Faith Selling

This cartoon went through our paper today:

I also happened across this post on the problems with phone numbers on websites.

Today we have had three customers tell us that they were surprised they got to talk to a real person.

Fifteen years ago in college I called Gateway computers and was so surprised that a person instead of a phone tree answered that I didn’t know what to say.

I have always believed that customers WANT to talk to someone when they call a store, otherwise, why would they be calling? I don’t know about you, but I’ve never called a company wanting to press more buttons on my phone.

That is why we haven’t ever implemented a phone tree. If you call us during business hours, you are almost always going to get to talk to someone on our staff. If you would rather take orders from a computer telling you which buttons to press, there are plenty of other places to shop.

Sorry if our system disappoints you. We believe that “business is personal”* and plan on keeping it that way.

*Taken from this great blog.

A bookstore asked for advice on selecting a POS system. We built our own so I don’t have a qualified answer to give. Anyone out there have some suggestions? Please give pros and cons.

One of the things that distinguishes a mediocre business from one that shines in fulfilling customer expectations is the ability to predict and prepare for trends in the market.

I have stated before that your goal in whatever niche your business is in is to be the authoritative source for your customers. If you are, your customers will think of you first when they have questions about a product or about general concerns in your industry. For example, I used to own a 1973 Ford Mustang. I know that there is only one place in town to take a Mustang if you want work done on it right - Mustang Paradise. For a paradise, it’s really a dive: A run-down storefront in an industrial area next to the dog track filled with cast-off Mustang parts that looks anything like paradise. The thing is, these guys know their stuff. The cars that come out of there are beautiful. You go there if you want Mustang work because these guys actually know how to tune a carburetor and set the timing on a car with a distributor cap.

You want to be the Mustang Paradise of your industry - at least in knowledge. Don’t imitate their presentation. So how do you do that?

First, you have to know what industry you are in. “Oh, come on, that’s too obvious,” you say. Is it really? We sell Catholic stuff so we are in the Catholic goods industry. But that’s not all we are in. There are several ways to sell a product - on-line, retail, wholesale, import, electronic downloads, etc. You can’t just end with the product and assume you have the whole picture. You have to stay on top of trends in retail, sales and marketing if you want your business to grow.

Second, you have to care about the industry you are in. If you aren’t going to be passionate about the things you sell (services or physical products), it is very unlikely that you are going to go the extra mile to watch industry trends. People who are at a job just to have a job are very unlikely to come up with ways to make the company better or to spot trends that the company should do something about. If you could care less about your product, it’s time to start looking for a new line of work.

Third, you have to have knowledge of your industry. If you run a car repair shop but haven’t spent time getting good and grimy changing oil filters and dismantling engines, how are you going to know when something is a real trend / good product or just a bunch of hype? There is a story frequently told that when Federal Treasury Officers go through counterfeit training, they never look at counterfeit bills. All they do is learn every minutia about what makes a bill authentic. If you have a firm grasp on what is right, you can spot something wrong even if you can’t point to the specific thing that makes it wrong. You almost develop an extra sense.

Fourth, you have to know where to find news about your industry. Are there trade journals? Is there a newspaper either entirely devoted to your niche or at least one that has a section about your niche? Are there websites and blogs that track your industry? Finding blogs in your niche is a goldmine of information because these people are passionate about your product and provide you with tons of free information about industry trends.

Fifth, you have to know where to find information about the products you sell. These can frequently be the same sources as where you find industry trends but they may not completely overlap. There are many magazines and newspapers that do product reviews that don’t cover trends in an industry. They just happen to have someone on staff who likes to give opinions about products. This is an area where you have to do a little background research to make sure that the publication is trustworthy as a source for product hype. For example, take reviews of Catholic products in secular newspapers with a grain of salt. These reviews are typically by people who don’t have a very good grasp on true Catholicism but have a very concrete (and wrong) idea of what they think/wish Catholicism is.

Sixth, you have to either be or find someone who can pull all these different threads of information into a workable action plan for your business. Spotting a trend and failing to act on it is a good way to lose credibility with your customers. When they storm your business looking for a new product that is all over the news and you can’t provide it or don’t have the information necessary to answer their questions, they will look elsewhere for that authoritative source and you will have lost their business.

Here is an example of how Aquinas and More tries to stay on top of the Catholic retail / web industry.

First, define your industry. We are primarily an on-line Catholic store that sells direct to consumers. We also have a retail location, sell Church supplies and sell wholesale and offer a website storefront program for other Catholic stores.

Second, passion. I have been selling Catholic stuff for seven years now and planning for it for longer than that. Our family has always been passionate about Catholicism and about authentic Catholicism in particular. We have several bookcases full of Catholic titles in our home and have subscribed to some Catholic publication non-stop for the last twelve years.

