Essential Sales Training for Peak Season Retail Success
Holiday traffic is peaking, wallets are open, and your team’s skills and training will decide how much revenue you keep.
In this engaging, practical session, retail sales expert Bob Negen and merchandise planning leader Marc Weiss talked about how to successfully navigate the rush and generate reliable cash flow. You will learn how a simple, repeatable sales training framework can lift average tickets without coupons or promos, then connect those selling behaviors to smart inventory decisions so the right items are on the floor at the right time.
A retailer himself for many years, Bob uses his four decades of retail experience to help store owners and managers learn the necessary business skills they need to succeed in today’s changing retail environment. After implementing structured training, Bob has noted that retailers have seen revenue bumps of 20 to 30 percent. Are you ready to watch your business grow?
View our session today and give your staff the tools to serve better, sell confidently, and move the merchandise you need to move before year end.
You will learn
The importance of a storewide selling system that any associate can master
Holiday-specific plays to increase UPT and average ticket
How to align daily coaching with inventory plans to boost cash flow
Every day you wait is lost revenue during the most important weeks of the year. Train today, profit tomorrow.
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Essential Sales Training for Peak Season Success
Presented by Management One
Introduction
Management One: All right, we will open up our waiting room here to folks.
Management One: There we go.
Management One: Hello, everyone! Thanks for joining us again for another Retail Insights session here. Very excited for this one, so…
Holiday Playbook
Management One: We are coming up on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Pink Friday for our Boutique Hub members, and Christmas, Hanukkah, all the holiday season, which means your retail store is likely buzzing, and I wanted to create this session for you, a little bit of a departure away from the financial numbers, and talk a little bit more about
Why Sales Training Matters
Management One: Training, and we can't do that without the mind of
Management One: Mr. Bob Negan, and Mark Weiss here from Management One. So thank you guys for joining us today.
Management One: Before we get into the actual content here, a couple of housekeeping items. So, one thing, we are recording this. If you do need to step away, not a problem. We are gonna send out a recording to all of you.
Q&A
Management One: And the second thing is, one of the great things about these sessions is this is live and totally interactive, so we want to hear your questions. Right down at the bottom of your Zoom window there is a Q&A button. At any time, please feel free and submit questions, and at the end, I'm happy to turn them over to Bob and Mark.
Management One: to record them.
Management One: So if you're not familiar with Management One, thanks for joining us today and stopping in. Our main purpose here, especially with sessions like these, is to provide financial security for our people, our clients, and our affiliates. And we do that with a focus on merchandise intelligence and education for
Management One: independent retailers like you. And we do those things with a main focus on our core values, and those are a generous heart.
Management One: courage.
Management One: curiosity, adaptability, commitment, and collaboration, like these sessions here. So without further ado, I will turn it over to Bob and Mark. Gentlemen, the floor is yours.
Marc Weiss: Well, thank you so much, Nico. Bob, great to have you with us today. My mind has been really thinking so much about training in the past couple of weeks, coming back to Management One, retraining all our people, really thinking about how important it is
Marc Weiss: To be involved with training and, what you're gonna… how your holiday season is gonna turn out. Won't just be about the product you bought, but how well you trained and worked with your people. I don't know anybody in retail that does a better job or knows more about training retailers than you do, Bob, so I'm just gonna let it… let the… let the conversation flow and let you…
Marc Weiss: Well… what you love to talk about, and that's, you know, helping retailers work with their people. Training
Marc Weiss: it's something to think about. You've developed programs that I hope you share with the people who are on board today, and it should be something that should be part of every retailer's strategy for 2026, but it can also be spontaneous, and there's a lot you can do between now and the holidays.
Inventory + Training Alignment
Marc Weiss: to maximize the opportunity and come out of the season, from our standpoint, with not a lot of inventory, but having a lot of profitable sales. And that… that's gonna… that whole effort's gonna happen through your people.
Marc Weiss: So, I'd love you to just start to talk about that, and share your wisdom and your ideas, and I'll… Sure!
Bob Negen: And thank you, Nico and Mark, for having me. I love talking about retail, and I love talking about training, and so… and we all know that the holidays are such an opportunity.
Bob Negen: But if you don't… if your people don't know what they're doing, if they're not comfortable and confident on the floor, they're not going to give your customers the service that they deserve, and you're not going to make the money that you should make. So let's say, you know, start with this premise, and Mark, you and I have talked about it, that
Bob Negen: The… really, the only competitive… true competitive advantage that a local brick-and-mortar retailer has is the ability to create a tremendous human experience.
Bob Negen: Right? I mean, they can't get that online, they're not gonna get that in a big box store, but when they come to your store, if you're here watching this and you're a local independent, you know, your ability to make somebody get in the holiday spirit and feel good and really do the work necessary to match somebody up.
Bob Negen: with their perfect gift, so that they feel like a hero when it's all said and done. It's all about your people.
Bob Negen: And the mistake that people make is they hire somebody, or they, you know, they take their regular crew, and maybe they don't hire their year-round crew, or they hire part-time seasonal people, and then all of a sudden you have new merchandise and a new way of looking at things, sort of, the customers are coming at things differently, and…
Bob Negen: The people don't know what to do. So training is about making your people feel comfortable and confident talking to your customers on the floor.
Bob Negen: And so I did a real retail TV, you know, every week I send out a video blog on this exact subject, like, I think 2 weeks ago. So if anybody's listening to this, you can go to whizbangtraining.com.
Bob Negen: But the title of it is the Down and Dirty Trading Program, right? And it's…
Bob Negen: You know, so, if you don't have time to put together an entire training program, or you don't have time to put your entire team through our Retail Sales Academy, here's what you can do.
Bob Negen: Down and dirty just for the holidays. Number one, policies and procedures. Just write them down. If it ain't written, it ain't real. So, you know, what do people have to do to request time off? Where do you want them to park?
Bob Negen: What are your return policies? You know, what… what does someone need to know to operate effectively in your business? And, you know, just write it down. If you don't… again, if you don't write it down, it just is a rumor. So, that's the first thing. The second thing
Bob Negen: is product training. And, you know, clearly you can't train every SKU, but what you can do is pick your best sellers, or pick what you think are going to be best sellers for the holidays, and maybe you pick
Bob Negen: 20, 30, I don't know how much time you want to put into this, but write it down, or make a video about
Bob Negen: You know, this is… this is what this thing is, and, you know, these are the features and benefits, this is who it's for, but give people that information so that they feel, again, comfortable and confident
Bob Negen: on the floor. So, if you can do that with your holiday arrivals, your special holiday merchandise, your best sellers, sort of bring everybody back onto the same page about it, all of a sudden.
