Ian's Bits & Bobs: The Blog

FamilyTree_HelperSigns

Helping Customers Succeed – The First Time

I know most people are up to their neck in spring and don’t have time to read my ramblings, let alone hold meetings to implement new ideas. But I wanted to record what I am seeing out there just in case some readers were able to use it to help their customers succeed – the first time. The industry is changing because the customer is changing, as my analysis of this year’s National Garden Survey data shows.

Walk any type of garden store (I’ve seen 12 in the last few days) and watch shoppers, especially the younger novices. You can see confusion bordering on panic on some customers’ faces as they read every bottle or plant label, asking each other “what’s the difference between these two?” They have bought into the concept of outdoor fun with the kids or healthy home-grown food but matching the dream with reality is another matter.  “Fear of failure” is the main drawback to increased garden spending at times like this.

So, keeping it brief for Mother’s Day weekend, here are some questions/queries to use for your training or critiques in the next few days:

  • Do displays/signs assure first-timers (e.g., ‘Easiest succulent we carry!’)
  • Is wording simple and encouraging, or botanical and fear-inducing?
  • Are there simple bundles such as “Perennial Success Kit” or “Fresh Potatoes Without Digging”?
  • Are the top 15-20 selling plants accompanied by their essential tie-in products and how-to info?
  • Are guarantee signs positive and pro-customer, or defensive and pro-company?
  • Is there an information desk? Is it always staffed by happy, competent people?
  • Are customer success stories and reviews shared online or on site?
  • Are online how-to videos promoted at the point of purchase for customers to access as they shop?
  • Is there help line/website reference or at home consultancy available for after purchase questions?

How much money from the customer’s “Fear of Failure” is being left on your table for another year?

Let us all know how this questionnaire played out!

Photo by Ian, taken at Family Tree (KS)

May 5, 2016 5 Comments
GrowYourOwnSalsa_cropped

Let’s Sell Emotional Values!

The phrase “The Value Proposition” is marketing-speak for “In return for your money (or effort or time etc.), you get this” and is worth more than an academic glance. Just look how the “Mad Men” in advertising have used that simple premise to help us all to part with our money for decades:

–          Concerned about that daunting list of side effects in a medication ad? (Sure, but just the idea of not sneezing every five minutes in spring makes it that a deal you can accept.)

–          Excited to turn over all your home TV and internet to one giant cable company? (No but you DO like the idea of watching whatever you want, when you want.)

These types of ads carefully craft a message of emotional benefits (the outcomes of the purchase), while the garden industry mostly still features the technical details. From propagator/manufacturer to retailer we see garden product ads, signs, labels or training manuals that are heavy on product functions (“Spreader-sticker” anyone?).

We see “Takes partial shade” instead of “Fill that bare spot under a tree” or “soaker hose” rather than “Waters gently like Mother Nature”. Maybe THAT’S why Americans spend more per household on Pizza than on gardening!

Marketers realized years ago that consumers spend more easily on emotional benefits than on functional ones. That’s why people drive miles to save gas money, so they can spend it at their favorite restaurant!

With competition from the smartest marketers on the planet, the lawn & garden business should spice-up the (sometimes necessary) technical language with words that suggest the product benefit (outcomes!) in simple emotional terms. We have highly marketable products with infinite emotions from excitement and joy, through pride and accomplishment, to solace and peace. We have things that taste great, clean the air, increase property values, reduce utility bills, create privacy, enrich lives and save the planet. But we still talk or merchandise to the public in technical or hobbyists terms. Just look at what “Mad Men” do with soap, drugs or insurance and think of what you could do with gardening!

So instead of “quick grower, 6ft by 5ft, $99” how about “Hide the neighbors for under $100”? Or for “3 months continuous feeding” substitute “Feed and forget” (with a 90 day reminder to buy more).

Train to Think Like the Customer

Team training should focus on the end result, not the process, as employees make the emotional value proposition: emphasizing the cool style of succulents or the fun of a child measuring a sunflower.

In training meetings I have found employees so anxious to tell the customer every single fact, they miss the essential motivator – the emotions of the end result. Stressing “things they need to know” means that emotional values like the fragrance of lilac or tasting that first tomato are missed. I even heard one experienced manager telling a customer “I think you’ll find it worth the effort” when she balked at digging a big hole for a shrub!

