Navigating Retail Challenges with Bob Phibbs LIVE

Good morning, everybody. Today is Sunday, November 10th. You are live with Bob Vibbs, the retail doc.

I know that people watch this all across the world and at various times and on replays, but I read every comment. So I encourage you all to type in where you're joining me from today. Haven't been able to do this for a few weeks because I've asked for questions and I didn't get them. So if I don't have questions, I don't continue on.

And so whenever you see that on a Saturday morning, please do me a favor and give me a question you're looking to fix in your business, in your retail store, whether that's marketing and merchandising. I've kind of done it all. I've been doing this for 30 years with some of the greatest brands in the world, all the way down to brands you've never heard of. And the whole thing that my mission is we can make the world a better place

by the people working and shopping and retail. If you believe that, then you'll probably want to follow me. So please make sure that you do that, whatever platform you're watching this on, and give me some thumbs up. That's always great. And also, just for your Facebook buddies, just remember there is a place on my Facebook page that you can give me a review. I would appreciate a five-star review because the algorithm looks at all that stuff.

I have several questions here, and I'll probably stop and talk about some different things along the way. But if you have questions while I'm live, please do me a favor and type it in there below. I know using StreamYard, you have to allow that it will use your information because everything is about privacy these days. So let's see what we got.

Jackie Schlitz says, what are your thoughts on the port charges returning? I'm not sure what that question is. The port charges returning, my thoughts are the returning. I am pretty agnostic on these things. I have come, we've all come through a week where, let's face it, there was a major change in America's direction. And there's a lot of people that are celebrating. Other people are very upset about it. I just say, look, what you do with your business is manage the customer.

You get another chance to start over with your customer. And honestly, I just don't have patience for fear and what if and all that other stuff. I am much more of be in the moment, release it, and you're free. If you want to be stuck in the past or you want to fear about the future, I think you're going to have a tough time. I'm just saying. So there you go.

David McCord says, do you have any success with using technology such as QR codes on displays that show product videos or recipes using the product, so forth and so on? Or do customers not engage with it for the most part? David, I don't care if just one person engages with it. I'm happy. It's that simple. We just finished the retail refresh. And one of the units we did was talking about things to do with QR codes, as a matter of fact.

And one of the things that you can do so easily is by having that QR code anywhere in your window that somebody can see one thing. We don't want to see everything, but one item. That would be great. If you have something at the register that's a QR code, somebody could sign up super quick for your loyalty program, so much better than having, what's your phone number, or something like that. There's a brand over in China called Alibaba, and they have an amazing network of stores.

One of the biggest is a grocery store, and one of the things that's most interesting is they have a QR code on there. I think I was talking to Michael Zaccor on my podcast, and they have a QR code on their website. Or the spidery crabs, I don't know. I don't need them. But, you know, they're way up in the north cold waters and all that stuff. World's Deadliest Catch, that's the show. Anyway, if you scan that, you can find out where it was caught, the boat it was, the time it was.

You can order it to be ready for you as you check out. You could have them cook it for you right now and have it ready. Or you could schedule it for a party coming up and have it delivered. That is an amazing set of things that are all dependent on that QR code. There's so much information that you can put in a QR code, but most people don't know how to do it, and they don't know how to really encourage customers to use it.

So they're getting less and less, I don't know what's scary, but they're getting more widely understood because most of us have a smartphone that we understand how a QR code works, and it's helpful.

So again, even if just one or two, it certainly helps, but just make sure you're taking it somewhere that you can go through and track that good morning from albert lee good morning linda good morning from port orange florida i don't know why facebook is all has locked out all of our names on this but that's the way it goes so again privacy issues have taken over a lot of my social platforms and in fact i got hacked many times on my facebook retail doc and so i can't

advertise on facebook anymore so a lot of my videos like this. I can't promote a lot of other things. And we've been doing this since July. So every time I seem to think I can go back in there and do it, somehow my credit card gets used. So a heads up that the hackers are out there.

Holly Mason, your thoughts on fixtures. Okay. Are there outdated fixtures or best fixtures for certain types of products? Is the farmhouse look dead? Cherry-esque bookshelves, books, and gift store? Are there some types of display they're always a big nope for you. So that's a lot of questions in there, Holly. And fixtures always come down to what are you trying to tell? I think that spare tables are definitely not the way to go. Look at anyone who has got new stores, whether it's luxury or...

