What happens when people stop coming into your store or business drops? I know in my stores, my team always used to mop the floor at the end of the day, and inevitably, almost guaranteed, the minute that that mop came out, somebody would walk in the door.

And so in my stores, if it had been a quiet day, what the team would do is they would mop early. So instead of mopping at a quarter to four, we closed at four, they would start mopping at 3 p.m. Just to try and, you know, force people to come in because someone always comes in when you mop the floor. Hey there and welcome to the Bringing Business to Retail podcast where we talk all about ways that you can make more money in your retail or e-commerce business. Thank you so much for joining me.

Now, think about what our little tactic was. It wasn't really a plan at all, was it? it's not guaranteed. It is just get the mop out, cross your fingers, and hope that somebody comes in. And every store I know has their version of mopping the floor in the afternoon. It's the day that you rearrange the front table for the third time. It's the afternoon that you finally get around to doing stock take. and it's that little voice that says, You know what, it's just that time of year. Everybody is quiet right now. We're just gonna have to write it out. So when one of our my million dollar store retailers told us this week that her week had been, in her exact words, absolutely woeful she was wondering what she should be doing. she had sat up late a couple of nights, pulled out all of the last month's figures and then matched them to the same month last year. And they were just as low last year. So here's the conclusion that she came to. She's in a tourist town, it's this time of year, it's October, November

And everyone is holding off their travel until December. Here in Australia we have our school holidays, generally about the 20th of December, which is when everybody goes on holidays. And so her conclusion is it's just slow. She's got the data there to prove it. And here's the thing it sounds completely sensible. She'd done the homework, she had looked at the data, she had the same dip last year, so it must be an external factor.

Now if you've been in business for a while, you've probably said the exact same thing about one month or another. It's just slow, there's nothing I can do about it, everybody's waiting, we'll write it out. So Is she right?

So come and take a peek behind the scenes and see how we deal with a question like this. What do we do when business slows and people stop coming in?

cts 07587e5cb7d1f579 1080p (02:47)

It is from Ava. She has a fashion accessories store. Her trade is tourists and locals and parking in town is hard.

So much so that regulars tell her that they drive past slowly to see what is out the front and they cannot find a space. It's interesting, we have quite a few people who are in touristy type towns. So, her question. my week has been in her words, absolutely woeful. There is nobody around. I sat up the night before last looking at the figures for the last month.

And what they were last year, love it. And I found them to be just as low. And so I have concluded that at this time of year it is simply slow in a tourist area because everyone is holding their travel until December. I would like to know what I can do in a in a about a month that is always like this. Things that have worked in the past are when we give tour leaders flyers that offer the group 15% off. Okay.

This is interesting, and and I find it interesting because I know that Ava is in a town that is here in Australia, and I have an Airbnb also in a coastal town here in Australia, and we have been booked out solid for the last month. We are booked all the way through till February. So I find it interesting that you believe that nobody is coming. And so before I would accept that, I would be like going around and asking people who have Airbnbs what their bookings look like. Because it's very easy for us to say, I feel. I feel like it is slower than usual. I feel like it is like less people are spending. I feel like the economy, it's like feelings aren't aren't data, feelings aren't stats.

And so I love that you have already gone back and looked at what it was like this, what it was for this time last year, and you've seen that it was also low. So the first thing I am going to say is we need to come and look at the customer tracker because is it because less people are coming in the door, or is it the same amount of people, but they're just not buying? So I'm going to assume that you're you've already done this and you have decided it is a traffic problem. But traffic and a traffic problem and a conversion problem can look identical in sales figures if we don't actually break this down and they need very different fixes. if it's just simply that the staff in the store aren't selling, that's very different to if nobody is coming in the door or less people are coming in the door. So definitely uh grab your customer tracker data and look at that.

