Helping Reps Stay Safe on the Road

All reps are at risk whether they’re carrying live diamond jewellery or watch straps.  If they’re carrying any kind of bag in and out of your store, they might be perceived to be a target.

·      “Don’t Ask” - Flying under the radar is one of our most effective tactics to keep safe.  Please don’t ask about our travel plans or where we’re staying.  If you know anything about where a rep is travelling or staying.  If a rep gets robbed after leaving your store, the investigator’s first inquiry will be “who knew you were staying here?” or “who knew you’d be travelling this direction?”

·      “Don’t Tell” - If someone comes into the store and says, “hey, that handsome guy with the suitcases that just left is an old acquaintance of mine.  What’s his name again?”  Give a bogus or evasive answer.  If they knew us well-enough, they wouldn’t need to ask our name.

·      If space permits, offer a private area for viewing a line.  For the least valuable product (watch straps, giftware, fashion jewellery, etc) the rep may prefer to do viewings out front to demonstrate that he or she is not a “high-value” target.

·      When it doesn’t leave your own store at risk, please offer to walk us out to our vehicles.  Even better, do so with a cel-phone in your hand.  This is a first-class deterrent to a parking-lot grab and run.

I’ve issued these safety tips in the past, and I’m grateful to all of you who earnestly help us stay safe on the road.  Thank you all and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Social networking is not for everyone!

 I think YOU need to be involved, but don’t forget that not all of your clients or target market are participating.  If they are, they might be checking their Facebook or Twitter account once per week, and never click-through to your posts or website.  You can encourage your “peeps” or your “tribe” to get involved in social networking.   You can give them incentives to check your fan-page daily for spectacular specials, but there’s still a large segment that need to be reached in conventional ways.

I love the realm of social media, but I don’t think it will ever be my only means for advertising.

Saturday Story Time - Gemstone handling

Welcome to Saturday story time.  Today I was reflecting back on all of the interesting retail client experiences I had.  Some were good, some were really bad.  All worth a read.

Back in 1987 when I first started in retail jewellery at Forest of Jewels in Heritage Mall, Edmonton I happened to be on the floor for what would become one of my most embarrassing moments.  A gentleman entered the store with a recently acquired prize possession.  I found-out he was father to a junior high-school acquaintance, so I established a connection before he told me what he wanted.  He had been on a trip with his new bride and in their travels they entered a gem-shop that had the most amazing gemstone.  It was a 42 carat ametrine.  For those of you who are unfamiliar, ametrine is a bi-colored quartz exhibiting colors of amethyst and citrine.  It can occur naturally or be coaxed out of amethysts using radiation and heat on one-half of the gem.

This gemstone was prized by this client because both he and his new bride had just turned 42 years of age, and it represented each of their birthstones.  In talking about ways in which we could make a piece of jewellery out of this gem, I dropped it on the glass counter-top and put a crack in the corner of it.  I’ll never forget the look on his face and the face of my manager who was also present.  “Dumb-founded horror,” comes pretty close to describing it.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, it wasn’t impossible to replace the gemstone, and Forest of Jewels made sure that the replacement was also 42 carats and was even brighter in color than the original.  It wasn’t overly expensive as I might have guessed.  I’m still grateful for the way Guy Forest backed me up in that circumstance.

Since then, whenever a client shows me a prized gemstone, I ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS make sure there’s a soft pad to work on.  I also cradle my hand under tweezers when lightly gripping a gemstone – especially a heavy one.  Oh, sure I’ve had diamonds squirt out of tweezers since then, but with a little bit of practice and all necessary precautions you should never have to suffer the embarrassment I did.

Staffers, if you have never been fully briefed on safety precautions in handling gemstones, ask the boss for some lessons.  If you still have questions, I’ll be happy to spend a few minutes with you next time I’m in your store.

Play safe, and have a great day!

Two ways to zero-in on your target market

This may seem simplistic, but every time you spend money on advertising, take note of these two options.  The first is using mass-media and crafting the message specific to your target audience.  Your second option is using targeted media which preselects your audience for you.  Often the cost-per-thousand is more in the latter case, but more of those 1,000 are your target audience.

Rolex retailers use a lot of mass media.  You’ll notice that Rolex reaches its’ influential males over 50 by spending the bulk of their advertising dollar in the lead-section or business-sections of daily newspaper.  About 90% of the ads feature men’s watches.  Oh, they sell to younger buyers, and they sell ladies watches, but most ladies Rolex purchases are made after or concurrent with a men’s watch purchase.

If you’re selling high-end kitchens, you’ll probably use targeted media, such as local home-decor glossy magazines and luxury product trade-shows.

In either case, explosive popularity comes from whipping a select audience into a frenzy over what you do; such that they begin advertising for you.

Do you seek to be all things to all people?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  You can’t market to everyone, so you’d better know who your target audience is.  I remember walking past a store on boxing-day and noticing that almost every shopper in the store and almost everyone waiting in line to get-in was a female between the age of 20 and 30 years old.  You probably just missed the point.  THEY HAD A LINE-UP TO GET IN.  Not every store did.  If you sell anything to everybody, how do you generate a line-up?  Unless you have a marketing budget like Pepsi and an inventory budget like Costco, you’ll never cater to everyone.  The key to marketing success is to identify and go-hard after your primary audience.  The message will “spill” to secondary audiences, but your 1^st target market are the ones you’ll generate referrals from!

Don't be a Smarty-Pants!

When I began studying gemology, I was so pleased with my efforts to learn that I felt it my obligation to share my newfound knowledge with anyone who would listen.  Guess what?  I bored a lot of people.  I quickly learned to recognize the glazed-over look of someone who doesn’t give a rip about my gemological brilliance.

Over the course of many years, I’ve honed my retail selling style to use as little technical information as is required to make the sale.  I’ve had the pleasure of selling nice diamonds without ever talking about the color or clarity.  I wasn’t withholding the information; it just wasn’t required to make the sale.  When the sale is based on style and earned on trust, you’re in the zone to create a lifelong client worth having.  

When selling to men, it is always worth trying to appeal to them emotionally.  Men are chemically hard-wired to process either emotionally or rationally, but not both simultaneously.  When you work with men in a technical realm, they’re in the perfect state of mind to commoditize the sale and make it about table-percentages, pavilion angles and price per carat.  When their in that mode of thinking, they’ll also think about their credit card debt or wedding expenses.

When you are able to sell a design an experience, or a token of love rather than diamonds and gold, discounting is much less of an issue.  Learn, and gain knowledge in order to answer objections and help romance a sale, but remember to use as few facts as you need to make the sale.

Welcome to the new Toddwaz Report!

Welcome to my brand-new Toddwaz Report.  I’m not one to make new years resolutions, so let’s just say this is part of my marketing strategy in 2012 to write and distribute 300 blog posts.  My chief purpose is to provoke character building dialog.  I want our industry to be smarter and more able to compete against furniture stores, travel agencies and home-renovators.  Mostly I want my jewellers to be the most amazing business people in the world, so that they’ll sell more jewellery and enjoy doing it.

Subscribe on Facebook HERE.  If you’re not on Facebook, I encourage you to join-up.  I’m hearing more and more stories about friends-of-friends making major jewellery purchases through Facebook.  It’s a great source of “word-of-mouth” referals.  By joining the Toddwaz Report Facebook page, you can easily comment on posts and see other comments.  I want this to facilitate conversation and debate.  Agree, disagree, illustrate, or illuminate.  Make fun of me.  Give me a virtual high-five.

Let’s make this a character builder for the retail jewellery industry in Western Canada!!!