Long View Newsletter
Providing You Tools To Make More Money!October 2011
Articles In This Newsletter
Tip of the Week
What's Different?
Help!
The Original Social Media
Hi (Contact First Name),

We are rapidly approaching our "busy" season according to the experts. I think that their view of business is a little scary. To think that we have to work all year to loose money just to rely upon 6 weeks to "make it rich"? If I had to operate that way I think I would have high blood presser, be bald from pulling out my hair, be stressed out all the time and hate my life. It would be like Halloween every day. Thank goodness that our business can be different.

We are getting the first snow of the season before November! I guess that it is Global Warming. I am ready for it. I purchased a 2004 Ford Expedition and put a Boss snow plow on it. I like being open when it snows! There is nothing worse than waiting for the snow plow. Well maybe a few things but I love to plow snow.

The new store is doing great. We were up substantially over our old location every month since we opened. I am building out a 4000 square foot addition to the show room inside the warehouse. The customers are really excited and are looking forward to what we are doing. They are even bringing by their husbands to see the work being done. Maybe I should put them to work.

There is no other retail business that I know that has as many revenue streams and possibilities to make money as ours does. What can you do to tap into additional revenue? Don't just sit there and wait for someone to stop in. Find things that will bring in new customers and bring back the old ones.

I have been running an ad for years that you may have seen before. The concept is that I want people to come to my store and I will pay them $5 to come. I first did it about 7 years ago with great results and to this day I am still getting at least one card a month into the store. I made a mistake and forgot to put an expiration date on it. I have been troubled by that for years because all the experts say to put on an expiration date and I think I know what in this case it still is working. If they get the coupon and don't need anything, they will throw away the coupon if it expires. If there is no date than they may keep it for years, looking at it over and over again and they when they need something they use the coupon. I don't know what is better.

You can click here to download the ad. I had over 300 people bring in the ad and the average sale was $47.23 this time.

Make sure you read the whole newsletter. There is some great stuff in here and valuable information to download if I may say so myself. :-)

Till the next time ..... Always Be Selling,

Howard J. Anderson
Long View Retail Consulting
Tip of the Week

Spend as much to get your existing customers into the store as you do to get new ones.

All to often we are looking for the new customers. Scatter shooting with newspaper ads or Valpack mailings and totally ignoring out existing customers. You want them to come back. They are the easiest customer to sell to and the cheapest to advertise to. They know you. They hopefully trust you. They are already accustomed to giving you money. Don't let them feel ignored. This may not make you feel good but they will forget about you if you don't keep in contact.

There are many things that you can do to get them back. Here are a few:
  1. Customer appreciation party.
  2. Just give them a call to say hello. 
  3. Annual service post card.
  4. Preferred customer sale.
  5. Private sale.   
  6. Birthday Card.
  7. Regular Email blast from your store.
  8. Market similar products that they might need. HEPA vac ... Air Purifiers.
  9. Reminder to change bag and belt. 
The Tip of the Month is: Spend part of your advertising budget on your existing customers.

 
This is Going to be Different!
RIO

 

You may be asking, what is going to be different?  

 

We are all looking for that Silver Bullet that will change our business over night. However, in the words of the great Ronald Regan: "Well ....There is no silver bullet." But I have silver bullets available for you!  

 

Most people are familiar with a six shooter used in the wild west. At the Ultimate Profit Explosion Boot Camp I am going to load up my big 10 shooter with 10 silver bullets that you can use as soon as you get home. They are my top ten best things that I have learned, done and perfected for our industry in the 30+ years that I have been in business that you can't miss.

 

I really never thought I did anything special in my retail stores. I thought everyone was doing what I was doing. But in talking to other dealers I found out a lot of the things that I was doing no one else was doing. I heard many times that what I was doing wouldn't work in their business only to have them come back later to tell me that it did work for them also. I don't just have ideas, I have put my ideas to work in my "test Lab", my own stores.   

 

If you want to know what the 10 silver bullets are, click here.  