Bob Negen: Just that alone is going to make a huge difference in your team's performance during the holidays. Because let's just recognize, if people don't feel comfortable, what do they do? They hide behind the register, right?
Bob Negen: They don't want to feel like a fool. Nobody wants to go out on the floor and get asked a question that they don't know the answer. And then the third thing is sales training, and there's really not
Bob Negen: time to do a full-blown sales training, but, Mark, you guys offered to share a link to our
Bob Negen: holiday selling course, so there are tricks of the trade during the holidays, but if you can do a little bit down and dirty, if you can spend a morning putting together a document, or better yet, a video that you can share with those three things.
Bob Negen: Your current team will get on the same page, your part-time seasonal people will feel more comfortable, and just that little bit of work will make a big difference in the performance of your team.
Coaching Routines
Marc Weiss: Yeah, one of the things that you can do to implement that is have a daily huddle. Have a morning huddle, even when the shift changes, have a huddle, have it be 10 or 15 minutes, but 10 or 15 minutes every day turns out to be 3 or 4 hours of training a week, you know, almost a week's worth of training or more within a month.
Marc Weiss: So those huddles are important when there's downtime in the store, in between. You know, there's always a gap after Thanksgiving before the Christmas rush starts again, and that's also a very good time to train.
Marc Weiss: So I've seen, a lot of retailers
Marc Weiss: actually codify, and have a specific, plan with every huddle, every day, where, you know, there's call-outs on successes, there's call-outs on new product, there's call-outs on, you know, how we're, you know, what's working, what's not working, changes in the floor plan, so there's a lot of… there's always activity every single day. It's the beautiful thing about retail is
Marc Weiss: Whatever you did on Monday that worked, you can repeat on Tuesday. Whatever didn't work on Monday, you can change on Tuesday. So it actually drove me into the business.
Bob Negen: Yeah.
Marc Weiss: I kind of actually remember I grew up in the business, and my dad,
Marc Weiss: Christmas, when I get home from college.
Marc Weiss: It opened a new store, and I had to go out there and work it, and the people really weren't trained, because they opened at Christmas time. Right. And, you know, we did. We did daily huddles, and it really… I learned a lot about the people, learned who needed coaching, who didn't, found out there was some exceptional talent there, so… but the huddles also give you a chance to interact with your people.
Bob Negen: So, I'm going to agree, but not disagree, but sort of challenge that a little bit. I absolutely agree that huddles are important, and I love, you know, doing little games like having somebody sell their favorite item.
Bob Negen: Or talking about what's the appropriate add-on for this bestseller, and all of these things. But, you know, to your point, about, you know, if you do it every day, over the course of a month, you're gonna get a lot of training in.
Bob Negen: But this is the holidays, and at the… over the course of a month.
Bob Negen: It's gonna be the end of the holidays. So, I love, you know, and in general, I love to have it codified in a program, you know, that shouldn't be… for this down and dirty that I'm talking about, it shouldn't be more than a couple hours long.
Bob Negen: But give them that base, and then everything you do in person sort of amplifies and makes everything even better. So, I mean, and I… but I absolutely agree with what you're saying.
Bob Negen: You being involved, you being engaged with your team is gonna make such a difference in their performance and in your sales.
Marc Weiss: Yeah, and also when you do that, you're actually carving out the time, right? So you're saying that, you know, it's scheduled.
Marc Weiss: Everybody's expecting it, it can be fun, it can be a rah-rah moment, so there's a lot of energy that can be generated from it, so that's a good way to get the day going, get the shift going. I know there's longer hours at holiday, because the stores seem like they're open all the time.
Marc Weiss: So it's a… but the point is, is you're actually creating time within the schedule to make sure you get it. And don't worry about the little extra payroll you're going to pay people. You should get that back in waves, and I think that would be a good thing to talk about, too, Bob, because I think a lot of people get so… you know, everybody's paying more per hour for salespeople than they've ever paid before, so everybody's really conscious
Marc Weiss: about those, but there's a good, huge return on investment when your people are prepared.
Bob Negen: Yeah, so the… it's just so… I mean, being… being tight with your payroll at the holidays is dollar, pound, penny foolish. No, I said that… I said that the wrong way. No, I said that wrong. Anyway, you know what I'm saying, right? It's not wise thinking.
Bob Negen: Because, now, let's go back to this assumption, and this is an important assumption. If you make the assumption that you have good people who know what they're doing and are actually doing it on the floor.
Bob Negen: you know, you should pay more for payroll, because typically during the holidays, you have more people in your store than you have people to help them. So the more people that you have in your store.
Bob Negen: It's the holidays, they're buying, if they're trained, if they know how to sell, if they're, you know, if they're adding on. Show, show, show, until they say no. I mean, every single, you know, person you pay those dollars for that hour should come back in multiples. There are times when it's important
Bob Negen: to be very careful about your payroll, but you want to invest in your people and your payroll during the holidays, so I wholeheartedly agree with what you're saying there.
Marc Weiss: Yeah, so I think that, when… if, you know, if I were… if I came to your kite store, and, because Bob, everybody knows Bob owned a kite store, and it's a great story to tell, but if I were as a new person starting today, and I was working for seasonal holidays.
Marc Weiss: What would be the 3 or 4 takeaways you want to burn in my brain so I could perform for you?
Bob Negen: So, if you were to perform for me at the Mackinac Kite Company, the number one thing is, this idea of the perfect purchase. That is not about us, it's about them.
Bob Negen: that people are coming into our store to, you know, buy for themselves, perhaps. A lot of people buy for themselves, but, you know, being in the toy and kite business, we were, you know, a lot, a lot of gifts.
Bob Negen: So, ask lots of questions. You know, the more you know, the better you serve. The better you serve, the more you sell. And the only way to know more is to ask lots of really, really good questions.
Bob Negen: And so that was, you know, the best salespeople ask lots and lots of good questions. Who, what, why, where, when, how? Who's this for? What do they like? What do they like to do? How much do you want to spend?
