She has found puberty is kicking in earlier and earlier, and that teenagers are taking on adult roles later and later.

She says in part, “In the past, to become a good gatherer or hunter, cook or caregiver, you would actually practice gathering, hunting, cooking and taking care of children all through middle childhood and early adolescence.

But you’d do all that under expert adult supervision and in the protected world of childhood, where you would have experienced the impact of your inevitable failures and learned from them.”

When the motivational juice of puberty arrived, you’d be ready to go after the real rewards, in the world outside, with new intensity and exuberance, but you’d also have learned the skill and control to do it effectively and reasonably safely.

She goes on to say that even the basic skills kids would have learned while supervised by an adult regarding cooking, care-giving, and the accompanying jobs like baby-sitting and having a paper route have disappeared.

Consider her statement that for “most of our history, children have started their internships when they were seven, not 27.”

Failure to Launch

Researchers now know that experience shapes the brain, and they are finding teenagers’ brains haven’t been properly instructed and exercised.

Kids today are plenty smart but because they have been raised by a generation of parents providing instant gratification for their every want and need, their connection to life experience in the outside world isn’t there. For example….

• They might have a lot of sexual education but still get pregnant.
• They might know all the driving rules but still get in accidents.
• They might know all about the chemical properties of food, but that doesn’t help them make a souffle.

Kids today don’t know mediocre from excellent, because this generation has been raised to believe that as long as they do the work – they should get an A. Or got a trophy if they joined a team.

The more we’ve taken vocational education out of schools, the more crippled teenagers have become as adults.

Mentorship, so common in human evolution, simply isn’t being used to show these young minds the ropes.

When we take today’s youth and put them to work in retail we need to realize we need to instill the training they missed as children to make them successful employees.

What it will take

We need to show them the difference between mediocre and excellent and what it takes to stay there.

What we need to hire are kids who are trainable and then reward their ability with supervision that goes beyond simple task management.

If we are call on them to multi-task, we need to train them to be excellent multi-taskers. Your training is only successful if you remember you have to train them in the basic skills they missed before we can train them on more advanced skills and – just as importantly – before they are left on their own.

Again, we have many smart young adults, but research is showing they haven’t had the right experiences to shape their brains for success as adults. That’s up to us, now more than ever.

As long as retailers can give challenging real-life experiences with a degree of protection that comes from engaged supervisors, we can give these young people a path to success, not just a part-time job.

You’ll meet one such business owner in tomorrow’s blog.

Does this change your perception of teenagers on your staff or in your house? What do you think retailers must change in order to make younger employees successful?

Jon Severson mural in the lobby

So based on the case study, these are some of the things you might look at in your own business:

• Are you concerned with getting people in and out quickly – instead of building a relationship with them?
• Do you make sure your business is a place people want to return to? Start with the things they will see or touch.
• What do you need to purchase to upgrade and differentiate yourself from the competition?
• What stock have you wanted to buy but were afraid you didn’t have the customer base to justify it? Maybe you need to court a different customer…
• What systems can you put in place to make your business remarkable?
• Are you monitoring what your employees say and do to sell your merchandise? Do they have a cowboy culture where everything is negotiable? If so, how’s that working for your profitability?
• How are you keeping your face in front of your customers? Are you communicating through a variety of channels on a regular basis?
• Would partnering with competitors help you all grow your businesses?

Now the story concludes …..

Phase 4

Never stop upgrading
To give the property a unique surfing persona, we contacted artist Jon Severson and bought the rights to have his work made into murals for the common areas and guestrooms. The property was re-landscaped and new furniture was added for the balconies.

A separate computer desk was added to the lobby so guests could print their boarding passes and check e-mail. Fresh flowers were ordered for the guestrooms, lobby, and breakfast room. An apartment building next door was purchased to provide suites.

Phase 5

A Moment of Clarity
As property revenues increased over the years, the nagging question about our brand alliance loomed larger and larger.

It all came to a head when the chain’s inspector showed up for the usual inspection…

One of the owners had taken him around to show him all the improvements since his last visit, including the Severson murals, the large flat-screen TVs, the remodeled breakfast room, and other guest amenities.