Mid-market or other ones, they're always going to be round. And the idea of nesting and that kind of idea, because it just looks more human, it's more human scale. I'm not a big fan of those big gondolas that are six or eight feet tall, that you can get a grocery store being used at anything else but a grocery store because they obliterate your sight lines, but also everything tends to look the same.

So I think whoever you are that are looking at your store, you have to think like your home and is it clean and is it neat gift stores for me always have this grandma's attic feel about them which is put as much stuff in there and people will browse well you know the problem is when so much stuff that we're browsing is nothing stands out and so i don't think it's as much about the fixtures as it is about curating what you're selling because a lot

of us go through and because we can buy a lot of stuff we do and then we just junk up the store and i think that's really bad. So there you go. Oh, we have a lot of people just joined in. Hey, if you're just joining in, let me know who you are. Although I can't answer you by name because you're hidden in Facebook's little algorithm, but I'm glad you're here today.

So thanks for joining us. I hope that helps. Holly Lynn Palmer asks, it's shoplifting time of year. That's right. It certainly is. How do you discourage and how do your employees handle it? You know, it's fascinating when I was selling cowboy clothes a while back. And we used to have a big table out front. I mean, my goodness, 10 by 10 foot table. And it was stacked with Levi's because Levi's were huge in that time. I'm not going to give you the years.

And we were in Santa Monica, Santa Monica Place Mall. And it was a Frank Gehry design, really upscale. And a lot of tourists came there. So I went to the bank.

And I came back from the bank and I walked in the store and go, what the hell happened and i i went to one of the guys on charge and i said did we just have a run on levi's he goes what do you mean i go dude they were that high they're this and what the the sneaky thieves had done was when they had taken them all the appearance at first is you're just looking at they're all blue but if you just paid attention you would see that dear god we were wiped out it. And that was a very big deal.

So I always come back to, and every cop will tell you everywhere, the number one way to prevent shoplifting is eye contact. If you would get out from behind your damn counters, if I had my druthers, I would get rid of counters. I would have a bed of nails behind there. I would do anything I can. People have comfy seats. I've seen it all, believe me. And the idea that, you know, come to the counter and please talk to me is just done.

If you want to stop shoplifting, you make sure your crew goes out from behind the counter, they stop everything, and they look for the color of the person's eye. When you do that, they pretty much said, I know you, I know you're here. And most shoplifters would go somewhere else for the simple reason that. There's plenty of other places. Don't give a darn. You know, they're working on a store that should be working on eight people is working on two.

So there's their friends, they can't tell what's going on. And that's, that's a recipe for shoplifting. A few things else you can look at. And yes, we've heard them all. But those booster boxes you might have heard about, they're still popular. You know, it looks like it's a gift.

And it's actually as a whole, I think those are kind of hard to, to find because frankly, it's going to be a baby stroller or something where if you're wrong, you're really going to be in trouble but somebody repeatedly entering and exiting without purchasing that's a big sign because they're kind of casing you and know what your displays are and what should be there at all times if you have to you could take a picture but alert crews is what matters and you know the challenge

we run into it is that a crew that gives a darn is going to be really upset about shoplifting and a crew that doesn't care and is like whatever it's not my money, that rich business owner is going to pay for it. And that's usually not the case. If you love what I'm saying, give me a thumbs up. In fact, put in the comments, yes, or let me know that you are enjoying this. We're 10 minutes in and I probably have another 10 minutes to go. So keep me company, would you? All right.

David asks, if I had to trim payroll, is it best to eliminate a full-time person or cut everybody's hours back and keep everyone? That is playing with fire, David. The only thing I would say, if you consider the whole idea of cutting everybody's hours back, you would have to have a private conversation with each one of them and tell them you're thinking about doing this and then go forward.

I think it's a dangerous game to play when you say that because now you've not impacted one person, you could potentially be impacting six or seven. And at that point they go, is this a viable place for me to continue working? And that's never a good thing. Never a good thing. So my example, I think what I've just answered you is I would keep, I would have to eliminate one person and move on. And by the token, you know, the, the point is that sales are down and I, I've told this story before.

I'm going to try to tell us more stories when I'm on these, instead of just answer your question.

