Unlocking Retail Success: Creating Urgency and Overcoming Hesitations

Good morning, everybody. Today is February 2nd. I'm Bob Fibbs, the retail doc, and you are here live with me.

I try to do a live video every first Sunday of the month. I ask for five questions, and sometimes I get them and sometimes I don't. And I only got one this time, but I thought, all right, well, at least it gives me an excuse to go live with y'all. So, number one, welcome. And if you're here live with me, please type in where you're joining me from or what you sell. That's always kind of important and interesting to learn.

And there's a lot of news in retail right now. You know, our administration decided to put tariffs on an awful lot of our trading partners. And I can tell you there is an awful lot of chaos in retail, particularly in home goods or expensive items that suddenly you're figuring out like, oh my gosh, how am I going to do this? Ultimately, you're going to have to raise prices. There's no two ways about it. That's the problem with tariffs.

Usually the purchaser are the ones who pay for that, not the other country. And I just wanted to take a moment. But you might have seen me on Friday, I did a little video about choosing to, instead of wait for your attitude to tell you you feel better, you have to get your body to move first so that that way your attitude can come naturally. Because if you don't get the body awakened, you can't change the state. And if the state doesn't change, you can't change the attitude.

So if you're sitting there and you're like, oh, I don't feel like I'm going, well, that's the point where you have to say to yourself, three, two, one, get the hell up out of the chair and let's go for a walk. Or I'll go ride a horse or I'll go work out or Pilates or yoga or something to get the body moving.

Because when that happens is when the chemicals in your body without getting too deep into it can surface and actually change the attitude and understand that we all feel good and bad at different times. But I wanted to illustrate or to lift up a book that I have been reading lately called Let Them. And Let Them is really an interesting idea because there is so much that it's hopeless in our world. There's so many things out of our control.

And I think we have so been put in a box by algorithms and you need to be rageful here. And if you hate them, we hate them and all of that. And a lot of it is just hopelessness. So for example, if I do a speech, I was in Newport Beach last week, did a great speech, everything went well, but invariably I know that out of 300 people, someone doesn't like me. And you just have to say, let them.

I used to obsess on that. One person didn't like me. Oh, some person didn't like the way I said something. Like, let them. There's nothing I can do to change that, especially when an event has happened. So the same for you. Something happened in your life. You had a disappointment with a sale. You had an employee who quit and treated you badly. Let them. Just let them. But if you don't take agency over that and say, let them, and then go to the next part, which is let me, right?

So let them feel bad about that. Let them not want to work for me. Then you take the next part. Let me find people who do want to do that. And now you're switching the whole model. Your mind changes and says, I have power over this versus that hopelessness of, oh my God, another thing coming out of Washington, another thing over here in a natural disaster, another thing over here. It's a culture of hopelessness that we are being fed.

And when you say let them, if there's nothing you can do about it, then let them and then let me do something else that I can do positive in the future, change something. I just realized with natural disasters that came off wrong because we can do something, give money, you can do time, right? But if you can't do something, right? Something happened, there's nothing you can do about it, right? It's starting to rain. You don't have to fix it.

Let them, then let me do something to take care of myself. I hope that resonates with you. The book is called Let Me is by Mel Robbins, and I encourage you to listen to it or to read it, whatever it is, because it's a simple idea, but it takes a lot of work. And to me, there is no greater battle in your mind than for the parts of you that want to change and the parts of you that are happy being stuck. And that's the battle. That's what it is to be a leader, is to realize that's

the battle. I have to win it every day. And if I have to be able to be able to say, let them, and it doesn't mean you're a doormat, let them, but it does mean let me take action on something I can do better. If you like what I have to say, do me a friend and do me a favor and give me some likes and let me know all of that stuff. The algorithm does look at that. Hey, Jose Luis, glad to see you, my friend down in Mexico City. I love Mexico City.

So dang big though. My goodness. I tried to walk around that city and it was like, oh, thank goodness there's Ubers. So the reason I wanted to go live today is not only to share that bit about getting your mindset in the place. If you remember during COVID, I did a live stream for five months every day and tried to make sure that I kept the idea that, hey, your customers are going to be back. There's hope. But ultimately, that has to reside with you.

We have to find it in ourselves. If leaders can't lead ourselves, there's no way we lead others. So I hope that helps.

