Being a diabetic, and staying disciplined on my routine diet, has helped me remain low on my sugar counts, weight and blood pressure. Therefore, I told my wife I was going to break stride and take her out to lunch and dinner while in the city and we would enjoy eating whatever looked good on the menus! That's what we did.
I ate like no tomorrow and had a great time doing it. We had a ton of fun. I will get started later today to wrap up the finishing touches on our deck, too. I will enjoy adding the items we scored yesterday on our shopping spree. We had fun deciding which way to go to top off the final 'look' to our new sitting area on this deck. We had a gas doing it. We want this area on the deck to be our morning coffee area. At least one of them. We have a couple of favorite spots in our landscape for having a morning Cup of Jo. This one will be the most private one we have designed. We are looking forward to finishing it off before the weekend arrives! Then we can test it out!
One of the things I noticed again about our shopping habits. Keep in mind, we are what we consider normal customers. Before we travel to the city to go shopping for items we want to purchase we go online to narrow down the travel stops we plan to make. We check out online several of our favorite places, first, to see if they have the items we want to pursue. We definitely go online to find the best deals on restaurants before we go to those places to eat. My wife "always" finds two for one deals online before we travel. This is true for our coffee stops as well. We enjoy shopping and make a big deal about it. However, if you do not have a quality online presence with some good deals offered on your sites, you will not see us walk into your door. That has become our habit. We are not ashamed to eat a fancy dinner, two for the price of one. We do it every single time we head out to go shopping and have fun.
I believe I see many other people doing this same thing. I see coupons being redeemed and people choosing their stops after checking it out on their mobile devices, first. The business models who have a good online presence for addressing these shoppers are the ones where the foot traffic is the highest. We notice that trend a lot.
My point...listen to your customers. Listen to how they are choosing where to shop. Pay attention to the things that interest them. Listen closely to how they determine where they go to shop. I listened to all of the people walking around with each other and I heard a lot of them give wonderful clues to each other as to where they wanted to go next. The people who were in couples, with friends and groups were sharing with each other where they wanted to go shop next. A simple task of listening while they walked around in the stores they were frequenting could reveal how they determine where to go next. This was really valuable information that every retailer needed to hear. Are your sales clerks wandering about your store displays listening to this information? I heard a lot of valuable reasons why they choose where to go. Listen!
Next, some of the reasons for them going somewhere else to shop was not the same reasons why they were in the place where they were currently shopping. I heard a few customers share with each other how they 'thought' this place had one thing or another but could not find it located in that place like they thought they would. I learned that many customers were slightly mislead about what they thought they would find at the shop they were cruising through while they were looking. Many customers were just cruising through those stores to hope and find what they felt they might discover while they were there. Something about those stores was attractive enough to get those customers to examine their place of retail. I noticed many shops had no foot traffic at all. I also noticed that many stores had a ton of traffic, all of the time. Learn what makes this difference. Go shopping and try to discover why the crowds choose one over the other. There are clues rolling all over the place. Learn why they select where they go. Learn!
Remember, I am the 24/7 guy. I do business 24/7. I will have fun shopping with my wife for cool items we want to add to our home projects. However, at the same time I will be paying close attention to the reasons why large groups of people go to the places they choose. I enjoy shopping but I enjoy more discovering why they go where they go. Listen and learn how the consumer moves. It is not always the same ways they moved last year! If the reasons changed, you need to change. Learn how to apply what you see and learn. Be accurate. Be open. Be willing. Listen and learn. Then, apply.
Listen. learn and apply. These are such simple terms with simple policies to understand. However, many retailers were not paying very close attention to the kinds of things I was hearing. Many of them had slower traffic flows and the customers were adamant about why they were leaving to go somewhere else. The listening skills were apparently turned off. Those were the retailers doing the least amount of register sales...by the way. Go figure. We had one experience that stuck out like a sore thumb. It was so obvious that I predicted to my wife that this retailer would not be there the next time we come around. She agreed. How is it that these kinds of marketing errors can be so obvious to the customers yet to the owners it can become so blind to see?
Allow me to describe this one.
Next, two clerks were standing behind the sales counter with one on the phone and the other one was explaining to a customer how they usually take care of returns. The clerk on the phone was talking louder to the customer on the other end of the phone than the discussion going on about the return policy the other two were having at the counter area. It was irritating the customer at the counter. Listen! I once had a business mentor tell me that I must learn how to listen, even when I am talking. People have some very recognizable body language moves that can easily tell you what they are thinking. Pay closer attention to those signals. Listen more closely. The sales clerk talking to that customer at the sales counter did not notice how irritated that customer was getting about her efforts to compete with the other clerk on the phone. It was clearly written all over her face. My wife and I found it comical as we moved about the display floor. Listen to the body language! Learn and apply.
The front display when you enter that store was not complete and had some very poor efforts to look nice. In fact, it was a poor piece of display work. It was not finished, too close to the entryway door and poorly arranged. It made the customers who entered the showroom go one way or the other to enter the store. It was a discontinued display for items that the store did not sell well. The sale signs were hand made and hard to read. The penmanship was terrible. It was like seeing something presented in a grade school play. It was almost like going back in time. I was surprised to see this kind of display approach to a popular chain outlet.
By they way...the sales clerk talking on the phone so loud was trying to explain to his customer on the other end of that phone why they no longer offer charge accounts to special order paint sales. He was describing how hard it is to match those colors to the customer's satisfaction that if they do not collect the money up front, they usually never get paid for making the mistake! I could not believe what I was hearing. It was not only the wrong stuff to hear as a customer...it was so loud it was grating. I was not impressed with the customer service attempts these two clerks were using.
As the lady customer left the store unhappy, that same sales clerk looked to us and asked if we needed some help. I asked her if they had a place in the store were they inventoried small rolls of border wall papers we could look to examine. She said, "No. We do not stock those anymore. We just do special orders on that stuff, now." I paused for a moment, then said, "Thanks. That's what we were looking to find." We turned around and left. We were in that store for about three to four minutes total. This is what we learned. Troubled retailer, terrible sales clerks, awful displays, no stock to purchase, not-so-good processes for special ordering and too dark to see. We felt they were not listening to what the customers were wanting to see and buy. They thought low cost, low discount pricing at the front door with old and tired products nobody wanted to buy in the first place would do the trick! They were wrong. We will not add them to our future trips of shopping.
People...that is exactly how it works. It is also exactly how it doesn't work. Listen. Learn. Apply.
I suggest that if you are having trouble with your consumer attraction policies and efforts, go shopping. While out and about, check out to see why some win and others lose. Listen to the customers chat. Listen to the clerks talk. Pay attention to the way the consumers move about. Watch their body language. Check out what ends up in their hands and carts. See them move, talk and decide. Listen to them. Listen to them even if they say no words! Watch closely. Learn how they decide where to go and where to buy. Learn what interests them. Get a clear picture in your minds about how they offer the clues they do.
Above all, if you want our business and many others who shop like we do, make sure your online presence is relevant, current, attractive and special. We will not likely attend your store if it is not some of those things. We spent a lot of money yesterday. Some of you will never see our kind of customer activity, ever, if your online presence is poorly designed. I am sorry to let you in on that little tid-bit. However, it is the truth and your business will suffer if it does not finally get on board with this kind of proper marketing efforts.
Once you listen and learn...the only thing you have remaining to do is to apply. Go get it done.
Until next time...
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