Expecting a top-notch review, the front desk and housekeepers awaited the best inspection score ever.

That’s when it fell apart…

The inspector began his report with a picture he had taken of the underside of a hinge that had a bit of rust on it. The owner became incensed at his lack of consideration of the extreme makeover.

No one had installed crown mouldings like that, had murals like that, presented a unified upscale image to that brand’s customers like that! No, for the sake of a rusty hinge behind and underneath a bathroom door, the inspector chose to point up something no guest would see.

The owner stood up  and said, “Get off my property!” The stunned inspector said he was just doing his job causing the owner to repeat the command again. The inspector packed his things and quickly got in his car and left.

The owners reviewed their agreement to see how quickly they could debrand from the chain and sent the letter off that week.

A few months later, the new brand debuted with a red surfboard in its logo. Frequent travelers commented they always wondered why it had been aligned with the previous brand.

The Results

You Like Us, You Really Like Us
Beginning in 2002, the front desk agents started getting a new response to one of the standard questions, “How did you find about us?”

“TripAdvisor,” they answered.  That day we went online to see what they were talking about.

Lo and behold, we had been reviewed a couple times and they liked us, they really liked us!  In fact, the reviews quoted the reservation and checkin speeches because the benefits mentioned in those speeches resonated with our guests. Out of 17 hotels, we quickly rose to be the #1 hotel in Newport Beach, where they still stand today ten years later.

Award Season
Fast forward to 2006 – we received a call from TripAdvisor telling us the hotel had won the Top Travelers Choice Award.

Fast forward to February 2012 – the hotel received word from TripAdvisor that they are the number one rated hotel in Orange County, California, that’s number one of 381 hotels and inns representing 19,574,187 rooms.

While one of the owners has retired, the other enjoys a reputation second to none.  The front desk staff and housekeepers, some who have been there twenty years, are deservedly proud of their hotel.

Hats off to the owners who nearly twenty years ago embarked on a customer-focused program that continues to deliver the goods. Their investment of time and money cannot be overstated.

What it takes to succeed hasn’t changed; it’s about being customer focused.

As these owners proved, when your passion runs deeply, you can compete.

Recap For Retailers, Restaurateurs  and Hoteliers

• Know what you have to work with.
• Acknowledge your limitations.
• Act “as if” until you are what you aspire to be.
• Know you probably need to raise prices.
• Look at your competitors to help grow your market.
• Know that without training, your  employees will probably  turn to a discount to get the sale.
• Learn your customers but don’t be afraid of focusing on more profitable ones.
• Success begets success.
• Always be upgrading.
• Find ways to stay in touch with your customers and remind them of you – not just a sale.
• Form your marketing around benefits to the customer, not features.
• The world is changing fast; if you base your operation on how you’ve always done it, you’re missing it.

One final thought, imagine what that award-winning hotel could have provided to the brand that couldn’t see the forest for the trees…just sayin’…

I hope you enjoyed this story, and I would love to read your comments below. If you missed the first parts they are here:

• Part I – What Retailers Can Learn From a Hotel Makeover
• Part II – How to Get Business – 11 Lessons From a Business Makeover

About Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor

Companies from some of the very largest, to some of the smallest, from luxury brands to startups, from franchises to regional chains contact me as a retail consultant because they are looking for results. An owner may have read one of my books, seen my videos, seen me on TV, heard me speak or read this blog to get a taste of my people-focused philosophy and my methods.

While every client and project is different, the ability to enlist me as a retail consultant who has a fresh set of eyes to look at the challenges you are facing results in a focused, effective and creative path to profitable sales.

No matter what your size, let’s see how I can help you; click the Take the first step button below to contact me.

Phase 1

Encourage Longer Stays
We instituted a 2-night minimum stay for Saturday nights to cater to travelers wanting to spend time in Newport Beach, moving away from the “I need a bed tonight” crowd. We raised all the room rates but charged more for premium and view rooms.