Bob Negen: All of these things. So that's the first thing that I would do, is really make sure that they're focused on the customer, and what the customer wants, and get them to this thing that we call the perfect purchase, or in the case of Christmas, the perfect gift.
Bob Negen: So, I mean, that would be the first thing, because that's gonna really help get people to the right thing. The other thing that I would share, and this was a Mackinac Kite Company thing, and I know that not everybody does this.
Bob Negen: But some of our best clients, you know, mutual clients do this, is I would have such a generous return policy.
Bob Negen: In my opinion, the best return policy an independent retailer could have is
Bob Negen: There is no return policy. If you're not happy with it, we are not happy yet. And so, when you have that return policy.
Bob Negen: your people can sell with more confidence. You know, something like, I'll just use it, since we're using the Mackinac Kite Company.
Bob Negen: We used to sell a lot of games, and we'd sell games with demonstration. We had, like, 5 tables set up in a row, you know, little square tables, and if somebody was looking at a game, you'd walk up and say, hey, you want to learn how to play? And we'd teach them, and then if people were hesitant, we would say, look, if you don't like the game, bring it back.
Bob Negen: They go, oh, okay, so that confidence to sell that way, that is, you know, sort of the foundation of that is to really have a great return policy, customer-friendly return policy. Now, before we go on, I want to share something that is counterintuitive.
Bob Negen: but very interesting and valuable in this conversation. So we have a mutual client, Maureen Doran, so you know Maureen really well. And Maureen sells high-end women's clothing.
Bob Negen: And when Maureen joined our mastermind, she implemented this super, super generous return policy. And the fear that everyone has is that people are going to take advantage of you.
Bob Negen: And your margins are gonna go down from the quantity of the returns.
Bob Negen: What she found was when she made her return policy more generous, her returns actually went down.
Bob Negen: So, for people who are listening here, and you're going, I can't do that, my people are going to take advantage of me. I just wanted to share that, you know, to, to, you know.
Bob Negen: ally that fear. And the final thing that I want to share… hang on, I got one more here, because this is really important, this is really important.
Bob Negen: impulse items. It should be a non… I'm looking at everybody who's on this call. It should be a non-negotiable standard, meaning everybody does it every time, end of story, period, that someone is shown an impulse item
Bob Negen: at the register, at the point of purchase. You will sell more stuff. Hey, have you seen these red and green candles? Hey, have you seen this? This is really cool, have you seen that? Every single time, with every single customer.
Marc Weiss: Well, don't forget that a return… I want to just talk a little bit about the return. I call it a philosophy instead of policy, but I would say that it also creates traffic for you. So, you know, it gives you an opportunity to serve that customer again.
Marc Weiss: So don't worry about the money you might have to return. You know, think about, how do I get them re-involved? And it's not going to happen all the time, but it'll happen more than you think if you have that right attitude. The impulse item selling is critical. I mean, I think that it creates good selling skills, because you learn to offer something up. If you've done all the right questioning, you're going to know
Marc Weiss: One of the things you and I have talked about before, too, is, especially at holiday time, a lot of people aren't buying for gifts, they're buying for themselves. So understanding that, and you have the opportunity to make two sales out of one, right? One is… one because they're buying for a gift, and one because they're buying for themselves. If you could speak a little to that opportunity, that'd be great, too.
Bob Negen: Yeah, so let me speak to that real quickly, because this is one of those nuances, so…
Bob Negen: you know, we teach a system. I created a selling system at the Mackinac Kite Company. It's called the Six Steps to the Perfect Purchase. And then there's the greeting, which is not, may I help you? It's like, you know, hey, you look like Santa Claus today. Hey, you look happy. Hey, you look… you know, just establishing the fact that you're two human beings, you're on the same team, blah blah blah, you know, I mean, just getting friendly, loosening it up, right?
Bob Negen: But then the next part of it, the second step, is called questioning and listening. And the first part of questioning and listening is what's called the key question.
Bob Negen: And the key question is the question that exists to move the conversation from, oh, how's the weather, to, you're in this store for a reason, let's talk about it.
Bob Negen: And so, during the holidays, a key question, the holiday key question, in my opinion, is a choice key question. And you're giving them a choice, and you say, are you shopping for yourself, or are you shopping for a gift?
Bob Negen: And so many people will laugh, and they'll go, oh, I'm shopping for myself. Great. But when they answer that question, now it leads to other questions. So, Mark, you come into my toy store, and, you know, we talk, and I say, you're shopping for yourself for a gift.
Bob Negen: And you say, oh, I'm buying some gifts for my grandchildren. Ha! Sales made, right? If I'm a good salesperson, so how many grandchildren do you have? How old are they? What do they like to do? Do they like games? Do they like toys? How much do you want to spend? How much are they worth? That's what I asked at the holidays. How much are they worth? Oh, they're worth a lot.
Bob Negen: You know, all these questions, and so that whole idea of asking good questions, but that…
Bob Negen: Key question really sort of gets you off to the… off… off and running when you're on the floor during the holidays.
Marc Weiss: Speaking of grandparents, I want to, I was talking to a toy store retailer, and we were just talking about events, and they have a grandparents' night during the holidays.
Bob Negen: That's a great idea.
Marc Weiss: And, she said, it's really worked out to be something people look forward to. So, in her community, a lot of the grandparents show up. A lot of them are new, they're newly retired, or they're new, and they meet other grand… they meet other people their same age, so they've… they've… friendships got created, and, so, and then they have, you know, they built, they built an oper… they built a community
Marc Weiss: community that they didn't expect to build, and they all hang out, and they come back, and they have a, you know, the missing… the thing that brought them all together was the store, so the store wins, they win, and so it, you know, having those kinds of events are important, but having your people prepared when those events happen is how you take advantage of those events. So, if you're spending money on marketing.
Marc Weiss: and you're spending the time and effort to bring people in the store, you want to make sure that when they're there, they're well taken care of and looked after.
Bob Negen: Sure, and you know, of course you're right, Mark, you're always right about these things, but when you think about it, there's 3 ways to grow your business. Get new customers.
Bob Negen: increase the average ticket, and then get them to come back in again and again. More transactions per customer. But when you do an event like that, you're really, you know, you're acquiring new customers, and new customers is the hardest part of the equation.
Bob Negen: The hardest thing and the most expensive thing is to get new customers. The easiest is to increase the average ticket, but there's a cap to it. I was never gonna build my average ticket to 500 bucks.
