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The Jewelry Seller: Sample Issue #1
SHOP SOMEWHERE ELSE
Have you ever wondered where else your customers also buy gems, tools, supplies and anything else they need? And if you know where, do you know why?
Okay, enough with the questions. The reason I ask is because it is as important to know why people buy from someone else as it is to know who.
Other than asking clients where else they buy and why, there is something you can do to check out the competition: Buy something from them.
No, I do not mean walking into their location incognito, browsing around and accidentally dropping stuff on the floor. (I would do that, but you should not.) I mean getting their catalog or ad, and calling them up and buying something so that you can have the same experience that their customers do.
If you place your order by phone, are they nice when they answer? Do you get to talk with a real person, or is the phone answered by a voicemail system? If voicemail, is it easy to follow? Or will you hang up around the fourth or fifth menu because the list of options is so long you will forget what will happen if you press 1?
If you decide to order from a catalog, is the order form easy to follow? Is there enough room on the form to write your entire city name? Or do you have to cram it into a small space? And if you order from the company's web page, is the site easy to follow? And do you receive a confirmation of your order, or are you left wondering if it even went through?
Aside from the benefits of gathering data first-hand as a customer of your competition, there's another reason to actually place an order. Your brain processes behaviors in a different way than it stores facts. Knowing that there's a competitor out there is a fact that you remember, similar to remembering that there's a gas station on the corner across from the bank.
But when you actually deal with a process, such as placing an order, more than just facts are laid down in your memory ... there is the memory of flipping through the catalog, clicking through the website, dialing the phone, the auditory memory of the experience of ordering, and the impact of actually receiving the item. So, in one order, there's a tremendous amount that's actually going on. And having that experience will imprint quite differently on you than anything else you might learn about your competitors.
You can compare your experiences with your competition to the kind of experience that your customers have when they do business with you. And make improvements where needed.
There's another reason you might want to improve things: The next person who calls to place an order might be a competitor of yours who read this, also.
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The Jewelry Seller: Sample Issue #2
A CHOCOLATE STORY
If you're ever driving through Ventnor, New Jersey – a quiet beach community about an hour from Philadelphia – stop by Jagielky's Homemade Candies.
They're famous for their chocolate-covered butter creams, almond butter crunch, and something called a "Wynnewood" (named for a town in suburban Philadelphia) that consists of a marshmallow, caramel and nuts, all molded together into an odd-shaped ball about the size of a baby's head and drenched in dark chocolate.
They should sell it with a little syringe of insulin to stop you from going into diabetic shock after you eat it.
The business occupies a narrow storefront in a row of aging three-floor walkups you could easily drive past without noticing. No one (including the Jagielky family) knows how to pronounce the name properly. Despite the fact that
(a) it's practically invisible,
(b) they seem to do no advertising,
(c) there's no parking, and
(d) the area where customers place orders is about the size of an airplane bathroom,
it is always packed.
People quite literally walk through Ventnor asking complete strangers where it is. And everyone knows what to tell them.
By the way, people don't walk into Jagielky's and buy a few pieces of candy. I'm talking about people laying down piles of cash money and walking out with several pounds of candy. This success is in spite of the fact that – other than providing an absolutely outstanding product – nothing else Jagielky's does will ever make it into a marketing textbook. But perhaps that goes to the point. The product itself is so phenomenal it drives the business all by itself.
The people at Jagielky's obviously love what they do, they work hard to make an excellent product, and the results mirror their efforts. In fact, some of the less-convenient aspects of buying there seem to contribute to the mystique. For example, the lack of nearby parking not only doesn't seem to deter people, it actually creates anticipation as they get closer. And the effort to get to the front of the line (if you can call a crowd of people a "line") is rewarded by the aroma of the chocolates in the display cases. You wouldn't intentionally create these conditions in a business, but they're part of the experience.
Before you book a plane ticket to visit Jagielky's, look for your own local examples of retailers who take a lot of pride in their product. Maybe it's a small bakery that makes the best cinnamon buns in town. Or a golf shop that always seems to have exactly what you need.
The concept is this: Gems like Jagielky's illustrate how lucrative it can be to focus on excellence. Doing all the right marketing activities, like research, an eye-catching advertising campaign, great brochures and more will get clients to try the product or service you provide. But if the product or service doesn't meet or exceed their expectations, no amount of marketing will help.
If you decide you want to visit Jagielky's anyway, it's right across the street from the liquor store. Bring a few quarters for the parking meter, and I highly recommend the Wynnewoods.
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The Jewelry Seller: Sample Issue #3
GETTING HOSTS FOR HOME PARTIES
One of the more popular questions I'm asked is how to "recruit" new hosts for home jewelry parties. In particular, it seems as though folks who have been doing home parties successfully for a while feel like eventually they "run out" of people willing to host them. This issue contains several ideas for solving that problem.
It's typically much harder to get "cold" referrals to be hosts, particularly for something like a home party, than warm ones (those who already know you, or know someone who knows you).
Finding new hosts through people you already know will be much easier than trying to find them "cold." In other words, every hour you spend working your "base" will pay off much more than an hour spent trying to get cold leads.
So here are some ideas:
1) Create a simple brochure that explains how someone can host a party featuring you, and what the benefits are of doing it.
2) Distribute that to guests as they leave all of the home parties you do from now on.
3) Also distribute it if you do any other kinds of shows, such as jewelry shows, craft fairs, etc.
4) If you've already done a few home parties, tell the prior hosts that you're interested in connecting with the folks who already attended your parties to send them a thank you follow up note along with information about becoming a host themselves. The people who already attended one of your parties will be your strongest leads. You can even offer prior hosts something in return if one of their guests becomes a host.
5) If you don't already have one, create a separate page on your website that explains how someone can host a jewelry party featuring you, and what the benefits are to them of doing so. Post a link on your home page to that separate page. It would be best if that separate page (based on the brochure I described above) was a PDF file that site visitors could easily download.
6) Contact party planners in your area and see if they would be interested on collaborating with you to offer a "jewelry party" as one of their options when their doing sweet 16 parties, significant birthday parties or other occasions.
If you do all of these things, you'll also want to order more deposit slips from the bank. You're going to need them.
If there's an idea or two you have about how to successfully attract hosts, send them to me and I'll print them in a future newsletter.
If you're interested in learning more about selling effectively, check out my NEW book, The Jewelry Selling Answer Book. It's available for instant download at www.marketingjewelry.com/answerbook.htm. It's 150 pages of answers to the most popular questions that jewelry makers have about selling.
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