Every time a customer walks through the front door an impression is made. Just like a security scan at the airport that is trying to capture information from the person being scanned, our eyes make instant judgments of those people who cross the threshold of our stores. When people are well dressed, wearing perfect make-up with every hair in place, we tend to place a higher value with this type of person. Many of us will make the assumption that a well-dressed and well cared for person might have more financial strength than someone who might come in wearing dirty jeans, a t-shirt with holes in it, grease stains, unkempt hair and might even have a less than pleasant body odor.

Another way of looking at this scenario is that we tend to discount the value of the “messy person” while we hold the well-dressed person in higher esteem. Along with the way someone is dressed, we tend to judge people by the car they drive. Someone who is driving a late model Cadillac, Mercedes, or Lexus is certainly believed to have more money than someone who is driving a 10 year old Buick. Unfortunately this is not the case anymore.

We are living in the age of “stealth wealth.” Do we have to look any further than Steve Jobs as the perfect example of the type of behavior that downplays the importance of materialistic adornments? The real problem is that rich people just don’t look like rich people anymore, or perhaps they do. When people are comfortable within their skin and know what is important to them, they don’t need the impressions that appearances can give.

That is a wonderful altruistic way to live and if there were more people who lived their lives like that, retailers would be going out of business in record numbers. The truth is that people love to collect the trappings of a successful life. Think about the 30-something who leases the premium auto because it makes him feel good as he drives down the street hoping everyone will be watching. The woman who is constantly trading up her diamond to make it bigger and bigger for the personal high it gives her. The couple who stretches to get that bigger home, not that they need it, but because they want it.

To quote Michael Douglas’ famous line from the movie Wall Street, “Greed is good.” It moves economies, it creates jobs, it fosters great design and it makes a boring and unexciting world come alive, just like the lights on the Strip in Las Vegas. Let’s not judge people by what is important to them; let’s learn to appreciate that every person has the potential to become our best customers. Just as the person wearing the dirty jeans deserves the respect that your business has to offer, the same respect that Richard Gere had to insist upon when Julia Roberts went into a high-end store and was ignored. When Mr. Gere returned to the store he made it perfectly clear that they were disrespecting a customer who was bringing them a large source of business.

The real issue is; how do we control our natural tendencies of treating some people better than we treat others? Just because someone is dressed well or drives a late model car doesn’t mean that every sales associate is going to put them on a pedestal. In many cases they want to knock them off the pedestal as if to say, “What makes you better than me?” or “Who do you think you are?”

I recently worked at a high end jewelry store where the majority of the salespeople could not afford the products they were selling, yet they did a masterful job of feeling so fortunate to be able to work and play in an environment with the nicest things in life. It’s not just about celebrating one’s wealth; it’s about celebrating the excellence of the products we sell and the creation of those products. It’s the celebration of the designers who design those products. It’s the celebration of celebrating.

The customers who walk across our threshold are not as plentiful as they once were due to increased competition and, of course, the internet. None of us have the right to pick and choose like we once did. This is a simple lesson with far reaching affects.

The bottom line is; who gives us the right to decide who our customer will be? We win some, we lose some, but we dress for them all.

We received some interesting comments to last week’s article. It all comes down to the way we communicate with our customers. I listed all of the webinars that I was planning for 2012. Someone wrote that the timing for my webinars, which is 4:00 PM EST is not the best time for a store owner to listen. That gave me an opportunity to share some feedback about my webinars that can, and should, affect all of you. According to my statistics, 96% of all the people who view my webinars do so at a different time from when it is first broadcast. Because they are available online 24/7, the need to be by your computer screen at 4:00 PM EST is not important. I can’t believe that 23% of the people who watch my webinars do so between 1:00 and 5:00 in the morning. (It was encouraging to know that I am not the only person who works in the middle of the night!)

How does this affect you? It affects you because the goal today is the Returnability Factor. I define the Returnability Factor as what is on the website that would make a customer go back to the website again and again. It is offering little snippets of information. What is on the mind of your customer goes a long way. Do a Skype call and have it recorded with a friend in the same business you’re in from another state and add that to your website. Specialty retailers are becoming more special because of their expertise. Make it a New Year’s resolution to add one 60-second snippet to your website every month. Watch what happens!

The other comment which I found quite interesting was from someone who had advertised on both Facebook and Google Ads and discovered what a waste of time and money it was. I can’t agree with him more. He went on to say his two best forms of advertising were signage and word of mouth advertising. He then went on to compare political ads and realized that signage is a major tool in every political campaign. Again, I can’t agree with him more.

In the last two weeks, I have immersed myself in finishing my book called Signs Sell… Harnessing the Power of Your Advertising. I wrote this book specifically for individual industries. I am determined to finish the generic copy by the end of this month. I am thoroughly convinced that I can increase the sales of any retail store by at least 10% with the proper use of signage. This is a bold statement to make during these challenging times. I believe that signage is the most misunderstood and underutilized tool in retailing today. The problem is that most people look at signage as just sales or price signs. There is so much more to signs than just that. Extensive research has been done that proves that when you can add the benefits to the customer in a sign, it will make that product sell even faster. That’s not even to mention educational signs, entertaining signs, and signs that will create an emotional attachment to a business.