So when I'm in port porto portugal and i'm done at the qsp a convention was amazing in porto and we go to this fabulous taylor port wine the winery and the tour guide tells us this story that the main the ceo meets with their biggest client their main client one year and the client says well we're not going to pay that you've got to cut your price by 20 or we're not going to buy any and the ceo looked at him in the eye and said, well, we're not going to sell to you then.

He finishes the meeting and he comes out and gets the whole crew together, everybody in the vineyards and in the. Whatever, where they store all the, the port. And he calls them all together and he says, I want you to let you know, our big customer came in and demanded we lower our prices and I didn't. Now I have a choice if I could either cut our staff and we could try to make through, or I need each one of you to do 110% better.

And we're going to, we're going to prove them, prove our right that we're about quality. And he goes, and you know what? Our sales maintained And you know what's even better? Two years later, those people came back and bought all that they used to do and then more because we had integrity.

So I think that conversation is good for everybody is to understand that if you do have to let someone go, then it's an opportunity to say, so we need to get more out of the store so we all can be living a better life. And then you do something like get my online retail sales training program, SalesRx, which now has an AI generator role play that you know exactly what people are learning and how they're going to learn it.

And then you're going to be able to make sure that they're actually able to deliver a great customer service instead of waiting for someone to come in and go, do you have a black pen with like silver writing on it that clicks? Because that's basically what most of us have done. We have so given up with a customer. You expect the customer to come in like it's Amazon. You know, I'm looking for this one thing. That's not why they're coming in your store.

They're coming in to discover something new. They're coming into your store to find something different, to be surprised and be engaged. And they want a more human experience. The more AI gets out there in the world and we talk about it. We talk about algorithms in social media and people giving it up and not reading a lot of things. They want a human experience, right or wrong, whether it's better or worse. They want to experience humanity.

So if you're going to go through and have to get rid of people, then the corollary of that is you have to talk to your crew about how we all have to step up. Would you agree? If you agree with me, give me a thumbs up. Let me know you're out there. That always makes it better. All right. And welcome from Mexico, whoever you are. And upstate New York, Facebook user at 9-11. All right, great.

Alice Bacon says, what do you see as the outlook for 2025 for North American small retailers, given the incoming administration's ties to Amazon and other large corporations asking from Canada and not trying to stir things up? Well, Alice, you know, I am a big believer of we're about as successful as we make our minds up to be. And if you follow me, you know I don't have patience for whiners. I don't have patience for telling me the deck is just stacked against them, that any number of things.

Work is hard. It's work. I get up here. I start in my office every day at 7. I'm here till 5 every day, unless I'm going to Minnesota, which I'm going to Tower, Minnesota this week to work with a casino up there, which is going to be very exciting to talk about merchandising. But that's it. That's the job. And I'm here on a weekend. And if people call me, I am picking up the phone and I'm answering. That's the job. If you want to be in business, then you're going to say, OK, no excuses.

We screwed up. I lost that account. Is there another way I can do it? If I miss that deadline, how are we going to do it? But the goal is you're not wedded in the past. Oh, it was so great the last few years. Oh, and everything changed. Oh, and prices went up. It's so hard to get built. Oh, let me get on my chat and tell everybody how it sucks to be me. And we waddle in it. I'm tired of the waddlers. That's a word, I think. I want people who say, okay, I get it.

The last three years, we had big increases. And a lot of that was due to not selling more products, but for vendor increases in prices. If you think prices are going to go down, I think you're sorely mistaken. We lost 5 million people who work in the United States. People are not going to go back to $7.50 an hour. They're going to expect the same wages they're making.

So if that's the case, then you're going to have to earn more this holiday season from the customer than taking them for granted and allowing somebody who doesn't give a crap be on your store sales floor. And you're saying, did you welcome those people? Oh, I said hi. They're just looking. And we let them get off with that because they're not trained. And if you thought about being in the Olympics and you think people are not training to be in the Olympics, of course they are every single day.

Well, that's what you have to be. If you want to be successful, you've got to look and say, how am I going to be better? And those of you who have been on my site and you've explored SalesRx, and it's like, oh, that looks like work. Hey, if you can give somebody 10 minutes off the floor to go to the bathroom, you can give them 10 minutes a day to learn how to be a salesperson.