So I only got one question, and this will be a short video today. But Nancy asked, how can we create a sense of urgency in customers to make a purchase when selling non-essential luxury art? That's a great question, Nancy. And I think it always happens in everything, right? I mean, it happens in my sales training. You know, we have a lot of interest in SalesRx. And ultimately, people do things, they'll try it, do things. And then they'll say, oh, I have to think about it. And I get it.

A lot of times people have to get different people involved, right? The CEO has to get the managers, the regionals, you know, get aligned and all of that. But I think a lot of times I just have to turn around and say, what's it costing you not to do this? And that might be something to consider as well. That first off, I guess I should say you have to empathize that, yeah, it could be, it could seem like a big decision. You're taking, you know, a work of art, you're taking something that

you bought and you're having to put something around it. I get on that. But what's it cost you not to go forward, right? So is this a gift? Something is coming up. Is it something that you have had rolled up in a closet for a long time and you keep meaning to do it? That might be a way to do it. Or you might even ask them, okay, well, why not today? What is it? And, you know, a lot of times we say, oh, it's the money. Oh, it's the money.

Money is a, the French call it a canard, which is, I think, a duck. It's just, it's bogus. It's an excuse. We all say that because it's easy. And then you're going to like, oh, well, yeah, everything's really expensive. Unless tariffs coming up, right? But really what I think it comes down to is they don't feel safe in that purchase, whatever that is, whether it's art, whether it's a fancy Eileen Fisher outfit, whatever it's going to be.

There's that little part of them that says, I don't deserve this. That's what we're talking about. Good morning, Margo. Glad you're here. I don't deserve this. A great salesperson helps them see, yeah, you do deserve this because a lot of us have image problems, which is why we shop in retail. Hey, I'm a motivational speaker. I work for applause. For God's sake. Well, I work for a check and applause, but that's how shallow it is. It's just acknowledge it. Right.

But I think everybody is looking for some validation that says, yeah, this is for you. You're good enough. So whatever that's going to be, you know, might just be stepping up, taking a step back and saying, well, let's envision it hanging on your wall. What did that feel like? Just get the brain to switch. It's kind of what I was talking about earlier. We helped them get the brain to kind of go, oh, I think I would feel really

great. Oh, and where would it go? Help them start seeing it in their room. Oh, great. Maybe you're going to tell them you have a return policy, you know, if you don't like it. Now, I just realized you could have been selling art, Nancy. I know your store. Or it could have been framing, and you probably don't return framing. But maybe there's some way there's a return policy. I don't know what it is.

But the key in all of it, when I work with three flooring retailers or window coverings, those are big purchases you have to live with a long time. There's that movie in Tootsie where I think Jessica Lange's character said she was picking out the wallpaper with her mom. And she goes, just remember that wallpaper you're going to see every day for the rest of your life. And she said, well, what would you choose, mom? And she said, oh, I choose daisies because they're always happy or something.

It is that fear of getting it wrong. And you're going to live with it the rest of your life. Oh, my gosh. What if I get it wrong? You're like, it's flooring, it's wood. It's not going to suddenly be bad. In your case with art, like your kid drew this, you bought this on vacation in Venice. You're not going to hate this. You already have it. Or you stopped in an art gallery, which I know your story again is a little off the beaten path. You've stopped in here.

So clearly something drew them to there. And your goal is to help them get it right. How, what is the comfort level that they're missing to go forward with it? Right? So you're selling complete kitchens, same thing. A third of people abandon a kitchen redo because of all the decisions they have to make. And I think it's the same thing in framing. There's so many things that go wrong. Our fear of not getting it right stops us.

And how about you? Any of you in the audience here, type in. Do you have to deal with this in your store when you're selling something? Put it in the comments. So maybe for you, it's the fear of not knowing how to hang it, right? It might be at the wrong height or something. So you say, oh, well, you know, I can come over there and I'll help you hang it. Or maybe you charge them 50 bucks to go do it. Or maybe you charge them 50 bucks to go see the right place to do it.

Your thought in this process, Nancy, is what's the next step? Maybe pull back from the step is I have to sell the art. I have to sell this. How do I take one step closer? That's important, right? Because the way I think of sales is people are raising their hand like, hey, I'm interested in buying it. They do that when they go to your website, they're tracking it. And I'm sure most of you have cookies. I certainly do on my site, what people are doing and how they're doing it.

But then they find directions. They come to your store. They're opening the door with their hand up. Like I'm in it. I'm ready. And they talk to you. I'm in it. So your goal is instead of if they don't buy it, take a step back and say, how do I still get them to do something? So what is it going to be? Maybe there's a smaller piece that you could do. Maybe the goal is to put something nice on the wall because they just got a divorce.