Create A Better Experience
We purchased 5-star hotel beds for the premium rooms (and eventually all the rooms.) We expanded our free video library to include 100 new and classic movies which guests could check out to watch in their rooms. We added boogie boards, towels and chairs that guests could take to the beach for no extra charge. We baked cookies every day at 3pm for guests to have at 4pm after checkin.

Assess the crew’s strengths and institute training

Sales training was created to increase bookings both on the phone and with walk-ins. Discounting was discouraged but fallback policies were included that set limits for negotiating late night walk-ins.

Phase 2

Be Remarkable
Your employees are your greatest asset. We took the checkin speech and made it a script for the front desk to use whenever they made a reservation. No longer would they just ask for when, how many rooms, and for a credit card deposit. They would ask, “While I check that rate, may I tell you a little bit about us?”  This led to more conversions of callers to bookings and cut down on no-shows. Once guests developed a relationship with the front desk agent on a call, they looked forward to meeting them in person.

Market to those who know you.
From examining the zip codes of those who stayed with us, we discovered they skewed heavily from Phoenix and Las Vegas. We couldn’t afford big ads in those markets’ papers, and we knew those ads would only be incrementally successful. Instead, we entered the past several years’ registration cards into a database. A newsletter was developed and mailed out every 2 months to that list, often with a contest.

Retool Your Customers
We elected to become focused as a hotel that promised a cozy getaway for couples. The double queen beds were replaced with a single king for couples’ comfort, rather than to cater to large families. Previously the hotel had only 3 rate seasons; this was expanded to 8, and rates went up again with upgraded furnishings.

Spread the Wealth
A revenue goal was set for the front desk staff to meet each month. If the hotel hit its goal, each of the front desk staff split a cash bonus. This was presented at a monthly meeting of the staff which covered what was working, what wasn’t and how we could improve even more.  Pictures of staff were included in the newsletters to build on the personal connections between staff and guests.

Phase 3

Keep upgrading for your customers
We became one of the first non-smoking California hotels and added a $250 penalty for anyone who smoked in a room. We added all new windows, DSL, new air conditioning, furnishings: drapes, headboards, bedding, plush carpeting and tiled bathrooms.

Wonder What Helps, What Hurts
As revenues climbed, the owners began to question the wisdom of staying with the brand that was potentially keeping customers away. That brand image no longer matched their premium boutique hotel. Looking to a future separate from the brand, we installed a new reservation system.

Keep Your Face In Front of Your Customer
We sent custom postcards with an aerial view of Newport Beach and our property to all guests who stayed two or more nights. We included a personal note and an invitation to return soon signed by their favorite front desk agent.

Build Community
To build more demand for the smaller inns within a few miles, we went to the Convention and Visitors Bureau with a brochure featuring just the smaller properties. A spreadsheet was created which included all those small inns’ rates, amenities, locations, and contact information so if one was sold out, it could recommend a neighbor and not lose the guest to Huntington or Laguna Beach.

A Takeaway…

Before sharing the shocking conclusion to the makeover,  read on as I share more tips you should be considering to turn your shop, restaurant or other business from one with all the discounts to the standout in your neighborhood.

About Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor

Companies from some of the very largest, to some of the smallest, from luxury brands to startups, from franchises to regional chains contact me as a retail consultant because they are looking for results. An owner may have read one of my books, seen my videos, seen me on TV, heard me speak or read this blog to get a taste of my people-focused philosophy and my methods.

While every client and project is different, the ability to enlist me as a retail consultant who has a fresh set of eyes to look at the challenges you are facing results in a focused, effective and creative path to profitable sales.

No matter what your size, let’s see how I can help you.

 The challenge

While aligned with a major brand, this small Newport Beach inn had stagnant revenues.  During the summer months, the property was often booked for Saturday night. These one night stays were roadblocks for those who wanted to stay for several nights.  During the rest of the year, the inn saw mostly Saturday night business.

I was called in to grow revenues and craft the inn’s premium reputation.

The situation

The inn was, and still is, located in a residential neighborhood of multi-million dollar homes on the Balboa Peninsula.

Not all stores are lucky to be in such a neighborhood, but that fact alone doesn’t make them a success.

