Retail Today with Bob Phibbs, The Retail Doctor

All you want to worry about when it comes to tagging and pricing shelves and products is, does the customer know how much this costs? Nothing drives me crazier than going into a brick and mortar store and I have to ask somebody the price, just shoot me. I am not buying from you, I will go from anyone else. Oh, well it's hard for us to price it. Get a price gun, and price it, or do a shelf talker....

On my site, on RetailDoc.com, you can take under, I think it's Retail 101, and you go down and you can see my resource center, and you can take the retail assessment, and one of the first questions is, are you taking money out of the business? And I can't tell you, like 90% of people answer that no. Well, that's silly, because you should take something out as a reward that you are the business own...

... about to 26, so about a dollar more. So, why is the difference? Well, quite simply they make money on revolving credit. They put it on the consumer. That's where we're going to make our 20, 30%. American Express says you want our card, you're going to have to pay a lot more money, and you have to pay it off. And that's how they make their money. They are making it by charging the merchants a l...

Google has been doing an awful lot of updates on their websites and they are looking at whether you are relevant to what people are searching for, and if you're not, they're dropping off. So I would encourage you to look at your Google stats and if you don't know what that is, go into Google My Business and then you can have somebody help you with looking at your numbers. But Google has done a big...

We're coming into the money months, and you have about one more month to figure out how to sell, whether you want to use my sales direct online training, you want to try to read my book, or you're going to wing it, you have about a month left to get those add on sales. And that's a matter of training, and if somebody is not, or won't, or can't, or fill in the blank, won't support you, then now is...

Everybody loves talking about the retail apocalypse. It's a great clickbait, gets people to look. Please don't be those people doing local stories about how it hurts to be you, and how business is off, and how no one's coming in. That doesn't serve you well at all. That makes you sound like a loser. You're your public voice to anyone who interviews you or wants to do a story is business is great....

Yeah, the one thing that I find, like if you're a hot tub dealer, "Oh, we're going to be in the backyard outdoor space, so we'll put in a barbecue." It's like, let's just have this orphan little barbecue in the middle of all these hot tubs and say we're in the outdoor space. No, you have to commit to it. You have to buy enough that it looks like, "Oh, it's a store within a store. Oh, this is a bar...

This idea that you're going to hire someone who is already trained, and a great salesperson frequently, to me, falls on the floor. Because ultimately, great salespeople are made, not found. You can train anybody. Again, you can use my online system salesrx.com. $195 a month for starting with five users, and I will teach you, I guarantee you, exactly how to create rapport, how to discover the shopp...

The reality is that you may be ascribing events to your store that really aren't connected, and a lot of retailers do that. "Oh, the reason I'm not successful is because of Amazon." You're a farm stand. "Oh, well it's because everybody's on Amazon." We put all this other stuff to other things. There's an awful lot that you can do as you concentrate on your four walls and you have a branded experie...

Sometimes I hear people say, "Oh, I can't get my crew to upsell." And people say, "Oh, I can't do it. My crew doesn't do it." Well, maybe it's time to tune up your crew. And some people say, "Well, how do I do that?" I always say, “Give them some new customer service standards.” Be able to tell them, “This is how I want to do things.” And if they don't, or if they're somebody repeatedly have given...

I was at an apple farm across the river from me yesterday and I was buying a pumpkin pie. As I was checking out, the woman said, "Do you want the cider donuts to go with it?" And I was like, "No." But with every single customer, she was obviously the lead who understood it. And so, she would suggest one other thing for everyone. It wasn't always the same. And I was like, “That's awesome.” Except t...

Hey, today is Shop Small, originally started by American Express. It's the one time that Indies really have a spotlight on them. So if you have press that comes to you, you want to say how great it is and how much you're supporting it. You don't want to end up saying anything bad, because today is Shop Small, so make sure you welcome everybody you see, but most importantly, get their information....

Hey, Black Friday is here so don't stress out. Look, I understand, things are going to happen and it's going to be a lot of people at one time and you're going to feel like you can't concentrate very well. Well, you know what the other side of that is, it's an awful lot of fun. I mean, let's face it, the day is going to pass very quickly. So, make sure you use your energy to solve problems and not...

It's Thanksgiving. This is a great day to just stop. It's the one day to be grateful. It's not the time for you to go running back out to the mall and try to get all caught up in all the stress of pre-Black Friday crazy. Just slow down. Take the time because you're probably not going to get much time off in the next six weeks. Instead of making it a ‘thanks getting day’, just make it a Thanksgivin...

Have you ever been in a busy store and couldn't find anybody to wait on you and you look over and you see someone that's having a great time with one associate? That's a horrible thing if you're a shopper, especially if you're in a hurry. The thing to realize is that your customer service speed has to diminish with the crowd. The more people in your store, the less time you have to speak to them o...

In the next couple of weeks, you're probably going to be getting a lot of shipments. Have you thought about that yet? I mean, things can easily get lost, especially this weekend. So, make sure you have a process for items that arrive that are defective or items that need to go back or need a call tag, and share your process for holds, or shipping from one store to another, or online fulfillment. A...

Did you listen to me yesterday about posting your schedule? Well, did you confirm it? Yeah, confirm it. That means that your employees acknowledge it. They actually sign it. When you have your employees sign your posted schedule, you're pretty much saying there's no wiggle room here. Now I know some people will go through and they'll post a schedule on a private Facebook group or they might text i...

Scheduling employees, this time of the year can be a nightmare. I want you to think about today, how you're going to post your next six weeks' schedule. Employees want to be able to make plans, so post your schedule and don't be afraid of it. Don't create schedules based on when the employees can work. You want to base them on your need and then post them early. If you have rules about swapping, w...

You know when those holiday shoppers arrive next week, you're not going to have time to add on to everything. So what I want you to think about today is what can we pre-wrap or bundle for this weekend's big kickoff? The idea is to pre-wrap an item under $20 and then leave one out. So when you do that, put it up by your register, because it's something that everybody needs and something that you do...

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'...

With Thanksgiving a week later, now is the time to make sure that you have to deck the halls correctly in your store. Shoppers buy more when you pull at their heartstrings, and that comes from holiday decorations. Now that means non-religious, generally speaking unless that's your store, but you want to make sure that you use lights and bright colors so that there's a festive attitude in your stor...

You know, the holidays are coming up and you better understand that you can't park where you used to. Now, if you work in a mall, you probably got some kind of a notice that you had to park far away or in the top part of the parking structure. It might even have to be several blocks around and have to wait for a mall shuttle. But when an independent starts thinking about parking, they got to think...

About 30 years ago when I worked retail on a regular basis, I was addicted to Diet Coke. And I remember going to a McDonald's one day and this girl's nose was running and she was going to go fill up my cup. And I said, "Don't fill my cup up, you’re sick." And she goes, "Well, I had to come in, they forced me to." And so that makes me ask you today, do you let your employees work when they're sick?...

You know, big corporations have talked a lot about having the executives walk the plants or walk the manufacturing facilities with their management team. But when's the last time you walked your store with a staff member? And I just mean anybody. It doesn't have to be your assistant or someone else. If you take a staff member along with you and walk your store, you're going to notice things. But y...

You know, the holidays are coming and the pressure is on. So you might be thinking, oh, well I have to relax my standards for my employees. Look, even with the holidays, you still have to nip bad behavior in the bud. So, make sure you take that employee aside when something happens and don't be afraid to write them up. I had a guy that I had to fire on Christmas Eve and it was horrible, but I had...