Retail Today with Bob Phibbs, The Retail Doctor

Do you and your crew go out to lunch? Well, you know what, when the holidays hit, lunchtime can be a big-time suck, especially if they're going to get in their car and go somewhere with traffic and weather. So encourage your employees to bring their own lunches, especially when we start Black Friday. Long lunches can be avoided and should be if you don't want to cripple your store coverage. If you...

Have you started playing holiday music in your story yet? You know it is the season. Now, look, I know a lot of people who say they hate retail because they have to hear the same carols over and over again. And you know what, whether it's the holiday music or your holiday decorations, mind your attitude. Because when you go to work and you say, "I hate holiday music," and you open those doors, you...

Have you scheduled a holiday store meeting yet? You should. This is one last chance you have to get everybody on board. So that will be your one shot to be talking about, maybe you have layaway, maybe you have buy online pick up in-store. Maybe you have all kinds of different promotions and events coming up, but it's your chance to get all of their questions asked and to build a team around your s...

You know one of the shoppers' pet peeves of the holidays is having to ask somebody how much an item is. Look, nobody wants to have to ask the price. So today I want you to think about price everything before it goes out or have a shelf tag that does the same. So many shoppers often misjudge how much something is when there is no price. And usually, they're expecting it to cost much more than it ac...

You know, I've been doing a Facebook live video on my page for The Retail Doctor for several years now, and I always get the same questions about this time of the year. How do you greet a customer? Should I say, "How are you today?" Should I say, "Happy holidays?" What should I do? And the best way to greet a shopper is to simply say, "Good morning," "Good afternoon," or "Good evening," with a smi...

Do you think actors go into a studio and just wing it when they're making a movie? Of course not. Well in two weeks, your staff, if they're not well trained, are going to potentially be winging it when they're talking to your customers. That's potentially going to add or lose, sales for you. The important thing to think of today is to role play with every employee in the next few days. That's from...

Have you started thinking about your own holiday shopping? Well, now's the time to get your shopping done. When you're a busy retailer, the last thing you think about is, A, eating properly, and, B, your own holiday gifting until the last minute. And I'm encouraging you today to encourage your own employees to start getting their holiday shopping out of the way. You'll find that their breaks won't...

We're deep in football season right now, and a common thing we refer to in most retailers is having a huddle. Do you start each shift with a brief team huddle? You know, best retailers do. When you have a two to three-minute meeting, it focuses everybody's attention. You talk about a new product or you talk about a customer service story that went well, or you talk about a way to add on to a sale....

It's about six weeks until Christmas and I can hear you saying, "Oh, well, we're getting ready because it'll really get slammed after November when people are picking things out for the holidays." I hate to tell you, but shoppers are filling their holiday lists right now and it's a great time to add on to every sale because they're in a good mood and they're not overly stressed. So, how do you do...

If you're a regular listener to my podcast, or to this flash briefing, you probably carry better merchandise and you're bound to hear at the holidays, "You're expensive." Here's how to deal with that, have a reply ready, talk about how we have better merchandise and we found that people were more satisfied if they paid a little more at the beginning, that the most expensive merchandise is things t...

Do you remember when McDonald's used to ask, "Do you want fries with that?" Back, 20 or 30 years ago, they knew that added on to sales pretty easily because once a customer says, "Yes," they're much more likely to say "Yes" to an add on. So here's what I want you to be thinking about today is for every shopper who comes in, certainly for the next six weeks, simply ask, "Who else gets a gift?" You'...

Are you all set with the number of employees you have for the holidays? You know what, there is still time to hire. And that's important because I'll tell you, people are going to quit and they're going to get sick. And you think, oh, not me. But I'm telling you, if you have a lean crew now, this early in November, it's only going to get worse. Two-person coverage simply doesn't work at the holida...

The holidays are coming and you're probably going to be slammed. You know customer service is great, but your crew has got to learn how to juggle more than one customer. You have employees who like to talk to customers for a half-hour, whether they buy something or not. You simply can't afford that. So juggling customers can be taught, and if you are interested, you can look at salesrx.com to find...

Did you know there's going to be six less shopping days this holiday season? Yeah, that's right. There will be almost a full week of less time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And I know things can get crazy during December, but you've got to plan now. So, what I want you to do today is, prepare your crew for what could go wrong. That could be anything from we've run out of gift boxes, to we've...

When you look at your website, does it show a lock? If not, you've probably got problems. Today, I want you to take a look at your website and look up on the top left and see if you see that little gray lock, and if you do, that probably means that you've already switched your website to start HTTPS. If you haven't gotten that far yet, you'll see your starts ATTP, and what that means is that the i...

Have you ever had to set the reset button on an electronic gadget? Usually, it's just a restart of some kind, and it's a way to get the operating system back to where it was originally. Well, you know what, after a busy weekend, it's time for you to reset your store. So, try to move your displays around at least a couple of times before Christmas, and that's usually done on a Monday or a Tuesday b...

Every year I get the question, should you say Merry Christmas? I get it, there's an awful lot of people that are very passionate on both sides, but the reality is the unchurched continues to grow, and not everybody may share your belief. What I always say is, if they say Merry Christmas to you first, by all means, answer back 'Merry Christmas' if you're comfortable with that. But if not, 'happy ho...

Do customers lie to you? Of course, they do. Are you taking their lie as fact? Look, customers lie to you because they don't trust you. Now, one of the most basic ones people say is, "We can't afford it." We take that as like, "Oh, they have no money."  Except research shows that even during downtimes, customers still buy. While you might feel good about that excuse, "Oh, they have no money." It's...

You know, a lot of stories are being written about the retail apocalypse and a lot of small businesses are jumping into it. So, when someone asks, "Oh, how's business going?" They jump in and talk about how horrible it is, or Amazon is doing this, or someone else's putting them out of business.  Here's how to get publicity for your store. Give them a story. Tell them something you're doing differe...

Everybody likes to know how they're doing. Do you review your employees? Today, I want you to think about that because a lot of millennials and IGens really want feedback because that's what they've received throughout their lives and in school. And that's not going to wait for a year when you happen to think about it, that might even be in a month.  But I always encourage you to review at a minim...

Today, I'm talking about how do you handle a complaint. That's such an easy thing to deal with. It's something that everybody needs to know, not just your managers or your assistants, but everyone all the way down the line, because a customer is not going to complain to the highest store manager. They're going to take that person on the sales floor. Here's the four-step process I want you to think...

If you sell anything, you know that trying to close somebody quickly can be really hard, that if you try to go through too quickly and you try to get them out the door, they balk. They don't feel valued, and they never come back, so how to close a sale quickly? Well today, I want you to think about look for the buying signs and questions. What are some buying signs? Their hands are out. They're op...

  Well, we've all had that time when you've had a great run on one piece of merchandise and it comes to the end and you have a couple leftover and suddenly people say, "What do I do with old merchandise?"  You know, merchandise doesn't get better with age, and the one thing I always say is, if you're going to put it on sale, you can put it on sale for 20% off. That's fine. But when you get to clea...

Are your systems in danger at your store? You know, the one thing that we often forget is our business doesn't have just us looking at our computers. There's a lot of other people. So today, I want you to be thinking about your passwords and it's probably a good time to change them. Now, I use a company called LastPass, which means I can go through and put all of my passwords in there, and then I...

Do you know what your UPT is? Yeah, that's your units per transaction. It's the one thing that your employees have the most control over. Now, one thing we don't want to see is a units per transaction of one or 1.1, that essentially means people walk into your store, they ask for a product, your employee gets it off the shelf or off the hanger and hands it to them and they pay for it. That's reall...