The property didn’t have a pool, a restaurant, or a bar. Wouldn’t you expect every hotel to have at least a pool?

What it did have was the white sands of Newport Beach 100 paces from its front door and several of the town’s best restaurants within walking distance.

Consider the assets that make you standout… and are you missing something your customers expect your type of business to have?

The inn had two passionate owners who had exacting standards of cleanliness and hospitality. One had a greeting he personally delivered at checkin, which told hotel guests of all the amenities the inn provided free of charge.

Have you examined your store in terms of cleanliness and hospitality?

To accommodate more families, rooms had been outfitted with 2 queen beds, but it was not uncommon to see families show up with two parents and three or four children. This impacted the free breakfast buffet in the morning which sometimes ran out of some types of food, which caused complaints.

The front-desk agents consistently discounted the rooms; one even bragged that he offered people a $69 rate and always sold the rooms.

In short, this was a premium product being sold like it was a motel along the Interstate, nothing special.

The prescription

This was before the Internet when the only ways to market your property were through the brand’s network of other properties and your own four-color brochure.

While the brand provided a vital link in making reservations, it didn’t really fit with the emerging tony image of this boutique inn nestled among multi-million dollar yachts and palatial homes.

We had to determine if the brand was helping or hurting us.

What do you have in your business that doesn’t really fit? It could be your marketing, your merchandise, your logo – anything that doesn’t align with your promise to customers for a better experience than with any competitor.

With renovations pending, we needed to increase revenues to be able to upgrade the rooms. Until we could afford the renovations, we had to act “as if” we already deserved a higher price.  That would come from staff training.

We needed to get customers to return to us over and over again and not just in the high season. We also needed them to choose us over the big hotels on the mainland.

Have you considered how you talk to your customers to get them to come back again and again and not just when you have a sale?

The upshot for your business…

Is there a quicker way to turn people off from shopping in bricks and mortar stores?

Target stores launched their limited-edition Jason Wu for Target line this past weekend. Monday’s news wasn’t how affordable this up-and-coming designer’s clothes were or how fashionable they were.

No, the news was that Target sold out in hours. According to investorplace.com, “Just 24 hours after the midnight unveiling, 12,000 items were on eBay, some already having sold for three to eight times their retail prices at Target.”

It got worse when a Miami Target shopper posted outraged customers watching a couple take every piece of the line and while checking out, chide the other shoppers they could buy it from them in the parking lot or on EBay.  Watch the video:

According to Business Insider, “Target’s main objective for partnering with designers is to drive traffic and create buzz.”

But frequently these limited launches have led to major disappointments for shoppers. Most notably last fall’s launch of the Missoni line that crashed their servers. Now I suspect it was due to the same hoarders trying to capture all of the items to resell.

These scarcity maneuvers build resentment from customers.

How long can Target get away with that resentment before customers don’t come back?

Let’s be honest though, it’s really not a shopping or fashion event but a discount sale. Think Kmart’s Blue Light Special but with better merch.

Target is feeding on this fascination from American shoppers trying to “feel smart” about buying things on the cheap. These limited items offer those lucky enough to purchase, the chance to crow how “smart” they were to have gotten there first and, for those who purchased the line to resell on EBay, how “smart” they purchased the items and then jacked up the prices.

Regulating quantities as some have suggested would mean a democratization of shopping for limited items, much like Ticketmaster does to limit any one customer wiping out supply.

But how would that work exactly for the store employees? They aren’t there to police shoppers and referee conflicts.

Through these flash sales, Target’s marketing focus on scarcity of items creates legions of disappointed shoppers who, like some gambler going to the blackjack table, have come back again to see if they could be a winner.

The problem is that when hoarders show up and buy it all at once, it appears that the shopping game is fixed – the house is the only one who wins.

While some hardcore fashionistas may continue to try to be winners, how long before shoppers shrug and say, “Why bother?” I suspect many are already there if you checkout their 400+ FB comments, like this one from moment ago, “ I got another email today telling me to keep going back to the store. I told them that the next time I’m ever in any Target, I’ll be wearing that shirt. And since they screwed millions of us out of it, that will be never.”

