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Specialty Retailers: Hidden Profit, Zero-Cost Checklist

Posted by Tom Lombardo | Fri, Oct 03, 2014 @ 10:30 AM

retailers hidden profit checklistThe autumnal equinox marks a critical transition point for most specialty retail shop owners and managers. It’s around now that your stress level skyrockets as you clear out the summer collection and prepare for the holidays.

Since we’re in the business of alleviating some of your stress by protecting your cash flow, we did some research for you that might alleviate a little more – and that might help you plan your holiday presentation.

There are two major components: color and you.

Color first. Customers take about a minute and a half to form an opinion of your shop’s environment, and color dominates that thought process.Color and Discount Sales Strategy

Think about Target’s logo for a moment: a red bull’s-eye. Imagine walking into the store. Red everywhere. Why red? Because it’s associated with the root chakra at the base of your spine – it evokes a survival response that increases heart rate and appetite and that makes you want to seek physical safety. You need to find the deals and to stock up for the future, which is precisely the state of mind Target wants you to have while you’re hunting through their store. They don’t want you thinking too much; they want you hungry.

Now think about Payless: their logo is a giant orange word and there’s orange throughout the store. Why? Because orange makes you aggressive, excited, passionate and ready to make things happen. It makes you feel expressive and assertive which motivates you to find the shoe that will satisfy those desires. You need to make a statement and you need to do it right now because you’re a confident person who knows what you want.

How about Best Buy: all yellow, the color of your solar plexus chakra, right in the very center of your body. It’s all about personal power and self-esteem. It stimulates your mind so you can think about all the technical details relevant to their products, but ultimately yellow impels you to buy the thing that will help you show off the most. You feel youthful and your future is bright so why not splurge for the bigger screen or the more powerful processor?

Get it? It’s all about “buy, buy buy!” and “now, now now!”

Color and Your Sales Psychology

retail sales psychologyObviously you’ll use red, yellow and orange in your fall displays, but you won’t bludgeon your customer with these colors the way discount retailers do. You’d probably drive people away if you did.

They come to you for a completely different shopping experience.

More of a green experience than anything else, actually, since green conveys tranquility, money and relaxation. People subconsciously associate it with wealth and abundance. It’s the color of the heart chakra and evokes a healing, loving, open feeling. Your customer will look for things that she wants to share with others.

Or maybe it’s really a blue experience you want to provide. That’s the throat chakra’s color and it creates a feeling flowing with deep expression and meaning. Serene and tranquil, blue evokes the expansive mind-space of wide open skies and aromatic, rippling water. People settle into blue to do their most thought provoking and precise work, so once you’ve helped your customer make a selection, you have a sale.

Then again, perhaps your merchandise requires more of a purple ambiance, since purple is the color of the crown chakra at the top of the head – where, they say, our normal mind connects with the divine. Purple is wise and imaginative and explores possibilities beyond the realm of everyday experience. It’s alluring and mysterious at the same time, and suggests that there is more to your merchandise than meets the eye.

You and Color

No matter what, your personal presence will impact your customer at least as much as your shop’s color scheme. 

Just recently Facebook proved it. They performed an experiment because, as their researcher explained, they “felt that it was important to investigate the common worry that seeing friends post positive content leads to people feeling negative or left out.” They didn’t ask user’s permission to conduct the experiment, which caused the company a considerable amount of grief, but they did make an interesting discovery: when people saw their news feed full of positive news and happy people, they responded by being positive and happy – exactly the opposite of the “common worry” Facebook wanted to study.

So to at least some degree your customer will mimic your attitude. Which would be fine if you were in a green, blue or purple mood…but you’re not. You’re in the red, orange and yellow zone, stressing to unload summer merchandise and trying to anticipate what will drive profits during the holiday season.

Unfortunately, our research didn’t find a cure-all for stress. But we did find some techniques that you can use while you’re on the sales floor that will help you help your customer find the perfect item – and buy it.

Involve Your Customer

increase retail profitsYou want to bring your presence into line with your color scheme, so try to cause your actions and your speech to arise from the chakras that lead to sales in your particular store. Use your colors to capture your attention and bring it into the present.

And focus on completing the shopping experience for your customer. Selling is not part of this process.

It’s all about the experience, and to make it work you need to give it away. Sales psychologists call it “reciprocity,” and the sincerity of the gesture is what gives it power. If you expect anything at all in return, your customer will sense it and the impact will be lost.

But if you give them a brilliant experience just because you can, just because you want to, and also because you’re incredibly good at it, you will create a happy customer who may even become your advocate.

You can even insist that your customer play along.

This is new in sales psychology and arises from differences between online and in-store shopping. In-store shopping has a communal nature. The customer is not just responding to you; she is also responding to the other customers. It’s OK for you to wordlessly but clearly demand a level of politeness and decorum that will make the shopping experience that much more colorful for everyone involved.

Your Secret Weapon

When it comes to wordless communication, there’s nothing as powerful as a genuine smile. Genuine smiles take over your whole face and your eyes, and everyone can tell if you’re faking it. If you’ve ever watched America’s Next Top Model you’ve heard Tyra Banks coach people on this to an elaborate degree. She even invented a word for it: “smize,” which means to “smile with your eyes.” Here’s a lesson:

Studies show that people find a “smize” more attractive than perfect make-up. And don’t think for an instant that you can turn this on when someone walks in and then drop it when you’re alone. People can see a smile from 300 feet away, so “smizing” even when you’re alone might literally draw people to you.

Your Other Secret Weapon

If you want your presence to reflect your color scheme, and if you want to provide a stellar customer experience, and if you want to influence every customer to contribute to your shop’s ambiance, and if you intend to do that by mastering the smize, then to pull all that off you need to minimize the stress in your life and your business.

And we can help you there. According to several Federal Reserve studies Americans prefer to write checks for big ticket items, and judging by our clients, that is certainly the case for specialty retailers. Unfortunately, con artists have also read the studies, and according to Fraud.org check fraud is the single most common type of fraud attempted.

You’re an entrepreneur and so you’ve been around the block a few times. You know full well that you can’t tell anything about a person, for certain, just by looking at them. But you’re also human and when you manage to put together a great sale you know that your enthusiasm to conclude the business can cloud your judgment.

So don’t put yourself in a position where you’re the one deciding if you’ll accept a check or not. Locate, hire and lean on a check guarantee company. With guarantee in place, you get paid even in the check is returned.

So keep your chakras glowing, your smize blazing, and your checks guaranteed. Soon enough you’ll close the last of your summer sales and start making your first holiday ones. Learn more here. 

Check Guarantee Insider's Guide

Topics: Retail

Written by Tom Lombardo