Hey. It’s Bob. And, for the next two weeks, you are going to get clips from a Retail Success Summit titled Ways To Wow Them. So for the next two weeks, you’re gonna get several ways to wow your customers.

How you give them that kind of experience that makes them take notice, become more loyal, and spend more money. So but before we get to those clips, I want to invite you to our Summer Summit Kickoff. It’s happening on June twelve from twelve to three. There’s going to be, we’re gonna introduce some of our summit speakers.

We’re going to bring on some alumni from, previous summits. There’s gonna be prizes. There’s gonna be fun. There’s gonna be all the cool stuff stuff we do here for you, with you at WhizBang! Training.

So I hope that you’ll put that on your calendar. I hope you’re gonna stay tuned the next two weeks cause you’re gonna learn some great ways to wow.

Next step up the pyramid is your store.

The space, the place where the magic happens.

So this You see how this is all building one on top of another? Like, you could have an awesome store, but if you have horrible staff and terrible policies and unfriendly customer philosophy, are you gonna be successful?

No.

This is what I was talking about this morning. Yeah. You know, go when I go shopping in the stores in Bozeman, you walk in, it was like somebody spent a fortune on branding and display and store layout and all those things, and then nobody comes out. You know? So you’ve got the store, but none of the rest was in place. Therefore, the experience was on the engagement o meter.

So Right.

I like that. Anyway. Exactly.

Good. So in the store though, this is really an important part of the customer experience. Right? You have these moments of truth. These these little tiny moments when your customer is interacting with your store. When they touch the door handle, that’s a moment of truth. Is it sticky?

Is there a million fingerprints on it?

How does your, parking lot look? How many of you walk into your store through the back door?

So many people that I know, retailers, walk in the employee entrance, the back door, whereas the customers are walking in the front door. Are you always looking this is WWMCW.

Are you always looking at your store through your customer’s eyes? If you’re walking the back door and your customers are walking in the front door, you’re probably missing something, like that poster for an event in your town that happened six months ago.

Little teeny moments of truth. Do you care? Do you you don’t care. They’re evaluating you constantly.

Moments of truth. If you have a women’s clothing store or men’s clothing store, fitting rooms. You know? Fitting rooms are a huge moment of truth.

So all these different moments of truth are are adding to your customer experience. Real quickly, we’re gonna go through a couple of these things. Visual merchandising. Do you have an engaging and appealing space?

Clean, well organized, and well maintained. Your store operations.

This is a moment of truth. Are there dust bunnies in the corners?

Are the lights out in your sign in the front?

Are your windows filthy, etcetera, etcetera.

All these little moments of truth, enticing and engaging merchandise.

Your assortment, do you have what they want to buy? Do you is this a customer focused assortment plan?

And then finally, your in stock position.

This is your inventory management piece.

Do you have it in stock? You’re gonna tell your sock story.

Sure. There was a company that I really like, a local independent retailer, and I really like these people. I won’t mention their names because many of you you know them. And, like, three times, I went in and they didn’t have stocks in my size.

XL socks?

You know? There was this feeling of incompetence.

And I, you know, I mean, finally finally, I talked them into using management one, And everything changed, really. You know? I mean, they had the right stuff in stock at the right time, and it’s just changed their whole business around. You know, if you sell sizes and you’re out of key sizes or when we talk about merchandise, you know, if you’re in fashion, stock, if you don’t have them in sizes, and people come into your store and don’t find them, why shouldn’t they go somewhere else?

If I can’t find it in your store after the third time, why shouldn’t I go on Amazon?

X loyalty isn’t given. It’s earned.

So that’s the question. Why shouldn’t I? So go ahead.

Yeah. So this is these are all the different moments of truth that your customer’s experiencing in your store. K?

So finally, we get to the Wow, which is the cherry on the top. Right? This is the the stuff below, that’s really your customer experience.

The wow is what makes it special. But so many people, including your customers, by the way, think that the wow is what customer service is. Nordstrom’s took back tires that they you know, you’ve all heard this story.

They never carried tires and they took it back. Amazing service. No. No. That’s just the wow.

I mean I mean, wow is great. Don’t get me wrong. We’re gonna talk about wow. But, like, you can’t have that unless you’ve got the the whole rest of the pyramid underneath it.

So many people have this flipped upside down. They’re looking at the wow.

Way to say it.

That, you know, they they start with the wow. And, you know, and I talked about that this morning when we started. You can’t get to the place where you have a wow until you’re fundamentally strong. You know, we wouldn’t have been able to execute the whole yo yo program if we didn’t have the chops, if we didn’t have if we weren’t retail pros already. You know, Maureen would have never been able to do, you know, her wardrobe rewind if everything wasn’t in place. Russ, when you have to be fundamentally strong, and then you can do the wows that are the things that people can’t and won’t do.

And that’s true for your customers.

Let’s give them a couple of examples. Alright.

So we’ve got a whole bunch of cool examples of ways to wow now. So wow factor is really stuff that’s unexpected, it’s unnecessary, or undeserved.

So when you’re doing those things, like, all that other stuff should be expected, should be necessary.

Definitely wanting the the service that your customer deserves. Right? All those other foundational pieces. This stuff is the extra.