I get it, designers don’t want to have their creations hanging around on a markdown rack – they want it to sell quickly and get their name out there.

I get Target wants to use the newest, most visible designers to encourage their shoppers to come in more often and to have exclusives.

But creating a fashion line that seems to reward the hoarders of the world, the people willing to take all of your careful planning, marketing and messaging and reselling it for much higher prices, seems to me no different than the online retailers using Target’s stores as showrooms.

Target was willing to notify their vendors they needed to protect Target from online competitors, how about doing the same for their customer?

Something has to change in Target’s mindset to honor their customers who took the morning off, got a babysitter to watch their kid, and lined up for hours, all to feel good about getting a new treasure.

Without those customers’ support, Target has a lot of frustrated shoppers without the markups that could support a better experience for their customers because that additional revenue is going to the resellers. And those frustrated shoppers are telling everyone on social media how they feel.

Is there a quicker way to turn people off from shopping in your bricks and mortar stores?

Come on Target, you’re better than this.

What say you? Is all fair in fashion? Snooze you lose? Do promotions like these hurt or help the brand? Would you stand in line to purchase a limited collection like this? Please comment below:

Lately, major chains seem to be taking a page from the same tired, retail-sales training book.

Somewhere on a torn page, it must advise managers to station a person within four feet from the front door and use them as a designated greeter.

Think Wal-Mart but closer.

Except, instead of being cordial, these new greeters are to “greet” the customer with news about their sale merch. Hanging out just inside the entrance, they become soulless puppets muttering the same markdown mantras over and over.

But if you’re going to designate a person to only greet your customers, don’t you want them to use their energy to suggest the new spring lines you just got in? Or make a positive comment based on what the person in front of them is wearing? Or try to make that shoppers’ day by offering them a smile?

I think so.

Instead, customers are pointed to the markdowns like there was gold in last September’s picked-overs still there in February; those leftovers are in the flea market.

If your customers wanted to go to the flea market, they would.

While I teach that greeting is only one aspect of the sales process, and that the greeting should be connected as a building block toward customer trust, make sure the people you are stationing out front are only the beginning of the relationship that ends with, “I’ll take it.”

Ideally the greeter follows that customer through the store helping until the time of purchase. Meanwhile another person has positioned themselves at the front to await the next customer.  In this way, each greeter becomes a salesperson.

If you are going to station employees in front of your store, whose sole job is just to greet customers, at least follow these four tips.

Four ways to use a greeter:

1. Have them start with the attitude that they are welcoming someone into their living room.
2. Train them to say greetings like, “Good afternoon,” and to avoid, “Hi, how’re you doin’?”
3. Train them to make eye contact and smile.
4. Train them to spotlight a specific item for each customer …and not the markdowns. This means your greeters need to know the merchandise in your store.

Part of the reason shoppers avoid interaction with greeters is that they are not seen as people, but as parroting bodies saying the same thing over and over.  Much like those pesky perfume samplers, customers just want to avoid them.

Face it, there are fewer customers coming through your doors in February,  so relax the hype and let your greeters become human.  Let them inform customers of a new spring sweater they really like or of the new board game that just came in.

By allowing these greeters to share their connection with your goods, they will make a connection with your shoppers in your store.

And that’s something that doesn’t happen at a flea market.

To learn more about greeting your customers, grab a copy of The Retail Doctor’s Guide to Growing Your Business (Wiley)

But more choices do not always equate to happier consumers.  In fact, some studies show that having to make too many decisions can leave people tired, mentally drained and more dissatisfied with their purchases.”

This was detailed in Matt Haig’s 2003 book Brand Failures.  He noted that “Procter & Gamble’s brand strategy in the 1980s seemed to be: why launch one product, when 50 will do? However, increased choice equaled increased confusion.

As a result, Crest lost market share… as soon as there were 50 Crest toothpastes, its market share dipped to 25 per cent and fell behind Colgate.” When they had one product they captured above 50% of the market.

I would add because it was easy for the customer.