Bob Negen: In a toy store, but then where the real money is, is in more transactions, because that leads to the lifetime value.
Bob Negen: of a customer. But when you do something fun like that, and you build a community that way, you know, you're taking two of the three, and you're just nailing it. And then, that second part, average ticket, which is so important during the holidays, that's where all the training comes into play.
Marc Weiss: Yeah. Well, so, in this particular story, she was telling me some of the grandparents actually became not just customers, but employees, because they were looking for something to do, and they liked being around, you know, kids and selling good stuff, and so there's lots of opportunity to build on things. Connections happen, and sometimes we don't always pay attention to the connections and the opportunities that are driven through those connections.
Marc Weiss: I want to talk a little bit about this time, too, in terms of driving traffic. Sometimes there's a…
Marc Weiss: you know, one way to drive traffic is to run sales, right? Yeah. And there's a tendency to do what's easy, and let's run a store-wide sale.
Marc Weiss: And…
Marc Weiss: that's not a healthy thing to do. If you took 20% off your store, that's a 25% hit on your gross margin. So, 20% to the customer is 25% to you. So, if something's $100 and you take 20% off, it's $80, but the markdown's 20. 20 into 80's 25%. So, I mean, I could walk through the math at another time.
Marc Weiss: But be cognizant of that. The real key
Marc Weiss: to, running a sale is to sell the stuff that's not selling, and to put it at a price you can sell it at. The double-edged sword to this is that
Marc Weiss: you'll cherry pick, and you won't get rid of the stuff you wanted to get rid of. You'll get rid of the stuff that you could have sold at full price, then you gotta go back and pay money to bring it back in, and so it's a real drain on cash. So be really thoughtful about your marketing, especially when it comes to pricing, because there's other things you can do. You can mark it down, bundle it into something else. There's lots of ideas. Bob, you have more tips and ideas
Marc Weiss: on how to get rid of merchandise than anybody I've ever met.
Marc Weiss: But, again, going to the resources that Bob's developed over the years, and all the tips, and, you know, he's a fountain of ideas, there's lots of opportunities for you to do lots of things, from how you market, to how you sell, to how you,
Marc Weiss: create opportunities with your own products in the stores. So, if you.
Bob Negen: So, yeah, and let me just sort of highlight one of the most popular, and this is something I absolutely… we can talk about two things, because they kind of tie in together, is bundles. You mentioned bundles, and bundles are just such a great way to increase the average ticket, make it super easy for someone to buy, and it's super easy to sell.
Bob Negen: You know, I won't tell the story about how I finally figured out that a bundle is valuable, but once upon a time, I was selling, and you know, I sold this whole thing, and then I was like, oh…
Bob Negen: how come I keep selling the same 5 things at once? And it was like… and it became our summer super special.
Bob Negen: At $29.99, and then they just flew out the door, because it was super easy. Once you understood that this was… somebody was looking for a kite for their family, and they wanted to spend, you know, about $30, boom, you knew just where to go. But the best merchants are really looking at
Bob Negen: You know, it's probably too late to buy into them now, maybe not, but they're looking to build bundles that have great margin, and then as the season progresses, you create bundles that have the stuff that is perhaps not moving quickly.
Bob Negen: And, you know, your point is absolutely spot on. Bundles is a great way to protect your margins, increase your average ticket, and, you know, go from there. So when we talk about bundles.
Bob Negen: you know, I always, when I do this live, I say, so what is McDonald's famous for? And everybody goes, would you like fries with that? And they have an… that's an add-on, right? And they haven't done that for.
Marc Weiss: ordinary pulse item.
Bob Negen: how many decades, but everybody knows the answer, right? Everybody knows the answer. And then I said, so then they increased their average ticket by…
Bob Negen: Creating a bundle. What's the bundle? Everybody knows. It's the value meal. And now they add on to the value meal by supersizing it. And there's a lesson there for everybody who's watching this. And then the second part of that
Bob Negen: is signage. Signage is so important during the holidays, and it's important for a couple reasons. One, it's a silent salesperson, right? Again, let's go back to the idea that you
Bob Negen: especially during busy days, you're gonna have a lot more customers than you have team members to help them. So signage sort of helps people get an idea, it gets them thinking about things, it sort of makes… it compresses the time needed to…
Bob Negen: Help a customer.
Bob Negen: There's another really nuanced benefit of signage, too, and that's that it slows people down.
Bob Negen: When people are in a hurry, they get in the store, and they, you know.
Bob Negen: you know, most… you know, like in our downtown here. They're all long, skinny, 2,500-foot stores, right? And so, but people go in, they walk in, right, they go around, they come out, they walk out. And so your challenge as a retailer is to slow them down, and the more that you can slow them down.
Bob Negen: the more… the greater the probability you're gonna get a team member over there to sell them some stuff. So, bundles and signage together.
Bob Negen: huge. I mean, it's a great way to sell stuff. Oh, I think we have some questions, Mark.
Management One: Bob, I would actually, include QR codes on signage, too.
Bob Negen: That's a great idea, Nico.
Management One: Because there's a way you can take… alleviate some of the stress off of your salesman and digitize some of these things, whether it's a product description, a video, something, like you said, to stop them in their tracks and keep them in the store.
Marc Weiss: Yeah, I wanted to mention something about the bundles. You know, in the toy stores, these mystery boxes have become so powerful that we're actually now planning mystery boxes and surprise boxes. So, even if you're not a toy store or a gift store, even if an apparel store, you can still create mystery boxes
Marc Weiss: And make it a surprise.
Bob Negen: Pet stores, our best clients who are pet stores, oh man, they sell a lot. And, you know, so it depends on the industry, but in the pet industry, they get lots and lots and lots of samples. Lots of samples. And they get a lot of vendor support.
Bob Negen: So they're creating mystery boxes that have amazing
Bob Negen: margins, and they're an amazing value. The only thing that I want to say, because I was a victim of this once, is please don't put
Bob Negen: crap in your mystery box. I've seen that, you know, nothing will kill the buzz faster than, yeah.
Marc Weiss: Yeah, make it fun, make it interesting. Make it a surprise… make it.
Bob Negen: Yeah, exactly.
Marc Weiss: Yeah. Wow them.
Marc Weiss: Did we have some questions?