And then you can actually, instead of cutting people, you can be expanding like several of our clients are adding new stores, adding new crews, and they're loving life because they're selling higher dollar values and more of them in one sale versus just having more expensive items go out the door. Hope that makes sense. Enjoy northern Minnesota. It's beautiful. Yeah, well, there's a chance that I might have one inch of snow on Wednesday night, but hopefully it'll melt.

So there you go. I think that's probably Linda there.

That's all you go. So, Shell asked me, how do you prepare for proposed service? Well, we're on a roll with this. Do I order as much immediate ship as I can right now? Clearly, that inventory would have to be year-round appropriate instead of seasonal. I'm a clothing and gift boutique in Ohio. So, I'll give you another quick story here, Shell.

And so, this might line with you. When I was doing a business makeover for Mike Sheldrick, one of my very first clients, I walked into this one area, and it was filled with syrups. I mean, like case after case and things like grape and pineapple. And I'm like, why do you have all of this? Nobody's ordering that in a coffee house. And he said, oh, well, you know, I get 15% less if I'm a distributor. So I have to maintain my inventory. I go, but this stuff is not you're going

to sell it. He goes, but I could. I'm like, well, you could, but you're not. So why are you doing that? And so that conversation around, again, preparing for proposed tariffs, these are ideas. Nothing has come to fruition. There's nothing out there saying that's what it is. When your distributors tell you something like that, fine.

But I don't buy on fear. And I'm certainly not going to end up trying to buy as much as I can and ignore all the rules of proper merchandise buying, which is quite simply buy what you can sell, not buy what you can hold. That's not why you're in a retail business. You're in a business for the merchandise to turn over and over. That's what matters. So agree. Team effort. You can't win a game if we're not all in on the plays.

That's exactly it. I love that. Hey, I've got a name here. Hey, Dan, glad you're here. Oh, that's coming in from YouTube, so that's why I could see that. All right, great. Graham asks, simple question. Okay, Graham, what's the simple question? If a customer breaks something in the store, what are your thoughts regarding charging them for a broken item? Okay, Graham, that's just a no. I can't imagine if I broke something and someone came over to you, you have to buy that.

I'd walk out and like, go ahead, charge me. And then I would probably post on social media and I'd probably talk about it or never go back there. You know, or what are we going to be doing? Charging customers for trying on clothes and not buying them or billing them for time spent asking questions. It's the same absurdity, right? It's like if they broke it, then they broke it. And that's what happens. But I think that idea is just wrong.

And, you know, if you're that particular, you're that against the wall, I don't think that helps you make any friends. I hope that helps. Yeah. Thank you. No. All right. That's good. In fact, I'm just going to, this is all I'm seeing is I just have Facebook user. So I apologize. There must be some other upgrade that I can do to try to get around that next time we do one of these. We'll try to do one again in December, by the way, after Small Business Saturday and Black Friday and all that.

Remember this year, by the way, side note, Thanksgiving is a week later this year than last year.

So that means you have a condensed shopping time. but we do expect it to be a really great time for after christmas sales because christmas falls in the middle of the week and so people won't know which weekend to take off but you'll end up having more time with people who are going to be you have an extra weekend in there so that kind of makes up for it but that's why you're seeing everybody fully decked in their stores in christmas already which i highly recommend.

Yes, I love there, Stacey. If it was an accident, if we treat customers as if it's in our own home, exactly. Was that what you would do in your own home? Some cowboy would. I don't know. Get out the little stripe. I can charge you on that. All right, great. I've got three more to go.

Nancy says, what are some unconventional merchandising or marketing techniques you found to be successful? Showing up in places where people don't expect, and again, you didn't say it had to be retail, so the one that comes to mind was on Election Day, Calm, which is a meditation app.

Had an ad running everywhere, and it was just, here is 30 seconds of silence, as you just see it, and there's no music or anything else, it's just 30 seconds of silence, and that's all it is, you watch it, and it's like, you're welcome from Calm, and that was it, because it's a meditation, app, and I thought, brilliant. I think we're seeing products show up in unconventional places, We're seeing people doing partnerships with different vendors.

You know, in your case, Nancy, you do an awful lot of picture framing. So I would say, you know, try to find a way even to get into a school on a back to school night and you show how you're framing like two or three quick pictures for somebody or something like that, that gets people to go like, wow, that was interesting. Or they might take a moment, but you want to be true to who you are.