The LAT story said as much in their helpful tips, “Sometimes it’s good to rely on habit — ‘put the blinders on and get the same toothpaste you always get,’ says Barry Schwartz, a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College.”

How this impacts your retail business

What is so deadly about this for retailers is that we think giving our customers more choice is better. But if the customer can’t quickly get why one product is better than the other, they become overwhelmed and put blinders on.

That’s because it’s easier to settle.

If there is no one there to help whittle down their choices or find out what they are trying to do and then matching product to their use, you lose the sale.

And the higher the ticket, the higher your stakes.

That’s why you need salespeople, not clerks.

The evidence is overwhelming that customers are over-choiced, from the menus in restaurants, to the products on the sales floor.  We just don’t want to make the wrong choice. Salespeople, true salespeople can make the difference.

Yes, Paul Schottmiller and I recently discussed the customer survey by Cisco Systems that found 68% said online reviews were one of their top three influencers whereas only 13 percent indicated store associates.

But I believe that says more about the quality of the store associates in many stores than customers’ proclivity to seek solutions from store employees.

What to do to drive conversions

You want to get your store sales up? Do the hard part of hiring people who can sell, who can funnel down hundreds of choices of paint, of carpet, of furniture, of black dresses, of whatever, into what customers can easily decide on.  Salespeople are out there looking for work, whittle down your resumes to those who have proven they can sell the merch.

Your competitors are “putting blinders on” and hiring whoever will fog the mirror, work the hours and be grateful for a job.

To get your store moving, take the time now to whittle down your choices of who you allow on your sales floor, train them how to sell and you’ll be able to help customers choose, not settle – or worse, walk out the door empty-handed.

What stores do you put blinders on when shopping? Grocery? Hardware? Drugstore? Please share in comments below…

This debate features Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor and Kevin Graff from GraffTV discussing bricks and mortar retailers, the effects of mobile shopping and in particular the Amazon price matching app.  Here is the video to watch and an edited transcription below.

So, the most profitable items you have in your store are the ones are that are going to be scanned. I’m not talking about a little widget for four bucks down at the Five and Dime, I mean the really expensive stuff, consumer electronics or those kind of things. That’s my point.

Kevin: Well, interesting perspective, and I’m not so sure that I could disagree more than with anything that you just said.

Bob: Perfect.

Kevin: I mean, I think there’s some truth to what you’re saying, as there always is, but I think common sense and history tells us that we will be just fine as we go through this. I think what Amazon is doing, and it’s not just what Amazon is doing, it’s what everybody’s doing around this show with mobile and social this, and connect to that, and e-com that’s been around now for a little while. It keeps advancing and it keeps growing in terms of significance, but look, retailers adapted. If nothing else, retail is a survivor. We’ve survived the arrival of the mall. We survived the arrival of big box retail.

Bob: I’m not that old, but OK.

Kevin: Do you remember the invention of the cash register? Monumental shift in how we did things.

Bob: I don’t think that’s the same because then it was just there for your four walls, and now, here for your four walls, Amazon accounts for 20% of all purchases online. That is huge; that is globally what they do.

Kevin: 20% of all purchases online, but not 20% of all retail purchases.

Bob: Well, that’s the whole point though, is that it is so trusted that they, by default, become the trusted player.

Kevin: Are you going to scan me to see what you can get me for online?

Bob: It’s only pennies, folks at home. You can check that out, Graff Retail TV.

Kevin: But if it’s what this is going to do, and this is the good news. The reason I’m happy to see things like Amazon’s price check come out in mobile and all of its different formations come out, is because from a consumer’s point of view, and we’re all consumers first and foremost, what it drives is a better shopping experience period.

Bob: Really?

Kevin: Absolutely.

Bob: How do you see that?

Kevin: Well, think about this. Every time, I’m up in Canada, I always say the best thing that ever happened to Canadian retail was the arrival of Walmart. Walmart arrived in Canada in 1994.

Bob: Made everybody up their game.

Kevin: Everybody had to up their game, but we took a look at the retailers that were most threatened by them, retailers like Canadian Tire. If you saw what they were then to what they are now, it’s a classic example of what’s going to happen inside. So, is there going to be some shake-out? Yeah, there’ll be some shake-out, honest, but there’s always shake-out. At the end of the day, the consumer wins.