Management One: Yes, so let me go… there was one earlier, and I think she was asking in context, so I don't know the context, but Marie asked, what if you're selling a product that is custom? So, Marie, with your permission.
Management One: If I can open up your mic, you're more than welcome. Just give me permission in chat there, and I'm gonna move on to the next question, but give me permission in chat to open up your mic, and I'm happy to have you ask your question directly to the panel.
Management One: So the next question here is from an anonymous attendee. They're asking, when should I put my holiday merchandise on clearance?
Bob Negen: That's a question for Mark.
Marc Weiss: Okay, I'll always say the sooner the better, and… because it doesn't, you know, inventory depreciates pretty quickly. So, you know, as you're going through the season, and you see your sell-throughs slow up, you should start marking them down. That's why I don't believe in blanket markdowns. Be surgical, be specific.
Marc Weiss: go as deep as you need to go to get rid of it. It creates cash and starts flowing in new goods. You can certainly start bringing in some spring and resort goods. People want fresh, people want new.
Marc Weiss: you know, in planning, we plan for a fresh flow, even during, sale times, so you get a mix of both, selling regular price and sale, but the sooner the better, and don't wait, because it doesn't become any more precious. I know some people…
Bob Negen: It doesn't become any more precious.
Marc Weiss: I know some people.
Bob Negen: But don't they, Mark? They just hold on to margin. It's like, I can't mark this down, $3, it's gonna cost me $3. Ladies and gentlemen, your store is not a museum. You know, Mark could speak to this in numbers, you know, in the language of numbers, but your store's not a museum. Get rid of it.
Marc Weiss: You know, I think that people want to hold on to margin… hold on because they're afraid of returns, and, you know, they… something that they bought is now marked down. Don't make your decisions based on that.
Marc Weiss: People spend more money the 10 days after Christmas than any other time during the year, so if you're not on sale taking advantage of that, you don't have new stuff to sell along with it, you're missing out on all the cash, because a lot of presents are cash.
Bob Negen: A lot of.
Marc Weiss: Just miss out on 10 days of the best selling that exists.
Bob Negen: And, you know, here's something else that's worth talking about.
Bob Negen: is I treat… I believe that returns are an opportunity. So let's go back to this idea of the perfect purchase, right? So if somebody came into Nico's store and bought a gift, and it wasn't perfect, I don't want that person to hold onto it. So when they come in.
Bob Negen: and look for an exchange, what it means was that it wasn't a perfect gift, and so now you have the opportunity to make it right. The mistake people make is, how would you like that return? Would you like it in cash, or how did you pay for it? No, no, no, no, no! Why wasn't
Bob Negen: Why didn't they like it? It could be as simple as, it didn't fit. Well, good, let's get it so it could fit. I call it, a lot of people call it, saving the sale.
Bob Negen: So when somebody comes in, don't assume you have to give them the cash back, or give them a credit on their credit card. Assume that it wasn't right in the first place, and then not only can you make it right, and make that customer happy, but to your point, there's… sell them some more stuff!
Bob Negen: In your store, you're talking to them, show them stuff, show them the things that are on sale. Our clearance table is in the back left. I mean, use it as an opportunity. To your point, lots and lots of traffic. Take advantage of it.
Management One: All right, I always love doing this. So Marie has agreed to a hot her mic. I'm gonna turn it over… let me turn that on there…
Management One: And unmute… There we go.
Management One: Alright, Marie, you had a question about a custom item.
Marie Adornato: Yes, so I'm in the formal wear industry, specifically custom bridal gowns.
Marie Adornato: We do sell off the rack, and then we do, custom, gowns as well. We also sell prom dresses, mother of the bride. For an industry like mine, it's a little bit more difficult to, offer a flexible return policy. We actually… typically, most of us businesses don't offer refunds or exchanges at all. Just because of
Marie Adornato: the custom nature of the product. So, how do we address that situation? How do we build trust? Because a lot of times, customers will come in and say, geez, I… I can't return it, so I have to make sure that I love it. So can you share a little bit more about what we can do to ensure that trust, so that the customer not just wants to buy their gown, but they want to buy their veil, their headpiece.
Marie Adornato: Their mother of the bride dress, their bridesmaids.
Marie Adornato: Just looking for some insight on that.
Bob Negen: Sure, you want me to take it, or do you want to take it, Mark?
Marc Weiss: I'll go for it.
Bob Negen: So, you know, this is the idea of the perfect purchase, Marie. So, you know, if your people do a… you and your team, if you do an amazing job of making sure that it is right.
Bob Negen: They return it because it isn't right, so what you have to do is you have to front-load, for lack of a better term.
Bob Negen: All of this love, all of this attention, lots and lots of questions. Ask questions till they're sick of your questions, right? Just keep going. And so, here's the thing about a perfect purchase.
Bob Negen: So, think about a purchase this way. So, you start at… my hands represent what you don't know. I'm trying to get it on the screen correctly here. What you don't know. So, somebody comes in and they need to buy a dress. So, every good question you ask.
Bob Negen: gets you closer to a perfect purchase. You keep asking questions. Remember, the more you know, the better you serve. The better you serve, the more you sell.
Bob Negen: till pretty soon, you get together. I'm trying to make it appropriate on my screen. Pretty soon, it is, you know, you've asked enough questions so that
Bob Negen: you know… they know it's perfect, you know it's perfect, they know that you know it's perfect, and so you've just… you've spent all that extra time to ensure that it is indeed a perfect purchase, that it is indeed the right dress. And if they
Bob Negen: feel that comfortable and confident because you've front-loaded this whole process that way, then they're gonna buy everything from you, and not only are they gonna buy everything from you, they're gonna tell all their friends you're gonna become a hero to them.
Marie Adornato: And this is exactly how we've built our business over 30 years. How would you… one more question.
Marie Adornato: what sort of recommendation would you give for us, for the customer that doesn't purchase on the first visit? So, say that mom lives out of town, and she's not available to be there on the first visit. What would you recommend for my sales staff, in order to get that customer back on our schedule and back in the store?
Bob Negen: So, here is… write this down. Everybody write this down, because this little tip will make you a lot of money. Bomb, bomb. B-O-M-B, B-O-M-B dot com. And it allows you to make video messages easily in emails. And so, the follow-up to this is, you know, so they leave, and you make a bomb, bomb video. Again, if you've done the good job, there's a deep… there's already a
Bob Negen: relationship, they just need to think about it. So you make a bomb bomb video, and you say, you know, hi, Jackie, you know, I just had such a great time with you, blah blah blah blah blah. Talk about the experience.
