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| Providing You Tools To Make More Money! | April 2010 |
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| Greetings!
I am asked all the time why I write this newsletter and teach at VDTA and other events. Don't you have enough to do with your stores and business? The answer is very simple and self serving. On one hand I really enjoy helping people and seeing them grow and make more money. That's the fun part. I love hearing "I learned so much from your class." or "You gave me the confidence to raise my prices." I never get that from my employees!
The real reason is more self serving. I am scared to death that if as a group we don't become more profitable and sell more products that I will not have products to sell in my stores in the future. When I started in this business independent vacuum stores were 12% of the market. I have heard numbers as low a 3% now.
We can not survive as an industry if we don't have profitable dealers who pay their bills and have more new dealers come into the business to replace the ones going out of business. We have a great business model that we need to share with others so we can grow as an industry.
So .... yes, I enjoy speaking and getting great dealers together and sharing our successes. However, the main reason is to do what little I can to help us survive as an vital and prosperous industry.
See you next month.
Howard J. Anderson
Long View Retail Consulting
PS: I am picking up the new puppy tonight! Elizabeth has never had a baby. Oh boy is she in for a supprise. But .... it's sooooo cute! Should be fun.
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If You Accept Credit Cards, You Better Read This
Credit cards seem to be a way of doing business today. Most people don't carry much cash. Checks can be a challenge. Therefore, you really have to accept at least Visa and Mastercard. The question I always debate is "What about the others?". Discover is getting easier to deal with because the funds are now deposited with Visa and Master Card in our case.
My big challenge is with American Express. It seems that for just about any obscure reason they will refund money to the customer and you have to fight to get it back.
One case, a lady just dropped the machine off at our store after nine months and said she didn't like it and didn't want it. We sent her a letter telling we didn't accept her machine, to pick up her machine and that we only have a 7 day return policy. Amex said that because she didn't have the product and we wrote her a letter that said we did, they had to give her back her money.
What to do: Never admit to accepting anything back.
Another, the person had one vacuum serviced and purchased another identical machine. Two months later without a call or anything from the customer, we get a notice of a charge back. We sent in all the information as requested. A couple of weeks later... swoosh.... the money is gone. Why? When we sent in the information we printed out an invoice on large paper instead of a receipt so they could read it easier. On the invoice it had their address plus their address as the ship to address. Amex concluded that we had no proof of delivery and it was delivered to their house even though we had a signed credit card receipt and they picked it up in the store. It took us contesting the chargeback three times before we finally got it reversed in our favor.
One more story. As a compromise, we gave a customer a store credit for an electrical part returned because it was after the 7 days and we have no returns on electrical parts. He used some of the credit and then contested the charge. Amex gave him a full refund including the amount he used saying that we had no proof that we changed the terms of the original signature and we had no proof that he ever agreed to the new terms accepting a store credit.
What to do: Make sure the customer signs something agreeing to accept the credit.
As you can see, my hair is standing on end! I could go on and on but I ask "Do we need Amex?". Some people prefer Amex but still carry a Visa or Master Card. The Amex charges are higher than the others. I doubt that we would lose sales if we didn't accept them. There are definitely a great case for not accepting it. However, many people prefer to use it for points or other reasons so we are still going to accept it for now.
There is one way that you can protect yourself from these unreasonable chargebacks. Call your credit card processor TODAY and tell them you want to change your credit card receipt footer to read:
"No refunds without written approval."
If the customer asks about it say that the written approval is on their receipt and state your return policy there. It will save you lots of headaches if a customer ever contests a charge.
WARNING: Sometimes when your credit card company downloads an update to your terminal and it resets everything to "Default" status. When this happens you will need to call them back to get the proper footer put on your terminal. The "No refunds without written approval" is not the default. |
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VDTA/SDTA Las Vegas Convention  This year's VDTA/SDTA was great. Unfortunately, I didn't get much of a chance to walk the floor or visit with many dealers. I taught four classes at the VDTA and the Clean Home Association meeting and it really kept me occupied. My first class was at 8:15AM and it was standing room only. I was a little worried with it being so early. My hats off to all who made it. If you missed my class, I recorded "Make an Extra $20,000 in Your Service Department Even if You Think It's Impossible". If you would like to save $100 you can pre-order it before I send in my duplication order for only $97 but only until April 30th. It is packed full of great information. Click here to order. |
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Tip of The Month  Who is your "best" customer? There is a huge segment of your town that are what they call the "affluent boomer". If you are like us, they make up a huge percentage of our profit base. If you are like most businesses, analyzing where your profit comes from, 80% of your revenue will come from 20% of your customers and a huge percentage of these people will fall into the "affluent boomer" category. With that in mind, as a whole this is what the "affluent boomer" wants: -
To be treated special.