Bob: But retail, we just heard today, is responsible for one in four jobs in America.

Kevin: Absolutely.

Bob: So, if we took a hit of, let’s say, 20% of people go mobile or something, into this one player…

Kevin: Right. Well, we re-allocate those jobs obviously. I’m thinking somebody’s doing all this programming and picking and packing…

Bob: Doesn’t take it, doesn’t take that many people. Here’s my thing.

Kevin: I’m not the economist on this, Bob.

Bob: Here’s my thing. So there you are, you’re our number one sales person for widgets.

Kevin: Right.

Bob: OK, you’re working with Bryan over here and he’s working with widget central and you’re the number one guy, you’re a commission-based guy. You finish the sale and you’re like, “Great, I’ll take it,” and he says, “Wait a minute, let me just get out my scanner.” He scans it…

Kevin: Absolutely.

Bob: He finds he can get it for $300 less, throws it in your face and says, “Are you going to match price?”

Kevin: Absolutely.

Bob: So, a lot of debate is going to be about this because right, a lot of retailers will say. “Well, we will match.”

Kevin: Absolutely.

Bob: So, how often can you do that?

Kevin: Now, it will be policy driven at that stage of the game.

Bob: And what does this guy want to do? Does he want to work in that environment still?

Kevin: Well, see, and that’s the thing that changes it. So now, how does a retailer evolve against that? And you see it out there right now but in different formations where one retailer will sell one item for one price, another one will sell that same item for a completely different price in town, and still sell lots of it. Case in point, take …

Bob: But you have to go there. That’s my point.

Kevin: Think about it. Go into the mall, you can buy a pair of Levi’s jeans, right, at Walmart, $5 cheaper than at the Levi store in the mall, but the Levi store in the mall still sells hundreds and hundreds of jeans at $5 more. Why? Because they give you something more that you can’t get at the Walmart store.

Bob: I’m totally with you.

Kevin: That’s what happens with retail.

Bob: But when I’m in that “something more” Levi’s store, and I’m in it. I had that experience and gosh, they loved me, and I know Cary.. .

Kevin: Absolutely.

Bob: She’s so wonderful, and she does it, and then I go, well I think about it, and I scan it, and it’s free shipping and returns. That’s what I’m saying…

Kevin: And is it a game changer? Yeah, it’s a game changer.

Bob: It’s a huge game changer though.

Kevin: What’s rule number one, and I know you say this to all your clients out there. You’re not going to be all things to all people.

Bob: Absolutely not.

Kevin: There is going to be that bottom feeder that’s going to look for that lowest of lowest of lowest price out there. I get that. Absolutely.

Bob: Tell me you’re not going to be a bottom feeder.

Kevin: You’re the guy that crusades against Groupon all the time, are you not?

Bob: I am. That was another discussion which we’ll have up here, too.

Kevin: But not everybody is going to be that bottom feeder, when you look at how this shapes out.

Bob: But that’s not a bottom feeder. If you and I were going to buy a plasma TV, and we had a great experience at Best Buy. You cannot tell me you would not be curious with that $3,000 system, you would not be curious what Amazon was.

Kevin: Absolutely, but at Best Buy they’re also going to show me the best way to be able to install it.

Bob: They should do it.

Kevin: Or they’re going to provide an educational component to that, and I can’t get all of that online. That’s the differentiating factor. You’re not wrong, this is going to be  challenging.

Bob: Well, and you’re not wrong either. This is the debate. This is why we wanted to have this debate is because this is what we’re not hearing in a lot of the booths here, right? We’re hearing that if you’ve got a tablet, baby, everything’s great.

Kevin: Absolutely.

Bob: You’re going to be fine. If you’ve got a virtual wallet, if you have a little app, everything’s great, and you and I both, because Kevin and I are very similar personalities in that we both think it’s about the person, the humanity…

Kevin: Absolutely.

Bob: …that moment that somebody walks into your store.