There's an awful lot of people that do pop-ups with all kinds of brands that have nothing to do with their product. And I'm kind of like, I sort of get it, but they don't really know who you are as much as who that other person is. So make sure that they're a partnership. I hope that helps. Dory's asking, how do you talk to a salesperson about their body odor? Well, I think you have to have like any uncomfortable conversation.

You have to, and I'll put a link in this afterwards because this is exactly what my AI role play is.

Sidekick rex does it's you have an uncomfortable conversation and the one i'm going to put in the chat here he i don't know why i call him he but in any event he you'll start the the role play with a picture of a young woman who's been late three times that week and you have to have an uncomfortable conversation with him to get him to change their behavior and then you'll do this might take you a minute and then you get a score you'll

get to see how you've figured out and it will tell you exactly you did this right you did this right or missed you'd miss this it's the same my thing with body odor, you first have acknowledged there's a problem here. So however you get in that conversation, you're going to do this privately and you're going to say, you know, hey, I just want to make sure that you understand that, you know, I have found that.

Sometimes bodily hygiene is lacking when I, when you come in sometimes and you have to get them to acknowledge there's a problem. Well, I don't have a problem with it. Yeah, I understand it, but I do. And my customers are having a challenge with that. And then you turn it back on them. So how can we correct that? And then I'd say, oh, I work at the gym and suddenly don't take a shower and you go, oh, great. Well, you have to take a shower.

I've had other people say, I keep a stick, band deodorant or something in the back room and you can use that kind of mask that that's not the point. The point is they need to make sure that they see the issue. And this doesn't have to be a long thing. And I wouldn't be worried about it if you're going to be too soon. I'd much rather to do this in a new employee soon and later.

But that brings me to the other point for all of you, which is you put in your job description as one of the most basic things, maintains personal hygiene so as not to be offensive to customers or other associates. When you have that, you could just point to that and say, yeah, this is in violation of that. When you don't have that, you haven't set any expectations. And so it's a really hard one.

Bob Rodriguez says, I'm sure you've toured a lot of stores here's have you ever seen a display that was so organized and bad that you told the manager and how to make improvements on your off time without them even knowing you no i wouldn't know that and you you sent a picture and you can all see the picture it's in in the questions there down below it says sweet savings but this display is very busy and And the trouble I have with this,

Bob, is I don't notice the product as much as it's so generic, sweet savings. You've got cheap prices on it. What's the top going to say? Isn't it like who wants chocolate would be a better sign than sweet savings would be my suggestion because it's very busy. You got a lot of bows, but no one's buying chocolate because it's on sale. It's because it's chocolate. That's what you have to remind yourself.

And that brings me to the end of my parts let's see if we have any questions here you mentioned phone answering machines is there an answer. Well, they're all, I mean, you can do a million of them with the phone answering machines. That's whoever your service provider is. You just set it up that it's text to Podium does it. There's several other vendors you can do, but they're all going to be AI generated because it's just listening to it and then it's transcribing it.

And then you want it to text you with it. That's what makes the difference. I was talking to somebody here on Facebook the other day and they said, oh, we just answered the phone. It's like, great. What do you do after hours? Oh, because that's another point. And I'll just end with this. You've been generous to be with me 26 minutes. The whole idea that when a customer contacts you, are you getting an instant ping in your email and answering them? Or are you waiting?

Like I've had a couple experiences this week where it's three or four days later and then it's like, oh, we value every interaction. And it's some stupid like auto reply that you get four or five days later. I'm just telling you, we understand those things. And they say, you don't need our, we don't need your business.

And if that's you, just understand that instead of looking at, oh, my God, tariffs, oh, my God, who's getting in, who got out, what happened, oh, my gosh, what's going on with Brittany, what's going on with, right? Instead of worrying about a bunch of crap, just understand your job is to make a customer's day. If you do that, they will be the line back to your store. If you don't do that, then they're going to go to somebody else and the blame game starts.

And if you want to blame somebody, just look in the mirror, because a lot of times we are just not creating our own universe. We are about as happy as we make our minds up to be. I wish that for you today. And if you've enjoyed this, please share it with your friends. And I will see you another time. I'm Bob Fibbs, The Retail Doc. Thanks for joining me.