Retail Today with Bob Phibbs, The Retail Doctor

Yesterday I told you about a sewing machine retailer with change their Facebook banner and end up getting a sale and today I thought I wanted to just unpack for you that they're really kind of three types of retailers when we are in a situation like we are today. The first one is "There's nothing I could do. I just have to hunker down and endure it," and some people, that's where they're at. Other...

If you love what you heard on Retail Today, connect with Bob by visiting retaildoc.com or send a message to bob@retaildoc.com . Thanks for listening!

One of the things retailers are asking me now in this time of stress is “How can I pay my employees?” And one thi I would encourage to consider is the share-the-burden idea, which is maybe staggering employee shifts and hours. So, instead of someone working 25 hours a week they work 15 hours a week, but you’re able to maintain them on the schedule. Another way is to maybe have someone be on one we...

Well, the good news is they’re considering a one-trillion-dollar ($1T) bailout for small businesses. How fast that will be doled out and how that will be implemented is still days and probably weeks away, but the good news is people are looking at how to help small businesses like you listening. The other question comes up is "Do I close my store?" and I think you have to think about the advantage...

Today is Wednesday, March 18th, and today I want you to be thinking about nostalgia marketing. You know, during this time of crisis, it’s easy for us to feel bad about the future. One thing that I think can help your customers feel normal with their circumstances is to ask them to share their favorite memory of shopping at your store. You can start off by doing a Facebook Live video talking about...

Today is Tuesday March 17. St. Patrick’s day. We learned yesterday that new guidelines advise no gatherings of 10 or more people, the fed has slashed interest rates to 0, and Wall Street had another horrible day. While interest is coalescing around helping restaurants and small business, there are no firm plans yet. America is split as to how leadership is doing on the virus; some cities are ghost...

Today is Tuesday March 17. St. Patrick’s day. We learned yesterday that new guidelines advise no gatherings of 10 or more people, the fed has slashed interest rates to 0, and Wall Street had another horrible day. While interest is coalescing around helping restaurants and small business, there are no firm plans yet. America is split as to how leadership is doing on the virus; some cities are ghost...

Today is Monday, March 16th. I'm going to change things around today. You know, we're in a new retail environment. This last Thursday when Disneyland announced they were closing and all of the major sports franchises decided they were postponing indefinitely, and then on Friday came New York deciding that all Broadway theaters would close. And then Sunday, yesterday, I realized that the American D...

Are you a salesperson in a retail store? Well, today I'm talking about how do you feel about selling your more expensive merchandise. A lot of times that when I'm doing sales consulting, or I'm doing a training with a group of stores, I find that there's a lot of people who actually feel like they're being a fraud. They know how much something costs, and they feel bad about going through and charg...

You know, if you're trying to close a sale, one of the hardest things is just presenting too many options. You know it yourself, if you get overwhelmed, suddenly work is what shopping feels like and you shut down. You're like, oh, I've seen too much. I just have to leave. I'll come back. Except you don't come back. You'll probably go to some other retailer who doesn't make it feel that way. What I...

Yesterday I was talking about employees and associates who just want to vomit useless fact after useless fact on people. They're typically kind of, an engineer or an analytical background and they think that the facts are what is going to make the sale. And today's tip for you is, that you always want to lead with what the product does for the customer after you've talked to them. You don't want t...

Have you ever met somebody that you just can't get along with, whether they're interviewing for a job or a shopper or even a colleague? We all have, and there's other people that really do well with you and really like them. We've all had that as well. Well, I think that there is an awful lot to personality styles. In fact, today I want you to Google my personality quiz, so Retail Doctor personali...

Have you ever been thanked by a vendor or by a store that you did business with? It's pretty powerful. I have a pond that I had cleaned out a while ago and they sent me a handwritten thank you and told me how great the pond was and made one more suggestion of something we could do, maybe next year when we have it cleaned out. And that really stuck with me, because I go back to them over and over a...

Do you ever wonder how valuable your employees are to you? A lot of people do. They don't really know exactly what the metrics are, and I always say, "Look at the units per sales." That's the #1 way I look at it. That's the tip I'm talking about today because add-ons are the most cost-effective ways to lift your retail sales, means you sell the first item, and then the employee shows something tha...

Do you ever go to a movie without looking at a review? I don't. I always want to know that and shoppers are no different now. They're looking at all kinds of reviews whether it's product reviews, brand reviews or even in your individual store. Whether you're big or small, you need to get those reviews and you need to be timely in talking to people. So today, I'm just talking about making the time...

You know, over on my blog, retaildoc.com/blog, I probably have a thousand articles, and a lot of times they're in response to people asking me, "How do I greet a customer?" and "What's the best way to approach a customer?" And I'm always surprised by that because if you just looked at what's going on, you wouldn't do those bad habits. "Hi, can I help you find something? You have a budget? Looking...

I love a busy store, don't you? Time just goes by. Everything works well. But one of the challenges we have is some of our employees don't know how to make it faster or shorter depending on the number of people. And what I'm talking about today is that the length of time with a shopper has to diminish the busier the store is. So what I want you to think about, today, is role play with one of your...

Can you imagine if you were in school and you turned in a big term paper and you got it back with no grade or comments? How would you feel? Kind of deflated, right? Well, that's what happens with an awful lot of employees. They never hear that they did anything good or bad because we've gotten rid of employee reviews. Most employees, especially millennials, want to know how they're doing. It isn't...

As the Retail Doctor, people often ask me, "How can I get more people into my store? How do I attract more shoppers?" And while it's good to attract shoppers, you better know your conversion rate, because just getting more people in the door isn't the begin all and end all. It's how do you convert those lookers into buyers? When you look around at how different types of businesses have made a diff...

You know, returns are at an all-time high in online and it doesn't look like they're going away. In fact, online shoppers, I think, can return up to 30, 40, even 50% depending on your category. But what about in your own stores? What's your return policy? If you have one that's archaic and you have it up at the register, and it's like, "No returns without this, this, this, and this," then it's a "...

You know, people often hire me as a sales coach to train their crews or to train their brand boutiques. And people often say, "How do I close the deal? How do I get that customer to buy it now and hand over the money?" Well, it's really simple. You have to go through and spend enough time to build rapport that they're going to tell you everything they want from a product. And so, to close the sale...

Do you hate training employees? I know most people do. They feel like it's a time suck, or I have to say the same thing over and over again. Or worse, they have somebody trained who really didn't like retail or sales training and then they have somebody else that they trained, trained somebody else, and now you've got a copy of a copy from people who didn't really like training. One way to get aro...

Do you know what good customer service looks like? You know, a lot of times when I walk around in various retail stores, I see managers who are managing tasks, but I don't think they really understand what great customer service looks like. And it's really quite simple: Do your people look engaged? Does the shopper look engaged? What does their body posture look like? And the other part of that is...

We've talked a lot this month about retail sales training and holding employees accountable. One of the biggest skills that I think people miss is “How do I give feedback?” Because ultimately you would need to be able to give feedback that's both good and bad, right? So I always suggest first off that it's private. You don't ever want to get feedback like in front of other employees or customers....

I talk a lot about retail sales training and one of the things I find that really impacts is getting the right people into your store to begin with. A lot of us ask very nebulous questions, “What are your goals in five years?” All of that is in the future. What I always say is go back and find something they did in the past. One of the questions I like to ask when I'm interviewing somebody is “I w...