessary, what I call “welfare pricing.”

As a customer, we love it when you price too low but as the merchant, your apathy towards what you need that widget to produce – profits – is killing you!

Your merchandise should be marked up enough to make the business profitable. An item has value if it is worth the price a customer is willing to pay. Here’s an example.

There’s a deli truck in the park by my house that sells soda for 50 cents. I figure that the vendor can get a six-pack for a buck at the local big-box. She might be telling herself she’s getting three times cost; but what would a customer pay for the convenience? A vending machine would charge at least $1. But she gives you a cup and ice. Would that be worth $1.25? I think so.

Sometimes you have to consider the value you provide to the customer and charge what you think the market could afford, not what you personally would pay.

You also have to consider breakage, spoilage, or other items out of your control before you set a price.

For example, a baker who has to bake a dozen rolls at a time might know they typically only sell seven of a certain roll every day.  So they factor in that five might remain, and price the seven to make the profit of all twelve.  It’s therefore a bonus if they sell out occasionally.

And how do all the coupon programs factor in?  If you price too low to begin with, you often are selling the item for less than it cost to buy and ship to you when discounts are applied.

Any Accounting 101 student can tell you that the profit earned by the average business is only one to three cents on the dollar. This fact flies in the face of a common perception that small business owners are raking in the dough.

So realize when you’re considering giving $10 off an item that you have to sell at least $300 more just to earn back that $10 in profit.

When you analyze discounts, you find that — like a sugary cola drink — they give you an added boost when you’re tired. But like that sugary cola drink, the high is temporary and you eventually crash.  Discounting does nothing for your (or your company’s) long-term health.

Coupled with a broken pricing strategy, is it any wonder so many owners have to dump money into the business rather than taking it out?

To learn more, purchase the book.


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

Small Business Don't Whine Or Cry, Change or Die

images-1There is a new report on MSNBC today Main Street’s Sour Loans Sour courtesy of the Associated Press that says, “the government last year was left holding a record $2.1 billion in write offs for small-business loans they had guaranteed. There were over 2500 restaurant charge-offs making it the largest number of defaulted loans. More than 150 of those loans were made by Quizno’s franchisees worth nearly $15.5 million.” It also highlights the difference between the banks that were “too big to fail” to the mom and pops not making it now.  Maybe what worked before doesn’t work anymore.

Instead of saying, “Where’s our handout,” where are the stories of people who realized they have to change or die?

I get there’s a lot of pain out there. I understand business for many is down. But when are you going to do something about it?

You have to radically change your business if you are not making it and want to survive.

I had lunch last week with Roger Leithead, the former CEO of Arrow shirts who told me a story about how Arrow survived the Great Depression. A bit of back-story.

arrow collar 140px-Jcl_arrow_teensThe Arrow shirt concept came about in the 1800’s because men only wore white dress shirts and they all went to work in a suit. Even the blacksmith would work in that white shirt. Well this one guy was a singer and his wife didn’t like him coming home and changing into a clean shirt just to go out – especially since they only bathed on Saturday nights.  The idea of a detachable collar and cuffs made it easy to look presentable without all that washing.

This is the way Arrow built an empire of over 450 warehouses across the US filled with detachable collars and cuffs. It was a recipe for success: find out what the customer wanted and then give it to them.

A competitor, the Manhattan shirt company, had a shirt you could buy with an attached collar and cuffs but it was built like a tent with yards of fabric to tuck in. Also, the sleeve length was a 37.  That’s why guys wore armbands, so their sleeves wouldn’t reach over their fingers – like you see in barbershop quartets. At the time that was based on need, not looks.armband

Sales were dropping off and the Arrow CEO saw the trend was changing to a complete shirt.  He announced to his board of directors in 1930, “We will never get there doing what we’re doing now.”   That’s when something truly remarkable happened.

