April 5, 2014

April 5, 2014

►    Customer Feedback:  Customer Bob H from Merrimack, NH stated that his general shopping experience with us was Excellent.  Did any of our team members do an unusually good job?  “Pat did a service call and really helped us out.  Great job.”  Sales help and operations were Excellent.  He would recommend us to a friend.

►    Advertising and promotions continue from last week:  “April Sale”.  This month’s color is pink.  Seasonal News and the Seasonal Reward$ email blast should be received by next weekend.  Watch the coupon with the email.  It requires one item over $60.  We have put duplicate coupons with the coupon envelope for your convenience.

►    There were 55 One-of-These awards in March; five for Customer Service.  This was our most competitive month in our history:  with 18 of them making semifinalist.  It was very difficult to get it down to seven finalists:  Jim, Joe (twice), Ann A, Stephanie, Rose, and Mia.  Each of those would have won Owner’s Choice in any normal month!  Owner’s Choice was Joe, and drawing winner was Jim.  Congratulations to all.

►    Happy Fifth Anniversary to Paul.  Celebrate with anniversary cake for him and for Mia in the classroom on Saturday, April 5.

►    Happy First Anniversary to Andrew, Julia, Kenny, and Sarah.  Anniversary cake in the classroom Saturday, April 12.

►    Grill demonstration Saturday, April 12.

►    The Nashua Home Show is at the Nashua Courtyard by Marriott, Saturday April 5, 1-5, and Sunday April 6, 10-4.  We will have competitors showing there.

►    A lesson we should already have learned from your competitive shops.  You need to address pool installations early in your presentation.  EVERY presentation.  No different from a liner, a ladder, or a top rail.  “We have a page here with installation price ranges and likely dates.  Most important, we have these two books with customer reviews, where you can read original reviews and recommendations from actual customers.”

If you are waiting for a customer to bring up that they were told something else, somewhere else, you are dreaming.  Landmines do not come with signs on them.  And they might run into the installation recommendation at the next store.  If you are selling genuine customer reviews, you are selling something UNIQUE.  If you are defending yourself from an attack on an installations list, you have already lost.

►    Please get better at jackpotting special orders with the correct jackpot number.  We could be eliminating hours and hours of work, if we could trust Retail Pro to give us advertising leads and other information.  However we are still typing and sorting them from your sales orders because our sales orders are often wrong.  So when you jackpot a hot tub as a spa part or even patio furniture, Retail Pro thinks it’s the wrong thing.

►    “Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.”  Will Rogers

►    Sales people should not go home until you finish all of your work.  That means more than making sale tags.  It also means proofing every sales order you wrote for mistakes, missing items, etc.  We spend way too much management time doing it for you.

►    Your quarterly bonuses last week were, on average, 127% of your goals.  Great job!  Thank you.

►    We have the coupon from the current Marquis promotion of $500 off MSRP in the coupon envelope.  Note that it is not  helpful to our customers, as our prices are already $500 or more off MSRP.  That’s because we are much cheaper than most Marquis dealers.

►    We just changed the hot tub sale sheet again; with the special financing on hot tubs until April 30.  Note you can use this one without skipping the $200 delivery rebate, and it will expire April 30^.

►    From the Reader’s Digest:

Hold the Presses!  Writing newspaper copy is an art form unseen in these real headlines:

–        “Worker Suffers Leg Pain After Crane Drops 800-pound Ball on His Head”

–        “City Unsure Why the Sewer Smells”

–        “Caskets Found as Workers Demolish Mausoleum”