So speaking of Maureen Yeah.

I was just gonna say, I was looking at the slides.

So Maureen, just not here because her kid’s graduating from eighth grade. So So Yeah.

So she worked a deal with a local florist, thirty five dollars, sending them out at random. So if you’re a good customer and by the way, Maureen does more dollars per square foot than anybody I’ve ever seen or talked to in my life. You know, her the lifetime value of her best customers is really, really good.

Massive.

But, you know, so she’s making a thirty five dollar investment in an unexpected something that will solidify that loyalty, lifetime value. So that’s a thank you bouquet.

Yeah. And she sends them out. She sends out a lot of them. She’ll send them out to her, the top, you know, her top two hundred customers randomly throughout the year.

Randomly. This is not something that she does as, oh my gosh. You just made a huge sale, Bob. You just spent, you know, ten thousand dollars with me.

I’m gonna send you a bouquet of flowers as a thank you. No. No. Random.

Just as a thank you. Just thinking about you. Thanks for being my customer. That’s a wow.

I love it. She says, everybody posts on social media.

So that’s cool. That’s one idea.

Patty Zeller. Patty, where are you, Patty?

She’s over there.

There she is.

She says we invite our best customers to the launch of our private label Big Dog Blonde Ale served up with brats and all the fixings that we cook up on our storefront grill and patio. She has a pet store, guys. Yeah. Animal Connection.

So, like, she just she’s inviting her customers over for dinner, basically. Hey. Come on over to my house. I’m grilling.

But now so just a second. So, Patty, this beer is a sort of a special release that you helped make. Right? So it’s a special release associated with her store, and then this party all ties together. So Yeah. I think it’s a great idea.

It’s a it’s just it’s a it’s a great way to wow them. How can you have a great party?

PetSmart’s never going to do that.

Keep asking yourself that question. Keep asking yourself your that question. Whenever you hear an idea that you like, you say, will my competition do this? Could my competition do this? And that the answer to that question starts to frame and inform whether you should or could do that too.

So Yeah.

So maybe you don’t have the luxury too of having, like, a cool barbecue setup like Patty does on the front of her store. But what can you do? So remember, like, no stinking thinking here. What could you do? How could you adapt this idea? What kind of a party could you throw to show your customers a little bit of wow?

Right?

Maybe you have your own beer. I don’t know.

We had a whiz bang cocktail.

We did.

I forgot about that.

Yeah. It was tasty too.

Yeah. We had a we had a party for our twentieth anniversary, and we had a special whiz bang cocktail that we that we had.

Anyway, you might offer them coffee.

This doesn’t sound like a big deal. Right? Just offer them coffee. But this guy, Steven from New Zealand, he he said, we make them their choice of espresso.

They are blown away.

Why?

Because ninety nine percent of the stores they go into, they don’t get offered coffee. It doesn’t have to be coffee. It could be a bottle of water with your label on it. It could be a soda.

It could be a handful of peanuts. I don’t know. What is it in your store? This guy loves coffee, so he makes amazing coffee.

But what can you do? What how can you make the shopping experience special in a way that nobody else can?

So easy. See, it doesn’t have to be enormous.

Right? Just a cup of coffee.

Theater tickets. You wanna talk about that?

Sure. Peter Moore, friend of ours from Ontario.

He, you know, bought blocks of tickets for the local community theater. He invited his best customers. A lot of them couldn’t come, but he found enough of them that could come. And this is sort of that undeserved, out of the ordinary.

I have tickets for some of our best customers. Would you like to come? Yes. I’d love to come.

Nobody else is gonna do that. Again, what are you doing that is different than anybody else? Okay.

Yep. Cool. Thank you cards.

So this is Gazelle Sports here. They have several running stores in Grand Rapids or in the West Michigan area. Every time I have shopped at Gazelles, we have gotten a card. Just with a quick note, so I don’t know whether I’ve been tagged as Bob the whiz bang guy, treat him right, or, it is possible.

Right? I mean, you know, I they they know me. I mean, we’ve worked with them before, but I don’t think so. I think it is just part of what they do.

We built the Mackinac kite company. I believe that one of the most important things that we did in the early days, and, again, it dates me, but this is before the Internet, was it was a nonnegotiable standard that everybody who worked wrote got the email got their physical address and sent three postcards to three customers.

Every single employee, every single employee, every single ship, three postcards.

And even though people would come to Mackinac City once every other year, you imagine, you come from Ohio to Mackinac City, you come into this full cool fun store, you buy something, you get a postcard when you get back to Ohio or wherever it is. That’s the kind of thing that makes an impression. So just these little gestures are really, really wow gestures.

And if you don’t wanna send a written postcard, send a video thank you note. This is BombBomb.

The video plays right in the email.

Absolutely amazing.

This is a great way to wow them.

Send champagne and cupcakes. This is an actual thing that happened to me. I was on a girls weekend with some friends in New York. We got back to our hotel.

The store we had been shopping in, they sent us champagne and cupcakes. Like, that’s cool. How many of you get girls weekends shopping in your store?

Great bags and wrap.