CLUETTHe went downstairs and gave instructions to open the doors of their main warehouse on River Street in Troy, New York, which bordered on the Hudson River. “Clear out the warehouse.” Using pitchforks, the warehouse men threw all of the existing collars and cuffs into the river.

Forget the environmental consequences of such an act of over 1 million dozen collars and cuffs floating down the Hudson. He threw out their entire inventory in order to make the changes needed.

They came up with 64 combinations of neck and sleeve lengths so that Arrow shirt fit you properly, not like a sack. They changed from natural ocean pearl buttons that broke easily, to plastic and invented Sanfordizing, which meant a shirt wouldn’t shrink. They again became the leader in men’s shirts because of the CEO realizing they had to change or die.

You think it’s tough to compete now? Imagine going into a retailer in the Depression telling them they needed all this inventory to serve their customers; where three models could capture the market, now they needed 64.

The CEO then had marketing come up with the “Arrow Shirt Man.”  Splashy ads in the best magazines touted how well an Arrow shirt fit.  It created a need for the women who purchased their husbands’ shirts to go into retailers and ask for that “Arrow Shirt.”  Retailers had no choice but to carry them and the rest is history.

When I speak across the country I hear many people quick to tell the story of how business is off, but they themselves are reluctant to change.  It might be like going to the emphysema ward of a hospital seeing people smoking while they’re under their oxygen tents.  The will to change can seem too much even when what you’re doing is killing you.

If things aren’t going your way, what radical change do you need to do to ensure your success?  Are things bad enough to change? Do you have the guts to throw out what you’ve been doing and start over?

Many businesses didn’t make a profit in the past when the money was easy – don’t blame the banks, Obama or someone else. It is your responsibility to make a profit. If you can’t, that’s capitalism.

And no, there is no level playing field – Wal-Mart will always be able to undercut your price, Starbucks will always be able to get a better location, etc.

My message to small businesses today? It’s not whine and cry but change or die. The choice is yours, but the time to act is now!

Learn the essentials of getting a retail business back in shape here

Michael Jackson Reminds Us: It's About the Work

The election in Iran, the improving economy, the GM bankruptcy, even iconic 70′s model Farrah Fawcett all took a back seat to the passing of Michael Jackson today. And for good reason. To paraphrase that old movie line, “We felt better about ourselves watching him.”

Forget the easy, over-hyped digs about his personal life. At the heart of why he was such an icon was the work. It was dazzling, fun, top-of-his game. During my speeches, I often play the Jackson 5′s “I Want You Back,” after a break. One time a woman said to me as it started, “I can’t believe you are playing something by Michael Jackson.” Another woman jumped in before I could respond, “Why wouldn’t he? I love his music!” Exactly. It was about the work, not the personality.

For your business and employees, it isn’t about what a nice guy you or your crew are.  It’s about the work.

I’m constantly amazed after a speech when people come up and tell me they’ve had someone on payroll for five, six, eight years and they aren’t cutting it. “But they’re so nice.”  It’s about the work.

Forget the personal traits. Heck, I had a guy who I had nothing in common with, the only reason we continued to work together is he got the sales. At full price. To 70% of the people he spoke to. With a smile and a repeat base we were all jealous of. Because of that, we could talk about business, how to do the sale better, what the next trend would be, how to close a hard sale. That’s what consumed his mind when he was on the clock.

He had moved out from Arkansas to southern California. He couldn’t find construction work and was sleeping in a gal’s back office at night; one step up from when he was sleeping on the street. He had used that address on my application.  He’d shower at the YMCA and walk to the mall.  He’d do his laundry at the local laundromat – he never looked out of place. He did this for about a month until he could afford an apartment.  I never knew until much later, he was strictly business.  It could have been easy to take his hard-luck story and make excuses if he hadn’t been able to sell. Could that be your crew?

My message today, in the wake of such an icon as Michael Jackson passing is to remember the work. His work; leave the personality out of it.  Is your employees’ performance memorable? Is yours?

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