And I'm assuming you've done this already. So I'm going to go with traffic. So you know that the first question I'm going to ask you is so what have you been doing to drive more people into the store? And if the answer to that is nothing, and the answer to that was nothing last year, this is our answer. you already said that you have a big obstacle, and I had this same obstacle in my shop as well. where my shop was located, it was the main street and then mine was in a like an arcade or they could park on the main street but they would have to walk around to get to my store and there was parking in the town but they would still have to walk which you know some people are happy to do some people aren't but if you already know that you have a big obstacle

A couple of things we need to do is are we driving people to the website to at least have a look at what is you know what is new in store? Are we sending emails? Are we sending text messages? Because if people are driving past to see what they can see, then we need to know, like we need to remind them that they might want to buy that thing. so credit where credit's due, you have looked at the data and you have identified that people are coming past. Like you obviously talking to your customers. But what we need to do is get to get those customers in store or get those customers buying. I don't care if they buy online. I will buy things from the shop that is 10 minutes away because in fact I have stuff in my cart right now for a shop that is 10 minutes away. I just don't have the time. I don't have the time to go there. I don't have time to wait in line. I would rather just pay the $10 and it's going to be here and it's all done and dusted. There are times when I'm happy to go and browse

And see all the new things, but sometimes I just know what I want. And so I will just pay the shipping. And so this is the other thing is just making sure that we don't put our own shipping biases onto our customers because we don't know why they're buying. If we don't we don't know what their ob objections are, or if you don't know what their objections are, we should find that out. But just remember, there are people who will be more than happy to pay for shipping, even if they only just live down the road. So

What you did say to me is something that worked is giving the tour leaders flyers for the group that is 15% off. So that is a money fountain, my friends. That is ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. My head is going, what are we doing to capitalize on that? So if you know that this happens, have you reached out to the tour operators to see when they're coming? I mean, people don't just run a tour without customers or they have a schedule. So one of the things I would be doing is reaching out to those tour operators to find out when they're going to be coming in and making sure that they have those flyers. even if it even if you have to be calling them every week or you have to send them an email every week, you have to remember they're running their own business. And so they don't really care about you being organized. mean sometimes they will.

We've worked with a lot of touristy towns where literally busloads of people turn up and they had no idea and they've got one person in the store that day. So this is the time where we want, we need to take proactive action so that we can be driving those customers into the store. so that would be one thing. The other thing, so one thing is what are we doing to bring people in? Are we doing the marketing? Are we doing the SMS? do we have like, you know, banners, shop windows, all those kinds of things? Are we doing things to bring people in. The second one is that you have a money fountain there. Are you tapping into it? Now, if that's it, how many tour operators are there? Like my head is just going, are there other ways for you to be capitalizing on what is essentially free marketing? I mean it's 15% off, but you only spend the 15% off, you only cop that 15% off if someone buys something. So this is great.

I'm sure that right now you have a lot on your plate. Even though the store can feel dead, what I would say is that is, and I know what it's like when that happens. And you can fall into a bit of a spiral of self-doubt. But actually, this is the universe giving you some time to prep for the busiest season. So you will need time to build out your Black Friday campaign, to build out your holiday, you know, gift guides, all those kinds of things. So, yes, I would say be actively bringing people in, but also be looking at this as you know an opportunity for that little bit of downtime to be able to do the things that will capitalize on the busiest season of the year. Now, I would not say go into Facebook ads or Google ads right now, because that is something that you to be proficient at, you have to either have an agency or you have to spend the time. And to you have to have the customer knowledge to be able to do that well. I think for you, Ava, you have this big untapped opportunity. You said that you're a tourist town, which means you've got hotels, you've got Airbnbs, you've probably got BBs, all those kinds of places you are surrounded by. And so this might be an opportunity for you to boots on the ground it, get you or one of your team members to literally go around to these people and be handing out, you know, having conversations, handing out these flyers, talking about what would bring their customers in. I definitely think we should tap into those tour operators. I have worked with a store that a gift store that had literally hundreds of thousands of people coming through and they didn't know when those people were coming in, as I mentioned before. And so this is one of the things where, like, having someone on your team, literally do a Monday morning call. it doesn't have to be you. All you want to know is what is the tool plans for this week? Maybe you do it on a Friday so that you can do your rostering. I don't know when you do your rostering, but you want to make sure that you have the people in the store when they come in, because if you get a busload of people in and you are the only person in the store,