So let’s see more emotional values from the entire supply chain:

  • Let’s read about “A green lawn for 90% less than a lawn-care service” (money-saving is a MAJOR emotional benefit!)
  • Let’s see plant labels spelling out nostalgia like “Grandma’s Lilac” or the fragrance of Old Roses
  • Let’s suggest the environmental satisfaction of creating a Monarch haven
  • Let’s see POP with “Basil on your balcony” for apartment dwellers and “Hops made easy” for home-brewers.
  • Let’s hear employees talking of “Relaxing sounds of wind chimes” or a fountain that “Hides the sound of the dog next door”!
  • Let’s see displays that call out “Best herb for grilling steak” in the myriad of herb choices.
  • Let’s focus on those emotions that entice consumers to save on gas and spend it in this industry!

… and finally, let me know what you come up with: happy propositioning!

Photo by Ian, on the road somewhere

Apr 27, 2016 6 Comments
Spring2016_v2

Simplicity – A Twelve Point Test

 

In most of the USA and Europe, garden retail makes money for three months, breaks even for three and loses it for six! So it’s understandable that retailers want to expose their customers to as many products as possible. They even have a phrase for it; “Peak the Peaks!”

Add to that pressure, the constant supply of new or re-packaged products (don’t even get me started on the yearly deluge of new plant varieties) and the businesses are bursting at the seams. Aisles become narrow canyons deterring shoppers while inventory obscures signs meant to help. Everything is so jammed in, nothing stands out.

Time Crunched

Now see it like today’s customer. There are now fewer hobbyists who love discovery shopping and more time-crunched project shoppers. You can see them every spring, like deer in the headlights with 25 minutes (“tops”) to get what they need and get out of there. Faced with shelves of similar packets or benches of seemingly identical plants they are forced to read labels or bags (then go on-line to see if it’s true!) Sure they could wait for an equally stressed employee, who already has five others hovering around her and hasn’t had a break for 5 hours…

Customers don’t know what they don’t know so de-mystifying 5,000 to 20,000+ SKUs in 25 minutes is not the fun experience they expected. Choice can kill impulse and current garden retailing is SKU-ing customers to death (or at least into under-spending!)

The retailer must become the first “filter” of what shoppers need to complete their project. That is the real goal of a retail buyer; providing the sales team with a range of products already narrowed down for quick, easy-to-follow sales or merchandising. Are your buyers focused on that?

I know it is too late to thin out the shelves or cancel orders for this spring (maybe that’s a summer project before the 2017 buying season!) but use these questions to walk around each department. Consider your inventory through the eyes of today’s intrigued but hesitant consumer:

1.       Is pricing readily understood by all (or do customers have to ask someone)?

2.       Are customers led from impulse to wow to inspiration (or do they just wander around)?

3.       Is layout conducive to grab-and-go shopping?

4.       Are signs simple, fresh and understandable? (“4 in perennials” anyone…?)

5.       Is there a “Fun ideas for a weekend project” area to give ideas?

6.       Does the POP simplify shopping by narrowing down the choice to a few solutions?

7.       Is sales language simple and confident reflecting expertise and local knowledge?

8.       Do displays attract, inform and inspire in just a few seconds?

9.       Does merchandising say “look no further, this is what you need”?

10.   Are projects, such as planting an herb garden, sold as a one-stop kit of plants and hard goods?

11.   Is there a full-size mannequin, mature display bed or photo-banner to show the project’s end result?

12.   Overall, do the products and displays simplify customers’ options or just create more questions?

 

Let me know how it goes and stay tuned for next week’s blog post on making the emotional connection.

Photo credit: taken by Ian, showing the brilliant idea by the team at Weston Nurseries, MA

Apr 19, 2016 14 Comments
SpringTrio_1

Three Steps To Help Customers Spend

 

Another spring arrives with national brand TV ads reminding America to get out in the garden, but also brings thousands of new items on the shelf or bench. We are not making it easier for customers to spend!

Consumers are eager yet hesitant to start gardening. Excited to feel the sun, share little discoveries with their loved ones and drool over their first homegrown tomato. But hesitant about the shopping process and memories of last year’s failure to launch.

Many customers this month may not have been garden shopping since last Memorial Day! Meanwhile, they’ve found even more ways to use their “spare” time. Gardening is now up against binge-watching the latest Netflix release. Shoppers are faced with “ConSKUsion,” more products to consider in less time. The world has changed since 2006: has the retail journey in your store (or on your website)?

So as 85 million households invade garden retail stores and/or websites, put yourself in their muckboots and walk through their expectations in your store.

They may be looking for a few “destination” items (tomatoes or weed killer) but are prepared to buy a lot more (and stay longer) if the experience is fun, easy and time-effective. In the next 10 weeks your customers want:

1.       Simplicity when they shop

2.       Emotional Value as they buy

3.       Success when they use it at home

How simple is it to find those destination items and understand all the verbiage? “Fear of Failure” is constantly cited as a reason for low spending, even in high-earning households.