What I found interesting in the blog comments was that signage and word of mouth advertising were their two best resources to generate sales. The reason for that is that signage is a form of word of mouth advertising. There have been extensive studies over the years to determine what advertising medium is the best source for customers in different types of stores and in different types of areas.
These studies and surveys asked customers how they heard about a store. They list all of the various forms of advertising, from newspaper, radio, TV, magazines, billboards, signage, to word of mouth advertising.  Naturally, word of mouth advertising would always be number one. Then the numbers would vary depending on the type of store or location. In rural areas, a radio station or newspaper can be the dominant player. But that is not what is important.

What was important is the fact that when the category of signage, including billboards, was eliminated from the list, the majority of those who choose signage moved over to word of mouth advertising. For some reason the customer perceives signage as a form of word of mouth advertising. As if someone told them about it but they don’t remember who said it.

Within the next couple of weeks, I am going to be releasing a FREE Sign Audit for you to use in your store. This will become part of the new book but I thought I would like to share it and get your feedback. This will help you assess if you are taking full advantage of the power of signage.

Another comment that was made on the blog was from someone who talked about how effective their email newsletter was. Obviously having written a weekly newsletter for the last several years, I am partial to this type of communication. Having said that, I realize that the phenomenon of texting is becoming the new frontier of communications. The unfortunate part about email is that the open rate is constantly dropping. It is currently approximately 22%. Compare that to the open rate of a text message at 98%. The more disturbing statistic comes from a study done by a Boston research firm that states a staggering amount of the people who had opted into a website to receive email from a store had unsubscribed to at least one or more of these emails per month. In short, you better give them value and a reason to open them up.

There are so many new and innovative ways of reaching customers today. Our challenge has become figuring out the way our customers want to hear from us most. Maybe that is why signage has worked so well. Look for the sign audit and thank you for the interesting feedback. Have a great week.

As I get older I am really learning to believe in the power of thinking positively more than ever before. I see more people who believe they can do things… in fact, doing them. While the people who say they can’t do things… don’t seem to do anything. Many of us don’t even realize we are doing it. Maybe because it’s the end of the year and it is a time to reflect, I look around at both old and new friends and all of the different businesses I have contact with over the course of a year. I realize there are certain people I really want to associate with and those are the people who haven’t given up, are looking for ways to make things work and just have that can-do attitude.

Someone who has known me for a long time reminded me last week of what I had accomplished from my early days of working with my mother in a 900 square foot dress shop in a suburban downtown location. He said that it seems like I am a far cry with what my life is today. I thought about all of the places where I have spoken professionally across the United States and around the world. I have written 15 books and have had my articles published in more countries than I can name. So what, who cares? In writing this I am feeling awkward because it sounds as if I am bragging and full of myself. Anyone who does know me, knows that is the farthest thing from who I am. I am saying this because I rarely look backwards. I am constantly looking for ways of making things better and I look at the world which holds infinite possibilities.

There are more opportunities today than ever before for the independent and small business person. Sure, there are a thousand reasons why a business will fail but all it takes is one idea to make it stand out and differentiate itself from its competition.

This past year has been a challenging and difficult year for many while a wonderful year for many as well. Is there a common denominator? Perhaps there is. Maybe it is more a common personality trait that is constantly looking for ways to make something work. Oh sure, knowing what doesn’t work may help you to eliminate paths not to journey down. Does that negative talk help you to find the path that has that gem of an idea to put you on a path to make it work?

Last week I worked at a wonderful bridal business in Plano, TX that is helping to recreate the wedding industry with the use of only one word. They don’t have salespeople, sales associates, sales coordinators, or even use the word consultant the way many bridal shops will. They use the word “stylist” to refer to members of their staff who help to style the entire wedding. It’s as if they are brand managers who are controlling every aspect of the brand. After all, every brand has a personality and everything a company does must reinforce that personality. An example would be you will never see Ozzy Osbourne endorsing a Betty Crocker product. It just doesn’t go together.

Every wedding has a personality as well. The wedding stylist is working to control that personality in every aspect of the wedding from invitations to the look of all involved in the wedding and the look and feel of where the wedding is held and what kind of experience the guests will experience. By looking at themselves as stylists, it opens the door to so many possibilities. It increases the level of service and the connection between the bride and the business and the stylist. The stylist becomes a valuable resource as opposed to a salesperson trying to earn a bigger commission.

The wedding industry has been challenging, to say the least, over the past few years due to pricing and competitive reasons and has seen many stores close. And every one of those stores will probably tell you the reasons why it closed. Maybe it is because they didn’t have enough reasons why customers would find a path to their doors instead of looking for reasons why the business wouldn’t work.

This is just one small example of making an old concept re-invented and re-vitalized. The world is changing because of the new inventions that are changing our lives. We can change our world by looking for and changing the way we do what we do. Instead of telling us the reasons why something won’t work, let’s look for those reasons that will make 2012 the greatest year you have ever had. I am committed to make 2012 that kind of year for me. We have more innovative ways of making your lives better and more profitable than any other year. Get ready for the excitement and the fun.

I look forward to sharing these ideas in the weeks ahead. Happy Holidays and remember, 2012 will be filled with great opportunities.