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Do business with someone who can the job right.
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Do business with someone they can trust to do the job.
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They want one person to do it all or coordinate it all.
They look around at the present and know they worked hard and they believe that they deserve all the special treatment that they get. They are willing
pay for bundles of service and products.
With that in mind, wouldn't it make sense to see how you can attract, service and retain this category of customer?
Tip of the month: In your advertising, store displays and layout, bundling packages and how you treat your customers, remember who's got the money and who is willing to spend it on high profit items in your store. They are willing to pay more as long as you provide superior customer service. You can even give them a discount on a day that you are normally slow.
The rest of the tip is to identify and pamper that 20% of your customers that give you the most income. |
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On the Lighter Side:
A Cold Lesson
A family owned a parrot that had picked up some naughty words and squawked them at the top of its voice. Nothing seemed to shut it up.
One day the minister was due to visit the home. The mother, in a panic, stuck the parrot in the freezer (after making sure to adjust the temperature so it wouldn't freeze). After the minister left, she went to let it out.
When she opened the door, the parrot hopped out.
"Learned my lesson," it squawked. "No more cursing."
"Thank goodness," said the mother.
The parrot cocked its head. "One question?"
Puzzled, the woman said, "Go ahead."
The parrot leaned its head forward, gestured toward the freezer, and whispered, "What did the chicken do?" |
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Why go to Atlanta?
The people are real nice. The pace isn't as rushed. There are great restaurants. The aquarium, zoo, museums, concerts, bars.
NO NO NO! All that is true but you need to go to Atlanta because there will be a meeting of the top dealers in the sewing an vacuum industry meeting for three days and you need to be there. Could you use some ideas to make more money? There is no better place than this.
At the Boot camp you will discover from top notch speakers the secrets of:
- Getting what you want out of your business, money, time, lifestyle
- Hiring the right employees to make you money and free up your time
- New Proven advertising methods
- The new media/Internet
- Store design that sell
There will also be:
- Time to share and network with other dealers
- Roundtable Discussions
- Makeover Hotseats
- Sales presentation roll plays
- Awards for the best ads, best In store display, best new idea and more
- So much more.
I am working almost full time to insure that this year's Boot Camp is the best ever. Together we can take your business to the next level. I have enlisted many of my mentors to make sure I have the proper mix and provide you with tons of content that you can take home and use right away to Explode the Profit in your business.
When you sign up for the Ultimate Profit Explosion Boot Camp you get my personal guarantee that you will learn great things and it will be well worth your while.
Now's the time to act. With only six months to go it is time to join the top dealers in your industry so we can all learn from each other how to grow our businesses. We already have more people signed up now than attended last year. Most of them are attendees from previous boot camps that know what a great experience it was for their business and want to come back again. We also have people that this is going to be their third event!
Click here to sign up and receive a $200 discount off the regular price. This discount won's last long. Don't delay.
For those of you that have signed up for the boot camp already, click here to register for the hotel room. There is another conference going on at the same time and I only have limited rooms available in our bock. |
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Is your stress level too high? 
All people have stress in their lives. But how do you know when you've crossed the line and have an unhealthy amount of stress?
Here are some symptoms to look for that indicate that your stress level is too high: anger, irritability, anxiety, depression, muscle pain or tension, headaches, high blood pressure, sweaty palms, rapid heartbeat, dizziness, cold hands and feet, shortness of breath and chest pains.
If you are experiencing any of these symptoms on a consistent basis and you think they are due to high stress, ask yourself the following questions:
· Do I let small problems upset me too much?
· Do I get a sense of satisfaction from the small pleasures in life?
· Am I obsessing on my worries?
· Do I suffer from feelings of self-doubt and inadequacy?
· Am I tired all the time?
· Am I angry about things now that didn't used to bother me?
· Have my eating and sleeping patterns changed?
· Am I suffering from headaches, backaches or other chronic pain?
If you think you are suffering from chronic stress, don't ignore the problem. Stress can have a lot of negative impact in your life if it goes unchecked. High stress levels can lead to medical conditions that are serious, like high blood pressure or heart attacks. Consult with your health care professional if you think you have a problem with stress. -adapted from The 10 Minute Guide to Stress Management, by Jeff Davidson |
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Why People Fail A Series of No B.S. Articles from Dan Kennedy
  Now Is The Time To Do It Differently
"Help! - I Can't Get Out Of The Box I Put Myself In!"