How much emotional value is there in the sales message? Does the team or the merchandising connect the dots during the shopping process? If customers imagine their dog on a safe, weed-free lawn or the “cool” comments they’d get about their succulent planter, they are much more likely to justify the value and make the purchase.

What are the chances of success with the product – be honest!? People in the industry tend to forget how hard it can be to keep living things alive (I hear the same disbelief from a “techy” when I have a problem with my smartphone….)  But failure this year means even less spent next year by those customers.

So, use these three basic concepts: simplicity, value and success to critique your store this spring and tell me how you scored.

Tune back in for the next subject coming up in the spring blog series: “Simplicity is the Word.”

Happy spring!

Photo Credit:  Ian Baldwin, taken at a should-not-be-named retailer

Apr 8, 2016 10 Comments
Nutcrackers

Be Smart at the Mart

As the last of the “50% off” sales straggle to a sad end and intrepid buyers of all-things Christmas head for “Market” (as the Atlanta Gift Mart is euphemistically known), I thought it might be worth sharing some observations from the Holiday business 2015:

It seems to have been a happy Christmas season for most garden retailers, despite a falling stock market and a burgeoning on-line business. The spending patterns of the American consumer for 2015’s Christmas reflected the greater changes seen through the year by the independent garden retailers that we know. Average spend per customer in Nov/Dec was up on the previous year by a range of 2% to 12%, while the favorable weather across much of the country drove customer count up by an even higher range for the majority. While predictions for general retail spending in the Malls were modest, garden retailers seemed to beat the street. Did consumers trade savings at the pump for a bigger wreath? J.P. Morgan Chase says that the average household is saving over $260 per year on cheaper gas and that they will spend up to 80% of it!

What consumers spent their money on is important as buyers head for Atlanta and Dallas, hoping to predict what shoppers will drool over in 10 months’ time – never easy. Christmas merchandise has but one chance per year to wow the consumer.  It takes real talent to repurpose a Nutcracker as a garden gnome five months later!

Fresh Is “In”

Feedback from our networks and clients was of strong and consistent traffic across all regions, demographics and store sizes. Fresh was “in” everywhere. Fresh cut trees, greens, roping and wreaths the bigger the better, the more unique the better in all categories. Customized wreath-making stations were selling them as quickly as they could be made. Where buyers could find them, re-orders sold out on cut greens, wreaths and outdoor “Porch Pots”.

Meanwhile, artificial trees were only strong at the top of the price range and what was once the very essence of a retail Christmas, ornaments and collectibles, especially collectibles, languished inside many stores. This last category, known to some of my English friends as “landfill,” may have seen its best days for a while as the collectors of such things as nutcrackers, carolers, nativities, Victorian nostalgia and so on, fade away themselves. And younger consumer may be turning away from decorative “stuff”  to spend on other, more practical or experiential, things.

A Department That Keeps On Giving

Given the (expensive) buying expeditions underway to the shows it might be helpful to know what those other things are!

Sales of all sorts of personal items, presumably destined for under-the-tree gifts were very strong, but the key change here is from Christmas gifts to all year round gifts. As one owner said “I want something I can sell into March, not just up to Dec 25th!” Despite the warm weather affecting sales of winter-wear in the Malls, sales of scarves, gloves, socks, sweaters and jewelry in garden-stores were extremely good in Nov/Dec. Any retailer with new or unusual styles of existing items such as super-cold drink containers sold out, while local-made apparel, food and drink were hits across the country.

I am not sure if I have a conclusion from all this information as you work the booths at market but caution is advised; change is in the air for Christmas “gift” shopping.  One of the big winners at Christmas was gift cards for future experiences: eating out, concert tickets, classes (glassblowing, cocktail making, etc.) or taking a trip.

Take Care With Those Bears

Sure, consumers are still going to decorate with lights, trees, ornaments or swag and will still buy lots of “stuff”. They will still change color schemes and update their homes each holiday season. But the highlights of their spending now seem to be less on Christmas/Santa/Holiday themed products and more on giving personal all-round gifts or new exciting things not necessarily connected to the specific season. Consumers are going for “fresh,” honest and, where possible, local products if they give products at all.

Sooo, buy carefully in the next few weeks: it’s hard to turn the boat back to China once you have confirmed!

 

photo credit for the lit “future garden gnomes” above: Moonlightway via MorgueFile

Jan 14, 2016 4 Comments

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