They just got married. They just had a kid. They just moved to the area. There's a million reasons for people to buy things. And that's true of all of you. So maybe another way you think about it is a scarcity call. You could say like, well, you know, people who've waited often find that frames have gone up more. And so that initial price might go up by 20%, even as much as six months. That's a harder one for me to pull off because I'm not really making it a trust

issue. I'm making it a like, well, you know, it's going to cost you more. That wouldn't be my first one I'd go to. Maybe you're going to do a customer story about somebody who, you know, you played the frame game with that we had developed for your store. And they brought in this piece that they've had for a long time or the piece they got from their grandmother or an old photo, fill in the blank.

And you went through the same process. They hesitated and they broke through it and now enjoy it on their wall. Maybe that's the place, but you know, maybe there's a hail Mary when you're taking a step back, like, okay, I tell you what, why don't I do this? Why don't I text you the picture of it? And I'll circle back in 24 hours and see if you have another question. How about that? And most people be like, great, give me your number.

Now you've got your number. That was the next step in the sale that you want to at least be able to keep talking to this person. But I think we tend to forget that selling is nothing more than transference of feeling because I feel good about something, I can sell it easily. Now, we read a recent Gallup poll that said something like only 28% of people who sell things actually believe they're good. And it's like, wow, so three quarters of people don't even believe in the product they're selling.

No wonder retail struggles and we sell by discount because we haven't figured out that, oh, I need to have people who believe in what I'm selling and I need to train them well enough to have those engagement questions. And more importantly, I need to be able to go through and know how to play the game of retail. Most of you are playing the game wrong. Somebody comes in. Oh, do you have this thing? Yeah, I have this thing. Oh, it does this. Oh, and it has this and this and

this. Oh, it's great. And it's on sale two for one. That's not really the game. The game, that's a game of online. The game of in store is to see those buying signs, be able to get them to see it in their store, having that conversation so that it feels like a human to human moment rather than human to ask questions that I could have done online. So I hope that all helps.

You know, one of the challenges I've been having lately is I got my Facebook account was hacked in July and they've been worthless to fix it or help me with it. And so suddenly I was buying all kinds of ads for all kinds of stuff and strange things and almost got locked out of my account. And so normally on my posts, I would just boost them all. And now I'm trying tentatively to come back. So hopefully you'll be able to

see more of me. And I thank all of you for sticking with me all of this time. But I want to just think about for you answering this question of how do I get people to make that next leap. That's where you should spend your time instead of getting on your little, you know, chat groups and, oh, it sucks to be us. And, oh, you know, I'm paying too much of my credit card fees and, oh, this and this and crying the blues.

The game of retail is trying to figure it out. If you really want to know how to figure out the game of retail, you should check out SalesRx by online training. 83% of users reported double did increase. Yeah, you'll pay some money for it. But the return on investment is going to end up being able to more than pay for itself. And then you'll know that the game of retail is this discussion of, oh, in this instance, what could I do?

And thinking of those possibilities and then drilling your crew to be thinking about, oh, how would we do this? Because your goal is to help that person walk home with it or hang it or buy it or create it or whatever it is. Your goal is not just to be an asked and answered clerk because there's no money in it and the path to mediocrity is that way. Remember, nobody raves about average.

And with that, I'm going to leave you all. If you like what I had to say, please do me a favor, share it on your network.

I read these questions every, you know, again, four weeks. And if you have anything to add into our discussion here today, I will certainly add that as well. But remember, we're about as happy as we make our minds up to be. So if you're looking to decide, I want to have a better 2025. Don't wait for someone else to shine the flashlight on you. Turn it around or, yeah, don't wait for somebody else to give you the light. It's up to you to find that in your heart.

And that's going to end up happening probably by movement first. And I'm not saying it has to be something strenuous. You just have to do something that gets the body moving so that the attitude can come up with it. And then you start asking your better questions, not why can't I? Why didn't this? Oh, I wish this didn't. Instead, you're asking better questions, which are, how could I? What if I? And now you're looking positively to the front.

And when you get that customer in and they're having a tough time, you're already prepared for it because if you've asked all these questions, if things aren't, you know, you're not able to make that sale, you're building that into your sales presentation as you go forward so that you harvest all that information and you're thinking always, how can I be better? I think I signed off two minutes ago, but this is really my sign off.

So thanks for joining me this morning. I appreciate it. Have a great day.