Welcome to my column once again and I don’t know about you, but I thought that January flew by!
On a positive note, I would like to wish each and every one of you a very happy Valentines day and encourage you to create an opportunity. Go on and try that new line to sell on your stall and maybe even send that card? I know some of us did get a lot of snow towards the end of January, but it seems the majority of us suffered from bad weather “Press warnings” rather than actual bad weather early on in January, which was very frustrating as a lot of my regulars gave the market and their normal routine a miss whilst the warnings were in place.
I was very upset to see the recession, and arguably technology, have claimed another three victims in Jessops, HMV and Blockbuster.
It seems that as we destroy the Amazon rain forest on one hand, we fuel ‘Amazon’ online with more sales than ever and they keep breaking sales figures year on year.
It is easy for us to blame ‘technology’ for the failure of the above mentioned businesses, but for every part of me that feels very sorry for the failure of the businesses causing the ever changing face of our high streets and of course the tragic loss of jobs, as traders we need to also realise that technology and the likes of ‘Amazon’ are just a new version of the competition we have always faced and we need to come up with new ways to compete against them.
I think it’s no coincidence the three stores that went to the wall in January all sold electrical goods and it seems to me the problem is customers using us as ‘showrooms’ to touch and get the feel for products, before going home to look online for the best price and then get the product delivered to their door. This is the reason we have to up our game as retailers and make sure that we give the customer reason to buy there and then, rather than go home and have a think about it and end up purchasing the product online.
I know myself that profit margins are tough and I would not encourage discounts as the way to close a sale for two main reasons, the first being of course we don’t want to lose any profit on the sale and the second, a lot of online businesses offer a price match promise anyway. So lets give the online retailers a real run for their money, do what we do best and use our customer service skills to bring added value to the sale and encourage the customer to buy there and then. Ideas for this include; free delivery the same day, simply drop the goods off on your way home (I always use this and it works really well, even with the smaller items); offer something free into the sale that doesn’t cost you too much, i.e. batteries for the product, carry case, extra charger etc; on going technical support i.e. if they have a problem operating/using the product they can always feel welcome to come down and ask for help with it; free recipes to encourage customers to shop more regular at food stores and a way of selling extra goods. Literally anything that you can give the customer for ‘free’, which hasn’t got a high cost value to you, is worth its weight in gold to them and works wonders to close a sale. This tactic of offering added value to a sale can also be applied to almost any sale. A great example was over Christmas we were offering free Mistletoe, which costs next to nothing, with every Christmas Tree we sold. The customers were over the moon and it really helped close lots of sales as the customer felt they were receiving a discount of £3.99, when in fact it only cost me £1.00
I sincerely hope that you are all having a prosperous 2013 so far and you are enjoying my column. Some feedback from fellow traders is always very welcome and a great way to do this and promote your business and your products is via “Twitter” - my twitter name is @TheAdamCorbally and I always follow traders back.
It was great to meet some fellow traders who attended my Business and sales skills bootcamp in January, which was held at the Raddison Manchester, and I would personally like to invite you all to this months to be held at the same venue on Wednesday the 20th. Please get in touch via my website AdamCorbally.co.uk for availability and be sure to mention Market Trade News to receive your trader discount.
I am really excited for this years ‘Love Your Local Market’ campaign and I hope that you all have your thinking caps on for ideas of how to promote YOUR Local market!
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