Sometime, like, I love shopping. They’ve they’ve since retired, but I used to love shopping there because the bags were so beautiful. It was like a gift in and of itself.

You know, it’s a cool bag and wrap.

And Kayla talked about that.

How many of you went to Kayla’s on a program on branding? You know, this is a visual representation.

If you give a bag that really says something or you send a box that really says something, these are the little gestures that really make a wow. And when you have lots of little gestures, all of a sudden you get the cumulative effect of these little gestures. Having a great bag, Pet Bistro, isn’t it’s it’s one thing, but when you start to add all of the little things, then your customers start to go, wow, why would I go anywhere else when I feel this way when I shop at this place?

Exactly.

Just fun fun stuff like this was a photo booth in the back of a pizza restaurant that I went to with my friends. And it was so fun. Anybody could do this. Any kind of store could do something like this.

It doesn’t have to be a photo booth. It could be, you know, if you’ve got a kids store, it could be a gumball machine. Whatever. What can you do that just adds fun and energy to being in your store?

Skirt, Maureen again, like, she’s she has bought into this way of thinking. Can you tell?

She had a champagne truck. Alright. She doesn’t offer coffee, she offers champagne.

Well, not all the time.

Not all the time.

Not all the time.

They always have champagne in the fridge, but this was a special event and they had a truck that served champagne. How cool is that?

And then you can look for the one offs. Like these are systematic what we’re talking about are kind of systematic things you can do, but look for the one offs. This is this guy Peter Schengman, he’s a customer service guru guy and he he tweeted out, hey, Mortens. Can you meet me at the Newark Airport with a porterhouse?

K. Thanks. Like, it was a joke And they showed up at the new at the Newark airport with a porterhouse for him. And, you know, like, wow.

Like, that’s just a one off. Like, that’s not something you can ever repeat, but that’s pretty cool. Here’s a smaller version of that.

This is Matt and he said, I was just talking with this customer, we were talking about this one author, so I bought him a book and I inscribed it. And he sent me customers for five years.

Just a one off, like a thoughtful gift.

We live in a world where everyone is a broadcaster.

So you have to build the foundation, but then these wows are where you’re gonna get people talking about you.

So I would encourage you all. We’ll talk about it later on this afternoon, but, we created this idea of ADD, ask, discuss, decide. And it’s a way of getting your team involved in thinking about your business with you. So, I would encourage you to consider making a d d ing this with your team. Get together with your team when you get back. Make it an action item. You know, schedule a half hour and say, what can we do that will really make our business stand out from the competition?

Exactly. Alright. We’re gonna do speech sharing.

So you’ve got no minutes to, like, think about it. I just want you to stand up. You’re gonna have, four with, like, three minutes. I’m gonna give you guys three minutes. Find one person that you haven’t talked to, walk around, and share how you wow your customers in your store.

Alright. So we are at the herding cats, part of the retail success side.

I know this is really super. This is fun to, like, share these ideas. This would be a great thing to ask somebody at the cocktail party tonight. This is a great conversation starter. How do you wow your customers in your store? See how many ideas you can gather tonight at the cocktail party. Yeah?

That’s a great idea. Yeah. Thank you. That’s a great idea. So let’s talk about something here.

All day, we’ve been talking about this idea of you have to be fundamentally strong. That if you’re gonna build the kind of business where you’re the store of choice in a world of infinite options, it’s not just about wow. It’s not just about doing fancy stuff. It’s about making a commitment to being an excellent merchant. It’s about making a commitment to yourself to tell yourself the right stories, to do the right things, to learn the things that you need to know.

Because when you build your business the right way, you’re going to get the life that you deserve.

When you go through the messy middle, you earn the right that to to live the kind of life that you deserve. So, Todd, raise your hand here. So Todd Anderson is a member of the Platinum Mastermind group, and I love Todd the fact that he’s out on the road all the time. In fact, he just came in from the middle of another road trip. He has a business that’s worked for him, fifty states, twenty three countries. I know this slide’s kind of outdated.

How many countries now?

Thirty seven.

Thirty seven countries.

You know, and there’s a thread on whiz bang retailers right now where we talk about taking time off. And several people chimed in, well, wait a second. This guy’s a coach. He’s Dan Sullivan. We’re retailers. We have to work all the time. And I’m just looking at all of you and saying bullshit.

That you deserve the kind of life that comes from making a commitment to building this kind of business. And it really starts with making a commitment to being a great retailer. And being a great retailer is all about the skills. It starts with being good. So I want to, you know, suggest to all of you, if you don’t have the retail mastery system yet, that this is going to be one of the first steps that you can take to really building that kind of business. I hope you found those ways to wow them inspiring.

I know that Susan and I were certainly very inspired finding these stories of retailers like you doing things like that. If you like that, if you like these ideas, if you like inspiration, I’m going to, again, encourage you to put it on your calendar.

June twelfth, twelve to three, the summer summit kickoff. We’re gonna have a lot of fun. We’re gonna be giving away tickets to the summit. We’re gonna be giving away swag.

You’re going to get to meet the speakers. You’ll be able to meet other, alumni from the Retail Success Summit. It’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s going to fill you with inspiration.

I hope to see you there.