Kevin: That’s what we’re probably not seeing enough of around here. It kind of gets lost in the noise of all this technology and all this IT, and this is all really great, and I think it’s all really cool, and it’s important. I’m not here to say that’s not important. I’m not living under a rock in the past, but what I do recognize is that we’re just going to continue to find better ways in retail to represent it. If we want to be bricks and mortar retailers, we’ve got to start creating better shopping experiences in there, and that’s going to come by adopting some of this technology inside the stores.

Bob: With the employees though, not instead of them. That’s my thing.

Kevin: Exactly, but there’s going to be some stuff that we’re going to do in the absence of employees that’s going to make the shopping experience better, but I’ll tell you, everybody’s going to step up their game from an employee perspective. So whether it’s staff coverage, whether it’s staff ability, whether it’s staff knowledge, all that’s going to pick up.

If traffic counts are going to go down into your store, you better get your conversion rates up and you better get your average sale up.

Bob: Because the people that really want to be there, really want to be in your store.

Kevin: Absolutely, and the fastest way to be able to do that growth in your business is going to come through your staff. Get them off their butt, get them waiting on some customers, teach them a little bit more, teach them how to sell, teach them how to drive.

Bob: And hire them better, to start with.

Kevin: Right.

Bob: But they really need to enjoy going in there and meeting another person.

Kevin: Yeah.

Bob: That’s kind of shocking.

Kevin: Why would you want to work in retail, if you didn’t, right?

Bob: That’s a great place for us to end.

So what say you? Is the Amazon price check app a gamechanger? Do you expect bricks and mortar to thrive? Please enter your thoughts in the comments below.

If you haven’t downloaded my special report: Bricks and Mortar Retailing At Risk in the Digital Age, you can still do so here.

My thanks to Marge Laney at Alert Technologies and our cameraman Brian Laney who made this all sound and look great!

This interview features Marge Laney with Alert Technologies and Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor discussing how fitting rooms are a missed opportunity for many apparel retailers. Here is the video to watch and an edited transcription below.

Marge:            No, actually, exactly the opposite is true. The only reason the brick and mortar apparel retailer exists today, and will in the future, is because of their fitting rooms. And the reason I say that is, back in 2003, Envision Retail, a consultancy in London, did a study. They found that over 70% of people who use fitting rooms buy, versus the people on the sales floor that just browse and not use the fitting room, only would buy 28% of the time.

They just redid that survey last year, and it was stunning to see what happened. In 2010, only 10% of the people that browse the sales floor purchase, compared to 28% in ’03.

Bob:            That’s huge.

Marge:            I thought about that for a long time. I thought what is going on? My answer: Online. The browsers aren’t coming to your store anymore. The browsers are going online. The browsers are staying home, and they’re staying in their jammies. They’re getting online and they’re buying there. So what does that tell us? That tells us that the customer that walks through your store is there to fit and feel your stuff. And it’s so important that you engage that customer and drive them to the fitting room every single time.

Bob:            But that’s hard to do, isn’t it? An awful lot of people say, “But I don’t have the staff for that. I’m going to go through and add all these fitting rooms? How do we know they’re in there? Am I supposed to look under and see feet?”

Marge:         You’re exactly right. That’s why they need to start looking at their fitting rooms in a different way.

Bob:            And to build on that, aren’t most people looking at fitting rooms like this is loss prevention?

Marge:         Absolutely. Even here at the NRF show, I’ve talked to people in the aisles that have fitting rooms and they’ll tell me that they’re just sort of a pain. That they’re, as you say, a loss prevention nightmare, hard to clean, hard to service, etc. But what they don’t see is that it’s the highest conversion zone and that they should be addressing that.

Bob:            But whose read Envision?

Marge:         Exactly.

Bob:            I mean, is that something that’s big?

Marge:         And they, well, this is their business. They should make it their business to understand, and that’s why I’m the fitting room evangelist.

Are fitting rooms something you look for? When you use them, do you secretly scan the items to see if they are cheaper online? What would a good fitting room experience look like for you? Please add your comment below.

My thanks to Marge Laney at Alert Technologies and our cameraman Brian Laney who made this all sound and look great!