The fast food industry got the idea for drive-in windows from banks. I guess there was a McDonalds executive sitting at the bank drive-through one day who thought, "I don't think we can fit the milkshakes in these tubes, but..." Netjets, the leader in fractional jet ownership, now owned by Warren Buffet, owes its birth to the vacation time-share industry. The microwave in your kitchen was not originally intended to go there; its original manufacturer, Litton, believed no consumer would buy it and built them only for restaurants. When was the last time you heard of Litton? What does this tell you? That successful businesses live or die by cross-industry 'borrowing' of ideas, that inspiration more often comes from outside the box than from within. Ordinary businesses stay ordinary, their owners eking out only ordinary incomes - and working too hard for them - as long as those owners foolishly and stubbornly, mentally stay in their own tiny backyard. Breakthroughs come from bringing fresh ideas found outside one's own business in and applying them in new ways. You choose to limit or expand your income by the way you reject or embrace ideas found far afield from your present modus operandi and industry norms.
The vast majority of ordinary businesspeople with ordinary incomes and never-ending ordinary complaints about how hard they work but how little they gain, about being unable to compete with the bigger and cheaper...have this in common: they get their hands on powerful information like that in this very publication and waste their time and energy in the non-creative activity of finding all the ways it can't and doesn't apply to them. Some people have such teeny, tiny, calcified, crippled imaginations they can only appreciate an example precisely matched to them - oh, that won't work for me because her place sells pizza and I sell Chinese food, and hers is in a medium sized city and I'm in a small town, and it rains a lot where she is but it's sunny here; you have to show me an example from a Chinese restaurant in a small town where it's hot and dry. Fools stay stuck in the very limiting "But My Business Is Different" box, thereby negating the value of 99% of every successful strategy, example, model they see or are presented with.
My client list is, fortunately, chock full of people who think in very opposite ways. They get rich by finding the non-obvious opportunities. Living creatively. Adapting tried-and-true winning strategies from somewhere else to where they are. They attack each issue of my newsletter, each book I suggest to them, with yellow hi-liter and bias for action, not closed mind. They are willing, even eager to "re-imagine" their businesses while others have Bilbo Baggins' (The Hobbit) attitude: not interested in adventures - they make you late for dinner. Space here does not permit telling you such client stories, but I'd invite you to get a peek, viewing the half-hour TV show at www.In12Months.com, free of charge.
One of the most successful marketing strategies of all time is called 'gift with appointment.' Today, it brings new patients into dentists' offices, affluent investors to financial advisors' seminars, new home buyers to developments and resort communities, and is in play in hundreds of fields, helping to create millions of sales appointments every week. To the best of my knowledge, it came from a woman named Estee Lauder. I wonder how many people from how many different fields ignored it for how long, because: "Nothing having to do with selling lipsticks and perfumes could possibly apply to MY business. MY business is different."
The WHY PEOPLE FAIL articles are provided by Dan S. Kennedy, serial entrepreneur, from-scratch multi-millionaire, speaker, consultant, coach, author of 13 books including the No B.S. series (www.NoBSBooks.com), and editor of The No B.S. Marketing Letter.
I HAVE ARRANGED A SPECIAL FREE GIFT FROM DAN FOR YOU including a 2-Month Free Membership in Glazer-Kennedy Insider's Circle, newsletters, audio CD's and more: for information and to register, click here. Articles © 2010/Glazer-Kennedy Insider's Circle LLC. All rights reserved. |
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Can't eat just one! 
We have a wonderful customer and teacher who brings these treats to almost all Stony Brook Sewing Events. Judy Hannon has been making for years and they are always a huge hit. Thanks for sharing Judy!
1/2 lb Butter or margarine
2 Cups of Sugar
2 Cups of Chopped Dates
2 Cups of Chopped Dried Apricots
1 Cup of Chopped Walnuts
2 Eggs, Beaten
2 Teaspoons Vanilla Extract
5 Cups of Rice Krispies
1 Large Package Shredded Coconut
- Cook together the butter, sugar, dates, apricots, walnuts and eggs for ten minutes stirring constantly.
- Bring to a boil stirring constantly until mixture turns beige or brownish in color and the sugar dissolves.
- Remove from heat and stir in Rice Krispies and extract.
- Spread half of the coconut on the bottom of a 15"x11"x1" Jelly Roll pan.
- Spread the apricot and date mixture on top of the coconut.
- Sprinkle the remaining coconut on top.
- Cut into 3/4" squares.
- Refrigerate for at least 1 1/2 hours before serving.
Thanks Judy. I love this recipe. I want some now!!!!!! |
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