Bob Negen: Talk about what they liked, talk about their wedding. Again, build that relationship.
Bob Negen: And, you know, that kind of professional, personal, high-touch follow-through goes a long ways. If you just wait and hope that they come back.
Bob Negen: your… the probability that you lose that sale goes way up. If you reach out and… not pressure, not pressure at all.
Bob Negen: But, you know, just follow up. Now, here's another little something. I worked with a jeweler in Three Rivers, Michigan, and, you know, what he did was, especially with high-end purchases, like wedding rings and things like that.
Bob Negen: is he said, look, you know, I know this is a big decision, I know this is a lot of money, and I know you need to talk about it. I have an account
Bob Negen: with a really nice lunch restaurant down the street. And if you just tell them that you came from us, that, you know, I'll buy you lunch. You talk about it when I buy you lunch.
Bob Negen: And he said his clothes rate went way up, because what were they gonna do? They were gonna go to another jeweler to keep shopping, and he sort of stopped that process dead in its track, so…
Marc Weiss: That's brilliant.
Bob Negen: I know, I was like, Rocky's guy's name was Rocky. I'm like, Rocky, that's on, man, I love that.
Bob Negen: So that's a great question. Thank you, Marie.
Marie Adornato: Thank you so much.
Marc Weiss: And I would just add on, you know, we think, you know, are we thinking about selling a policy, or are we thinking about selling, you know, the dress? And to Bob's point, I'm just framing it a little differently. He talked all about building the value, you know, what can we do? We can bring more value to the relationship, to the sale, by focusing
Marc Weiss: Not about saving ourself from a return, but creating an opportunity and a relationship with a customer that's long-term.
Marc Weiss: You know, returns are, in brick and mortar, are, like, maybe 5%.
Marc Weiss: And it's a little higher when there's really good selling, and I would always take the higher amount, because you have an opportunity to resell. So, it's what you focus on, and if you focus on what Bob talked about, building the relationship through the perfect sale, the perfect customer, taking care of them, building value in that experience.
Marc Weiss: Then… then your focus is correct, and you don't have to worry about the returns. It'll always be a part of the business, but don't let that… but you'll do way more business by not focusing on the return.
Bob Negen: And I want to say something also to you, Marie. I'm going to sort of challenge you here. I'm going to ask you to think about this, because I was just talking about Maureen and her return policy, and
Bob Negen: You know, what she said was her re… she had the… she said before she joined our mastermind, before she started thinking about that, her return policy was quote-unquote, the industry standard.
Bob Negen: She said it was 7 days, it has to have tags, it can't be worn, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And then when she changed it, again, it changed everything. So it could be, Marie, that, you know, so everybody in your industry does not offer a return. What if you did offer a return?
Bob Negen: How many addresses would actually be returned, and take that transaction and put it in the context of how many more dresses you would sell because you had this return policy.
Bob Negen: It's just something to think about.
Marie Adornato: That's a great… that's a great point.
Marc Weiss: Marie, do you take, what deposits do you take on your custom?
Marie Adornato: So, with my experience in 30 years in this industry, and the, possibility of weddings being canceled.
Marie Adornato: And I'm actually a designer as well, and I'm on the wholesale side and the retail side. We have a retail store, but I sell wholesale to other bridal stores all over the world. And, typically, you know, we see weddings getting canceled. So, in the event that, you know, you get a small percentage that do get canceled.
Marie Adornato: they'll try to return the dress. So… I, I would say…
Marie Adornato: You know, that maybe about 5% try to do that, but we, right now, they have to pay in full, for their orders, and we do a letaway policy in-store.
Bob Negen: So, so, so let's go back. Let's explore this a little more, Marie. Yeah, no, thank you.
Bob Negen: Interesting exercise for me.
Bob Negen: So, okay, so somebody wants to return a dress, even if it's custom. So, you know, assuming that they, you know, didn't spend the night dancing away and spilling wine on it and, you know, totally abusing your return policy, but say their wedding was, you know, canceled, you now have a dress that still has value. So, if you can resell it.
Bob Negen: Even if you resell it at a deep discount, you haven't made the profit margin from that transaction, but you still have created that extra value and comfort and confidence because you're selling with that, you know, because, hey, you know.
Bob Negen: This is what we do that nobody else in the industry does. Those are powerful words. Nobody else does this are powerful words when you talk to a customer. It shows confidence in yourself.
Marie Adornato: The only issue we have is, every dress pretty much has some sort of alteration. Yeah, so you have to.
Bob Negen: should do some alterations. Yeah, yeah.
Marc Weiss: And if you're profitable at the end of the year, you can have a charity event and give it to people who…
Bob Negen: There you go.
Marc Weiss: I mean, there's lots of opportunities if you just think about it differently. Sure. You know, we've got a lot of other questions, I know.
Marc Weiss: But these are great, so thank you for that, because they're applicable to other situations as well.
Marc Weiss: Absolutely. But, I noticed some other questions came in too, Nico.
Management One: Yep, so one of them, was from Liz. She didn't quite… she didn't quite hear the email service you said, Bob, so I went ahead and put it in the chat. It's, BOMBOMB.com, so just go to the chat.
Bob Negen: Bomb, bomb.
Management One: So Andrea is saying a two-part question, actually. So, she has less than a 1% return now, but she's closing her store in mid-December, and she's curious… she doesn't want to change it to a no-returns, all-sale final policy. Do you think she should say exchange only, or just give up the dollars and refund if they don't have something that they think is the perfect purchase?
Bob Negen: Mark, do you want me to take that?
Marc Weiss: Yeah, go ahead.
Bob Negen: So, I think, yes, you know, I think that you can do… because you're closing, what you don't want to do is have this thing drag on forever.
Bob Negen: Closing sort of creates a different set of circumstances. You know, of course you want to be the right… you want to do business the right way, but at the end of the day, the lifetime value of your customers is being cut short in the middle of December, so you're trying to make it
Bob Negen: you're trying to be very, very clear in your communication, so in this case, I would say, you know, if they know that you're closing in middle December, I would make it all sales are final.
Marc Weiss: Yeah, I agree with that. You know, you're… you're… there's no ongoing business, so… Yeah. People understand that. They know.