Third, knowledge of the industry. We have been selling Catholic stuff for seven years. During that time we have learned plenty about what sells, when to sell it and who to buy from. This isn’t just some gut feeling. We actually track sales by category and season so we can say that, yes, Christmas cards started selling in October last year even though we weren’t promoting them. This year, guess what we started putting on the website and promoting at the beginning of October? The effect? A 280% increase in Christmas card sales in October.

Fourth, where to find industry trends. In our market, there are a couple of useful trade journals - Catholic Marketing Network and Christian Retailing. There are also several ecommerce journals that have some useful information including Practical Ecommerce and Website Magazine. Because we program our website in ColdFusion, I also subscribe to the Fusion Authority magazine. If you subscribe to these publications, you would have known five years ago that the Christian retail market was going soft and that the stores were consolidating and shifting from books to gifts to compensate. You would also have learned that the Internet is taking a large chunk of business from Christian stores that don’t have their own web presence. I also read the Colorado Springs Business Journal to see what is going on here locally.

Fifth, where to find out about new products. This list could get very long because you really need to watch all different forms of media (radio, television, newspapers, magazines and websites to see what people are talking about. A short list for the Catholic retail world:

• Television - EWTN
• Radio - Your local Catholic station.
• Newspapers
  • National Catholic Register (not Reporter)
  • The Wanderer
  • Our Sunday Visitor
  • Your local diocesan paper
• Magazines
  • Faith and Family Magazine
  • Catholic World Report
  • Homiletic and Pastoral Review
  • This Rock
  • Inside the Vatican
  • Lay Witness
  • St. Anthony Messenger (carefully)
• Websites
  • Amy Welborn
  • New Liturgical Movement
  • Happy Catholic
  • People of the Book
  • Decent Films
  • There are many more places to find Catholic product reviews as well.

Sixth, finding someone to pull it all together. We have been fortunate in finding a staff that is always on the lookout for new things and have been able to stay on top of some, if not all of the trends that have come down the pike in the last few years. I recommend that part of your job application form should include a section asking an applicant what Catholic publications he reads and what Catholic websites he visits.

Following on the heels of a post discounting most of the reasons people give for not shopping at Catholic stores, comes a post aimed at stores. While you as a store owner may think that you deserve people’s business, you don’t: and here’s why.

1. You think God is going to run the store for you. Just because you think God inspired you to open a Catholic bookstore doesn’t mean that He has any obligation to also infuse you with business sense. In fact, the act of opening a Catholic store is very likely a sure sign that you don’t have business sense. Several hundred Catholic stores open and close each year, many in the same town. In a town near where we live it is almost a joke the number of times an individual has closed and reopened her store.Think carefully before you spend your money opening a store. Do you have connections with local parishes? Are the local parishes actually Catholic enough that the parishioners take their Faith seriously? Does the bishop like you? How little money can you live on and for how long? Those projections you created showing profitability in three years - burn them and make it six.Do you have any of the skills necessary to open a store? Are you capable of being an accountant, sales manager, marketing manager, bill collector, store manager, inventory controller and have a life outside of the store? When I finally admitted that I wasn’t an accountant it took several months for a real one to straighten out our books. More on opening your own store.
2. You think your store can look like a fifty year old curiosity shop and attract people.Complete with burned out lights, dusty counters, faded posters and books, the average Catholic store is one of the least appealing places I can think of to shop. You are going to have to go see where people buy books (hint: Barnes and Noble) and copy those designs. Good lighting and a clean store can make all the difference in that important first impression.
3. You think that organizing your store means putting books on shelves instead of the floor.I am not joking. I have been in more than one shop where there was no categorization of anything. Jewelry cases (something you should definitely get rid of) are full of stacks of dusty items. Books were mostly on shelves but also stacked on window sills and on the floor.You have got to make it easy for people to find what they are looking for. Tower jewelry spinners and clearly marked book categories with some kind of rational ordering within those categories are essential. Group like items together - statues, crucifixes, scapulars, etc. People are much more likely to notice a display of crucifixes than a scattering of them throughout the store.You also have to be able to find things when people ask. There isn’t much less confidence-inspiring than being told “I’m sure we have one of those somewhere.” as you wander aimlessly around the store.
   
   
4. You think that your customers should pay for your inefficiencies.So, why do you have your jewelry marked up 3x wholesale? Is it to make up for your lack of a computer that keeps your ordering inefficient? Is it to cover the costs of doing your bookkeeping by hand instead of with Quickbooks?You have to automate as much of your business as possible to keep up with the rest of the world. I know that the owner of the largest store in a nearby state places orders by walking around the store to see what isn’t in stock. Of course he has no idea what he actually sold and what was stolen. More on fair pricing.
   