 

There are only about 25 out of the 6,000 dealers in the country who have been able to accomplish what I have for any length of time. Time is important because anyone can be a shooting star, reaching great heights only to return to mediocrity. I have consistently be innovating new ideas that I have used in my business to grow my business year after year 

 

What I feel makes me unique is that I have relentlessly studied our business as well as others. From information mined, I worked hard to create duplicatable systems that I could train my staff to do. This is your last chance to get all this great information in one place since I will never again put on such an event.

 

I truly believe that two heads are better than one so for the first time and for a limited time, I am offering you to bring your spouse or significant other for FREE. You won't have to go home and explain what you are so excited about after attending the Boot Camp. To sign up both of you, Click Here NOW!   

 

You know that this is the best place for you to go for the latest information to grow your business. Now is the time to at least let me know if you are going to attend. Drop me an email and let me know how I can help. howard@longviewretail.com    

   

The event is at the Rio in Vegas. I have negotiated a special Suite Price of $99 a night. I have seen the rooms and they are wonderful. We will begin at 8AM sharp on April 23 and wrap it up around 2pm on April 25, 2012! There will also be a special reception on top of the Rio in the Voodo Lounge overlooking the strip. Really Cool! As you can see it will be a lot of hard work but a lot of fun also. 

 

Click here for order form.

Help! I Need HELP: contnued

We all need employees to grow our business. You will live and die by the quality of your employees.

Hopefully you made up your own list of questions for the phone interview of prospective employees that I discussed last month. I will assume that you did so Click here to see my form the we use as the first step to hiring.

Once you have completed the phone interviews, review all applications along with their resumes and compare them. Look for trends like 2 months here and 4 months there. If you see that they are a short term employee for others they will probably be a short term one for you also. Look for the reasons why they left. History will repeat itself. Pick 5-10 who you feel deserve more attention.

Now that you have narrowed down your pool of prospective employees, what's next? Make up a list of questions that will help you weed out the undesirables faster. They should be short and precise. I got the next tip from Harry Friedman, craft a letter to present to the applicant that will answer many of the questions that they may have. You give this to them along with your application and have them fill it out. Here is a sample of one of the letters that we use.   

Your homework is to come up with 5-10 questions of what you can ask prospective employees that will help you find out if they will be a good fit. While you are at working on your business, make up a complete job description. Know what you are looking for and what they must do.

Next month I will attach my questions but DO YOURS NOW!
The Original Social Media
  
By Ron Sheetz   


There's buzz about Facebook, YouTube and Twitter being the "hot" social media sites.  Quite honestly, they're "bright shiny marketing objects" right now; and there's a lot of competition for that space.  Client testimonials are the original social media/social proof; more specifically video testimonials.  They're easy to get and you can re-purpose them. There are 31 ways to repurpose 1 video testimonial.

This'll be the first in a series of articles over the next few months where I'll show you how to ask for and get powerfully persuasive video testimonials.  The tradition model for capturing a video testimonial is to ask your client for one, they say yes and you stick a Flip camera in front of them.  This is asking them to get psychologically and emotionally naked in front of a camera.  Most people's "knee jerk" reaction is to say no; it's like walking into a retail store and the clerk asks, "Can I help you?"  Your instinctive response is, "No, I'm just looking."  Those clients that agree to give you a testimonial are going to babble off the first thing that comes to mind.  These types of testimonials limit your ability to use them in your marketing.

Don't leave crafting the message of the testimonial to your clients... they're not qualified to tell your story, your way.  You can get them to say exactly what you want if you know the formula behind it.  First, draft a list of objections and questions you're often asked about your product or service during a sales presentation.  What pains do you or your product solve for clients?  Next month I'll discuss recognizing "Testimonial Triggers." Testimonial triggers are to a marketer what "buying signs" are to a sales person.  They identify the very moment the client will be the most agreeable to giving you a powerfully persuasive testimonial.

For questions pertaining to this month's subject submit them to me at www.AskRonSheetz.com