Holy freaking heck, that just becomes a nightmare. the other thing I would say, Tourist Town, there's always an information center. Every bus will stop there for the toilets. And so have you built a relationship with that information center? You know, have you gone and talked to the people who work there? Because yes, we can put our flyers in, but the reality is I would go and build some one on one time with the people who work there. I'm not open, you know, I'm I'm I'm not adverse to giving out a little bit of a free gift every now and then, or giving them a VIP card or something, a little bit of incentive. We won't call it bribery, a little bit of incentive goes a long way. Because these people are the frontline. These are the people who are actively talking to every single visitor who comes in. And these people who are coming in are looking for things to do. So definitely, I mean.

I see so much, so much opportunity here for you. So building a relationship with the information center, I would also go and talk to the either the council or the chamber of commerce. Now, those, one of those two will be doing opportunities to to advertise what it is that you're doing. So Chamber of Commerce will quite often liaise with the council on your behalf.

Biz councils usually have a business development officer of some kind, whose actual job it is, is to assist small businesses in getting their their you know, their promotions out there. So I've done this in the past. Honestly, it works. It's one of the ways that I grew my business quite well was having that relationship with the council because then the council started hiring me to come and do talks on on sustainability. So definitely, there's a lot of relationship building in a tourist town. So this is what I would say for you. Cafes. Can you maybe go to a local cafe and do a deal where if they spend $100 in your store, they get a free coffee and if they spend a certain amount in the cafe, they get a voucher for your store. Again, these are only going to cost you when the customer buys the buys something.

I don't know about your tour like this. My brain is just opportunity, opportunity, opportunity. I'm just thinking of so many other places. I don't know about your tourist town, but in the tourist town that my like my Airbnb is in, it does have a lot of what do they call them? Sea no, I know in Canada they call them snowbirds. I can't think. People who go to the seaside, a tree change, a tree change, a lot of tree changes and sea changes, sea changes, that's the word I was looking for.

so a lot of retirees who move down to these little villages, and you know, the reality is if they could be your customers, I would be going and building a relationship with those retirement villagers because they are going to arrive not only by themselves, quite often there'll be a bu a small bus of them or a carer that comes with them. And so this would be, you know, what does it cost to get into a retirement village in your place? I don't know. I, as I said, I've done volunteer work inside of a local retirement village when my little doggy Cav was still alive. He was actually a therapy dog. And so we used to go once a week into a retirement village and just hang out with you know with the residents. I also know to get in there was upwards of over a million dollars. And so these people had money. These people are looking for places to spend. So there may even be an opportunity for you to do, as I said, if it is slow, can you go and do a a styling session for for the ladies in there? I take a selection of things. Because at the therapy center that I used to go to, they used to have that. They used to have local businesses that would come in and sell stuff because some of these retirees can't actually, you know, they aren't so mobile.

and the last place I would think of was maybe the cleaners. Every Airbnb host relies on their cleaners. So again, going out, finding those cleaners, local Facebook group, and reaching out to them and just saying, hey, can I drop some flyers off for you to put into your Airbnb? So I think you have this huge opportunity, and maybe that's what your October becomes, is when you're going out and refreshing all of these relationships to make sure that you are as busy as you can be for the peak season. So once we have that, I would always give myself a target, reverse engineer the goal. So I would say give yourself a goal of maybe four really good viable connections by the end of the month. Now, so four places that will actively be referring your business. Now you it honestly, you might have to approach 20 or even 30 for that to happen. And so you are going to, or you or someone on your team are going to have to be putting some time in there. And so booking that into your calendar, what does that time look like? Is it better off in the morning? Is it better off in the afternoon? Think about the business that you're going to and when they're likely to be slower. Because the owner if the owner is going to be there or the the manager is going to be there, you want to be able to talk to them when it's not super busy. You know what it's like. How bad is it when a rep comes in and you're so busy?

