Marketing & Sales

handle a customer who tells me she can get a product cheaper through our Web site?

This is a real test of how you’re doing with customer service—your ace card. Can you tell that customer about your product research, ability to return books, community connections and support, engraving, why independent local Christian retail strengthens the Christian community, etc.? Are you delivering on your customer service promise?

Second, what’s the real price, including shipping? The Web meets certain needs, but it isn’t the only business model. Customers will understand these differences and should attribute different value to a local presence. If they’re ordering one book, there’s a good chance it’ll cost them more through the Web, including shipping.

Finally, Lemstone stores agreed, if the customer is still unconvinced, you need to make a decision whether to meet or move toward the online price. Our consensus was to do what you need to do to keep or capture the customer.

E-MAIL MARKETING APPROACH

We then moved to a broader discussion on e-mail marketing. We strongly encourage our stores to capture e-mail addresses as part of the customer welcoming process. We supplement store-level lists by adding information gathered from the Web site. Why?

E-mail marketing will continue to grow— it’s the cheapest way to touch your customers. I get three e-mails a week, every week, from Kohl’s. Read that again. I get three e-mails a week, every week, from Kohl’s.

Now, we can argue about whether this is too much, too little, or just right—it doesn’t matter. You need an e-mail program as part of your marketing approach to reach your customers. We send two to three e-mails a month, and 90% of them include some kind of value proposition. Some of our stores supplement this with e-mails of their own.

How do you get customers to give you their e-mail address?

• First, do you do a good job of capturing customer information? Our standard is 80% or better. When our stores do that, all their marketing programs work better and deliver better results.

• You and your staff need to be comfortable asking for e-mail addresses. Have you noticed when someone is excited about a product, they sell it better? It’s the same here—if you or a staff member is uncomfortable asking, it’ll show in your tone of voice, the words chosen, or body language.

20 | AspiringRetail | June2006

E-mail marketing isn’t something to dread; it’s a very effective way for you to communicate appropriately, quickly, and cost-effectively. Just like learning to sell, you’ll get comfortable if you practice asking for customers’ e-mail addresses. However:

• Make sure customers know the list won’t be sold. You can do this verbally or with a notice at the cash wrap.

• Post an e-mail policy at the cash wrap— “We collect e-mail addresses to communicate effectively with our customers and to send you items such as discount coupons.”

• Have a copy of a recent e-mail to physically show customers, one with a coupon ( What’s in it for the customer?).

• Use staff meetings to practice, role-play, or have your leading customer-capture person tell how he or she does it.

• Track customer capture by sales associate. If you don’t track it, you can’t measure and improve it.

• When you’re asking for an e-mail address, keep it in the flow of conversation— customers are asked for their e-mail address often and this doesn’t surprise them.

Finally, how do you send e-mails without having them bounce back, and honor all the rules, such as allowing customers to “opt out”?

We’ve found two ways. First, we use Innovative for most of our e-mail and all our corporate e-mail marketing programs. Their job is to design the e-mail so it works within the rules. For a single-store program, you could also look at Constant Contact—a great industrial-strength, Web-based service.

CHURCH MARKETING

The second major subtheme of our meeting was marketing to churches. We could talk all day, but the facts are:

• Churches are in your community.

• They’re your potential customers.

• Believers, also your customers, show up there at least once a week.

• Both churches and church attendees buy most of the Christian products sold.

Really, there aren’t many markets that can be defined this precisely and targeted this easily. As simple as that may sound, people buy based in part on relationships, and it’s your job to build these relationships. They won’t happen overnight and they won’t happen in every case, but they definitely won’t happen if you stay in the store and don’t reach out to churches.

This is like the man who said, “I want to go back to college, but if I start now I won’t finish for five years and by then I’ll be 5 0.” His colleague replied, “How long will it take

and how old will you be if you wait?”

You can wait, but it still will take time to build relationships, so you may as well start now for the health of your business.

From our discussions, it seems two problems with doing this are:

1.“If I leave the store to market to churches, I need to pay someone else to cover the store.” Well, that may be true, but if you have any success in approaching churches, your sales will increase.

2. Rejection. Unfortunately, one of the realities of selling is lots of rejection. You need to not take it personally, learn from it, and move on to the next call. Relationships take time to build and you probably won’t make sales the first time you call on a church and certainly not on every church you call. Your goal isn’t a sale, but a relationship enabling you to understand needs and resulting in your ability to meet those needs.

BACK TO THE WEB

Before you call on a church, go to its Web site. There, you’ll learn about its organization, leadership, mission, programs, and much more. This is the foundation for any church interaction you have. Unless you talk their language, offer something to help them achieve their goals, you’re unlikely to have the foundation for a relationship with churches.

It also may be helpful to look back at a terrific article by Zondervan Executive Sales VP Verne Kenney in the March 2006 Aspiring Retail (page 16). He offered some actionable ideas and sample church programs.

Finally, the International Christian Retail Show ( www.christianretailshow.com), is a great place to develop programs and packages with vendors that you can take to the church. We’ve found vendors to be very receptive to creating something unique to support church fund-raisers and seasonal events. If you know the church need, our vendors can probably help you craft a solution. AR

Scott Macdonald is president of Lemstone, a Christian-store franchiser and service provider to churches with bookstores. He has more than 25 years of sales, marketing, and management experience with IBM and various software companies. Macdonald’s sales and marketing column appears bimonthly in ASPIRINGRETAIL.

Questions for Scott Macdonald? Please e-mail publications@cbaonline.org.

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