Bob Negen: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Marc Weiss: It's a different circu… it's a one-off.
Management One: Yep.
Management One: Alright.
Management One: Go with our next one here.
Management One: So Kim was asking, when should I bundle slow movers versus marking them down individually, and is there a metric that can tell me what approach to use?
Bob Negen: Mark, you want to talk to that?
Marc Weiss: Well, I mean, I would do a bundle before I would do a markdown, or do one markdown, and then bundle it with other things, so, you know, I don't think you have to wait. I don't think there's a waiting time on it, and, you know, you get multiple sales, so… and it's fun, and it becomes fun for the customer, so I wouldn't wait.
Marc Weiss: There was a second part to that.
Management One: No.
Marc Weiss: Oh, okay.
Management One: Oh, sorry, yes, there was. What metrics tell her which approach to use? Or are there metrics she can look at that can tell her which approach to use?
Marc Weiss: Well, I would just have fun and experiment with it. I don't know a metric that would… I mean, the only metric I care about is sell-through. So if you have items that you're not selling through, you know, you can think in terms of weeks of supply. So if you've got, you know, 50 weeks of supply of an item, you need to do it now. You know, if you're, you know, we've got, what, 5 or 6 weeks through till Christmas now? 7 weeks? So.
Marc Weiss: If you've got a 12-week supply of product, you probably want to think about marking it, bundling it or marking it down.
Bob Negen: And, you know, and I love what you said there, Mark, this whole idea of just be creative, have fun. You know, and trust your gut, too. I don't know how long you've been in business, but, you know, and, you know, I'm a big proponent of open to buy and management one services, but at some level, you know, when…
Bob Negen: You're shucking and jiving, it's the holiday season, you're coming down, you know, you know what's not moving, you know what has to move. You know, trust your gut when things like that happen.
Marc Weiss: Well…
Management One: Well, on that vein, good segue to the next question. Julie is asking, I know you guys dove into this a little bit before, but maybe worth revisiting a little more in depth. Julie's asking, for bundle items, do you mix good sellers with the slow items that you're trying to move out, or do you just bundle slow sellers together?
Bob Negen: Want me to take it?
Marc Weiss: Yep.
Bob Negen: So, it… again, there's no cut and dried rule. So, if you bundle
Bob Negen: hot items with slow movers, you're gonna sell more of them. Why? Because the hot item is gonna be what drives the bundle.
Bob Negen: But if you, you know, it could be that if you have two items that are… that maybe you overbought, maybe they're good items, but you just overbought them, you know, you can bundle them together, and it could be argued that they're both slow movers, but they're good items, and when they're bundled together, if you, you know, make it a good deal.
Bob Negen: add some value to it, it's gonna move. So I don't think… to what we talked about, you know, just a moment ago, I think it's just, you know, look at what you have.
Bob Negen: Look at what's selling.
Bob Negen: See about… see what items are compatible, and trust your gut. You know, you can create a bundle, and put it out on the floor, and give it 2 days, and if nobody's bought the bundle, you know you got a dog, or if you create a bundle and put it out on the floor, and you sell
Bob Negen: 6 of them in the first hour, you know you have a winner. So, all of these things, like bundling, is not something that sort of fits under that management one open-to-buy umbrella.
Bob Negen: But they… it fits under this whole idea of you are a merchant, and when you're paying attention to what's going on on the floor with your merchandise, you develop that sixth sense from, you know, you develop the courage to say, hey, I'm gonna try this. Because when you try this, you may hit a home run.
Bob Negen: But if you have courage and you say, I'm gonna try this, and it's a dog, well, don't beat yourself up. Take it off the floor, unbundle it.
Bob Negen: Move forward.
Marc Weiss: One thing you can do, too, because there's still time, if you want to reorder something, because it's really been a good seller, and you decide you really want to go a little deeper than you normally would, you can negotiate with the vendor, and maybe get a better price, and then that becomes your bundle, and you've also got a built-in margin for markdowns. So, you've still got some opportunity to do some pretty
Marc Weiss: pretty creative things in your buy. So you're going to be creative on the sell side, you can be creative on the presentation side, you can also be creative on the buy side using your open to buy, in ways that, you know, benefit you and, you know, maybe you'll be taking something off the vendor's hand and get a better discount, ask for a deeper discount for it.
Bob Negen: That's a great point.
Management One: This next one, I think definitely for Bob, love this one. So, Maya's asking, how often should managers role play with associates, and how do we keep it from feeling awkward?
Bob Negen: Yeah, so that's a great question, Maya. So, you know, I like role plays, I do, but there's nothing like getting out on the floor and doing the deal. And, you know, in independent retail and brick-and-mortar retail, there are so many transactions, so I would…
Bob Negen: Again, you go back to this idea of you train them so they have this conceptual knowledge of what to do on the floor, and you might do some role plays, and yes, it's a little awkward, but I would much rather have… see someone
Bob Negen: watch me, and then go back and talk about what we did than do extensive role play. I would much rather watch, you know, as a manager, I would much rather watch somebody sell on the floor, and perhaps not make the total transaction value
Bob Negen: than me roleplay. So I… and this is a personal opinion. I know people who love role plays and do extensive role plays, but to me, it's kind of like sports, right?
Bob Negen: You can practice all you want, but until you get in the game, it's a different deal. Speaking to… so, Maya, you role-playing with someone, they're going to be running everything through the filter of, there's Maya, she's my boss, she's judging me.
Bob Negen: So, you know, I would just let them get out on the floor, pay attention, coach them gently and positively, and and let them get their feet wet. Let them get some real experience.
Bob Negen: You heard that, Mark?
Management One: Go ahead, Mark.
Marc Weiss: Yeah, I believe in a… I think the problem… I like role-playing. The challenge with role-playing is it doesn't always work out well. So sometimes it's just better to walk a salesperson through a situation you've observed, and
Marc Weiss: ask them some questions on how they could do it differently, and then give them some ideas on how they could have handled something a little differently. It's a little… it's a different format on role-playing, but, it's live, and it's something real, and it's something they just experienced. So to the extent that you can be closer to when the situation actually exists, it will probably improve their ability and their skill in the next time that
Marc Weiss: It happens, because it all…
Bob Negen: Yeah, exactly. You know, and the coaching technique is called self-review. You know, so Nika, Nico, you know, and you can self-review great sales, too. In fact, it's actually better when you do it with a great sale. So, wow, that was a great sale, Nico. So tell me what you were thinking, and then… Well, that was a great question. Why did you ask that question? So, you're doing a positive reinforcement. I think that's really important, too.