So I would think that you are looking at probably a good 20 minutes for each one of those connections. Maybe you meet them for a coffee, a little bit of schmoozing. It usually isn't a case of just walking in. It'll probably be will be walking in and asking to book a meeting. So let's just say you need to reach out to 20 people. I would be allocating maybe 12 hours to go and work on, not 12 hours all in one go, but 12 hours into your calendar. be going out and do that and then taking yourself out of the shop and going and having those conversations and you know if you can book them as close as possible to each other because the great thing about that is once you have somebody on board it's really easy to say we're you know we're working with such and such we're working with you know we're working with the local fancy hotel and when you have that kudos then it's easier for people to join on

the other thing I would just thinking about is the 15% off. If we're talking about tourists, because we kind of didn't really talk about locals, we talked about tourists. If we're talking about tourists, it needs to be something that they instantly get. Like you know, I don't it's not we don't need loyalty for tourists. Tourists is like a one and done quite often unless they're buying on the website, fingers crossed. You've got their down their email and you've added them to your database and you're selling to them later. But thinking about what is a higher value, because 15% off, if 15% off is bringing them in, that's great. But I would be, just analyzing what is the average spend on that 15% off. Because maybe it might be better to have something like, spend $80 and get a free pair of earrings. Like there are other things that you could be doing that has a high perceived value that isn't a discount which comes out of your pocket. So again, it depends on your profit margin, depends on your business model, but just something to have a bit of a think about. As I said, I've done the outreach. In fact, with my Airbnb, I did the outreach. I literally went to local restaurants and cafes and I got vouchers for my people that go into our guest book.

All those sorts of things just make the visitor experience better, but also brings the people in. So what we want to be doing is looking at ways that we can get more people in. But I would also be thinking about: is this your opportunity? If if October is slower and the tourist buses aren't coming in, well then yes, we have to target locals. Yes, we still need to be doing the marketing to the locals. Yes, we need to be getting our e-commerce sales.

But maybe that is also your time when you dedicate to the networking, to getting all of your marketing for the rest of Q4 done, for doing your inventory, all that kind of stuff, because we can't be go, go, go at 100% all the time. So there always will be ups and downs in business. So it's taking that opportunity to say, if this is outside of my control, although I think this is inside of your control, but if there is something happening that is outside of your control, what can you use this time to do to move the business forward? Okay, I hope that helps.

Salena Knight (20:54)

Before you go, if Black Friday is still sitting on your to-do list and you're not even sure what it is that you're going to sell yet, let alone how you're going to find the time to sit down and plan it all, listen up. We know Black Friday weekend is the highest revenue weekend of the year. It's the time that brings in the most money, but it's also the one that needs the most marketing. And it lands exactly at the time when you're already flat out. You've got stock arriving, you've got customers, you've got staff, you've got orders going out. If you are anything like the store owners that I work with, here's what usually happens. You know Black Friday is just weeks away. You know you need to work out what to sell, you need to write all those emails, you need to get all those social posts done, and you know you probably should have started earlier. But then today happens. A delivery turns up, someone calls in sick, there's a problem with an order.

A customer needs you, and all of those five-minute jobs end up taking most of your day. And so Black Friday planning gets moved to tomorrow. But tomorrow looks pretty much the same. And then suddenly you're a few days out from Black Friday, you are looking at stock, you are trying to work out what to discount. You're writing emails at 8 p.m. You're trying to tell your team what it is that you're selling, but you haven't even worked out the campaign yet. And so you build what there is time to build. And that's usually a discount.

You send a couple of emails, maybe some social posts, and when it's over, you tell yourself that next year you will be more organized. You've got this massive sales opportunity sitting right in front of you. But if you are trying to build the marketing for it in whatever gaps you can find, then is that really going to bring in the sales that you need? That's why I created my Black Friday formula or my BFF. It interviews you about your store and then builds you a custom Black Friday campaign designed to get your customers buying more than once. It will work out the offers, the products, the emails, and all of the socials, all built for your store. It is the same formula that Michelle used to bring over $120,000 into her toy store. So if you want to take the biggest campaign that you will create all year off of your plate, head over to SelenaKnight.com  and get started.