   
5. You Don’t Know What You’re Selling.When a customer comes in and asks for help differentiating between the Vatican II Sunday Missal and the St. Joseph Sunday Missal, can you provide a coherent answer? How about when a customer asks about differences between the Revised Standard Bible and the New American Bible?If you don’t know your product, your customers won’t trust you when you make suggestions and you won’t set yourself up as a local authority. You want customers to trust that you know what you are selling. If they trust you, they are more likely to shop at your store and more likely to say yes to an up sell or cross sell.
   
   
6. You Don’t Discriminate in What You Sell.Take a look at what you have in your store and ask yourself, “Is this a Catholic store, a Christian store with Catholic stuff or an anti-Catholic store?” If you sell books that contradict the Faith, you are committing business suicide. If you don’t have a clear Catholic focus then change the name and marketing associated with your store to attract the audience most in line with your products.If you really want to run a Catholic store you are going to need to commit to selling things that build up people’s Faith. You are going to have to be discriminating about the books you carry and have the courage to explain to shoppers the reasons for not carrying books by Anthony de Mello and Fr. Mc’Brien.
7. You Don’t Pay Attention to Trends.Remember when the Passion of the Christ came out a few years ago? Did you plan ahead? Did you find merchandise that related to the movie? Did you set up a display with The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ and other books by Anne Katherine Emerich? Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?If you want to be seen as the go-to source for Catholic things, you are going to have to stay on top of trends in Catholic culture. You should subscribe to the National Catholic Register, a couple of Catholic magazines and read your diocesan paper. Make note of books and authors that are featured and pay attention to topics that show up repeatedly. Did you do anything to beef up your pre-Vatican II Mass resources ahead of the release of Summorum Pontificum?Not only should you make sure that you carry products that relate to trends, you should also do enough research that a shopper with questions about the trend and not specifically about the products can still count on you for a knowledgeable answer.

Hopefully these tips will give you some things to work on so that the Christmas rush gives you the chance to really make such a good impression on your shoppers that they will recommend your shop to others - not because it’s the only Catholic store in town but because they really enjoy shopping there.

If you don’t own a Catholic store but can identify these problems with your local store, why don’t you offer to help as a volunteer once a month to clean up or organize the place?

Yesterday we launched a revamped checkout process that doesn’t require you to create an account or remember passwords to create an order. If you forget your password or don’t want an account, you can just fill in all your information as a new customer and get your order shipped. One less hassle to worry about.

We were recently looking for a new bookkeeper and one of our applicants seemed like he would be a good fit for the business, until I gave him a background check request. He said that he had provided references and would be happy to provide more but didn’t see why a background check was necessary. I told him that when it came to handling the financial data of our company and of our customers, prudence would demand that I do a background check on someone who was a complete stranger. Following that answer he withdrew his offer.

Have you ever done a Google search on a name? It’s amazing what is in newspaper archives.

Apart from the prudence of doing background checks, Visa and Mastercard require that in order to process their cards, business must follow PCI DSS requirements. (Details here) Vendors who don’t follow these requirements, apart from being careless with their customers’ information, are risking having their merchant accounts revoked. Part of the standard requires that anyone who handles credit card data be subjected to a background check.

We recently noticed that our church goods section had grown large enough to justify having its own site. We are now announcing the launch of the best church supply site on the Web: Catholic Church Supply. This site has everything from clergy shirts to tabernacles as well as vestments and chalices. If it’s for liturgical use, you can bet we have it.

• was holding several thousand dollars of your money.
• hadn’t released the money to you even though you had requested its dispersement three months earlier.
• doesn’t ever answer the phone.
• doesn’t ever respond to voice mail.
• doesn’t ever respond to email unless you make threats.
• lies about receiving documentation you sent.
• does not follow its own dispute resolution policy.

I think that would be called theft and fraud and such a company should be shut down and exposed publicly for stealing peoples’ money.

But then again, this is Catholic land so organizations such as Catholic Financial Services and its parent company Catholic Online will most likely never be exposed for criminal behavior outside of this blog.

That frequently the parish / school which without fail asks you for donations for some raffle every year is the same one that has never returned one phone call when your store has tried to work with them as a supplier for materials?

Yesterday I received a kind note from a Catholic blogger asking if I would be interested in advertising on the blog. The ad rates weren’t bad. Today the blogger announced the opening of an Amazon storefront with recommended products.

I’ll bet the blogger didn’t send Amazon a rate sheet.

Is it any wonder that Catholic businesses don’t do well?

For background on this, read here.