Bob Negen: Maya.
Bob Negen: when you coach, you know, so that Covey has this idea of the emotional bank account, and Covey contends, and I agree.
Bob Negen: that for every withdrawal, so if you're, in this context, coaching, for every correction of a bad behavior, there needs to be 10 positive reinforcements. So, you know, you want to build that emotional bank account by really, you know.
Bob Negen: Watching what they do, rewarding when they do the right things, so when they do something incorrectly, they're not taken aback when you correct their behavior.
Management One: this was one that just kind of popped into my head as you're talking. Have you had any experience, or have you heard of any customers that are using AI for role-playing?
Bob Negen: I haven't.
Marc Weiss: Yeah, we're starting to do it at Management One, where we actually use AI to learn how to be better and train it, so I think that that opportunity, we're learning from it, but it's awesome in terms of, learning about what's going right and what could be better in our wholesaling process. So, I think there's going to be a lot of opportunity to explore that, and again, you have to
Marc Weiss: go through the learning to train the models to train it correctly. But, I think there's also going to be some, new, selling tech… selling
Marc Weiss: processes that are gonna appear in the next year because of AI as well, but we're… I think we're about 4 minutes out of time, so…
Bob Negen: So, here's what I want to say about that. So, you know, I love AI, and AI has a place in everybody's business. But let's just recognize, you are local, independent, brick-and-mortar retailers.
Bob Negen: Your bread and butter is human interaction. And yes, you can get AI to do some role play and to train and things like that.
Bob Negen: But it is never going to be as good as when you, as the owner, look somebody in the face and says, you know, you did this right, you could do this better. So, you know, again, AI has a place for sure, but when it comes to
Bob Negen: But just be careful, and recognize that you are in the most human of businesses, and don't lose sight of the fact that that is where your competitive advantages lie, and just don't lose fa… you know, don't get too caught up in AI.
Bob Negen: When this human interaction is where we're making our money.
Management One: Yep.
Marc Weiss: Well, one way to improve human interaction is to learn how to improve on it, and there are ways that AI can help expose those opportunities in ways that you may not have seen before. That's kind of what we're learning right now, but it's a.
Bob Negen: That's interesting. That's interesting.
Management One: And I think it speaks to your point too, Bob, when you're talking about there's a difference between practice and live gameplay.
Marc Weiss: Bye.
Marc Weiss: Yeah, because people freeze sometimes.
Management One: So let's see, Cherry is asking, if my OTB is zero or overbought in a category, yet I'm sold out of certain better-selling items, do I reorder and buy more of the sold-out items and just figure out what to do with the slow-moving items, or can I just wait and hope the customer will buy a similar product we have?
Marc Weiss: No, you do exactly what you think you should do. You should mark down the slow-moving items so you have the cash to reorder the stuff you need.
Bob Negen: I was gonna say, that's a marked question for sure.
Management One: So we have a few questions in here that are really more commentary, I think, for a different discussion about how digital and online marketplaces like Amazon are shaving traffic away and shrinking potential customer bases, so I'll save those for a different day, but I did want to save one for last, and I think this one's definitely Bob.
Management One: How do we get veteran staff to buy into new training when they think they already know it all?
Bob Negen: That's, you know, that's a really great question. So…
Bob Negen: The status quo is the status quo, and people love the status quo. And so, assuming that you want to grow, and you want to create something better, you want a different version of your business, there always comes a place where there is sort of a…
Bob Negen: You know, get on board or go away.
Bob Negen: And, you know, I have had this conversation countless times. And, you know, that's really where it is, that honest conversation. You know, you can do it with coaching, you can do it with, you know, so let's just use the example of the Retail Sales Academy, our sales platform.
Bob Negen: sales training platform. You know, so you can put them through it. After you put them through it, you have the opportunity to measure statistics, and you can create standards around statistics, and if they don't measure up to your standards, that leads to the disciplinary action process.
Bob Negen: Which will sort of move them out the door. But at the end of the day, people are willing or they're not.
Bob Negen: And you just sort of need to determine whether somebody is willing or not. If they're willing, it's a function of coaching. You just need to help them get better.
Bob Negen: If they're not willing.
Bob Negen: It's time for them to go. Release them back into the industry. It was interesting, because in our Platinum Mastermind group, we have a 6th generation butcher in the UK, and he's also a coach, and I did a call with his coaching group.
Bob Negen: And a guy said that. He says, I have a butcher who has been working with me for 48 years.
Bob Negen: But he's not willing to change, and he can retire in 4 years. What should I do?
Bob Negen: But then when I dug a little deeper, it wasn't that he wasn't willing, he just didn't understand the technology, right? He couldn't place the orders in the computer. So a lot… so the advice I gave…
Bob Negen: This guy's a good guy. He's an asset to the company, but he wasn't doing the one thing that the owner wanted him to do. So what we talked about doing is, look.
Bob Negen: Get together with you, him, somebody else. Figure out a way to transcend this problem. So, the first thing I would do is dig into the root cause of why aren't they coming along.
Bob Negen: And then that leads to the determination if they're willing or not. If they're willing, give them the training they need to thrive in the new, better version of your business. If they're not, it's just time for them to go away.
Marc Weiss: 100% agree.
Management One: Okay, good. Well, gentlemen.
Bob Negen: Great way to end it, Mark, we agree.
Management One: Thank you so much, you guys, for sharing the candid thoughts, and I love the fact that we had so many questions from the audience.
Bob Negen: Yes, I appreciate it.
Management One: To the fact that we should probably do another session again in 2026.
Bob Negen: I would like to do that.
Marc Weiss: Thank you.
Management One: So much, gentlemen.
Marc Weiss: Bob, it was great again. It's… the time flies, I mean, oh my gosh, I can't believe we blew through an hour, so it's great.
Bob Negen: Yeah, no, I always enjoy talking to you. Thank you for having me, Mark. Thank you for having me, Nico. And again, to everybody who's here, you know, thanks for being here, and thanks for asking the questions. It's really an honor that we get a chance to serve you.
Marc Weiss: Have a great holiday season, everybody.
Bob Negen: Go get them, everybody.
Bob Negen: Bye-bye.