Signage is the single most overlooked, underutilized yet amazingly powerful tool a retailer has at their disposal. During this program, Rick introduces the power of these silent salespeople and their ability to turn your business around. Also covered is the emerging role of digital signage and how forward thinking retailers and vendors can partner to make the most of it.

Participants learn how to:

• Integrate the 3 categories of interior advertising within the store effectively
• Improve the shopping experience with creative signs
• Create a buying frenzy
• Learn how to increase sales between 10-500% with the I.S.E.E. Formula
• Have your customers linger longer increasing the likelihood of increased sales

In order to bring our businesses to the next level, we must design marketing plans that incorporate all of the strategies and tactics that will make our customers drive by other businesses and make our businesses their preferred choice–a true destination business.  We must position ourselves on and offline as the resource our customers value above all others.

We accomplish that by adapting a customer-centric philosophy that shifts our focus to the Benefit Quotient for our customer.  This dynamic, engaging interactive program incorporates every aspect of successful retailing today.

Participants learn how to:

• Create mutual understanding why the customer should shop with us.
• Communicate in the way that reaches the customer
• Embrace the latest cost effective ecommerce technology for customer acceptance and extraordinary growth
• Demystify inbound marketing and the best social media strategies that even the smallest of businesses can use
• Harness the benefit of interior advertising from the customers’ point of view to increase the average transaction size
• Discover the best price and non-price promotions that will keep the customers coming back and talking about your business
• Learn the latest in pricing practices to reach customer approval and merchandise optimization

Now when did you shop your competition online? It is difficult to shop your direct competitor in person but you can do it online anytime you feel like it.

The problem is we don’t. The other issue is what should we be looking for? In this program, you will not only have a guided tour of some of the best retail sites on the web but you will also learn some of the tricks and tools used in the sites that make them so successful. This will all be in terms that retailers understand, complete with an idea of the types of costs that are associated with them.

Let Rick Segel be your mystery online shopper and uncover trends, tools, and treasures that will make you money.

Participants learn how to:

• View websites the way a customer would
• Learn how to identify and eliminate those all-too-common stumbling blocks that make it difficult for customers to do business with us online
• Ensure that your site’s graphic design is working FOR you, not AGAINST you!
• Provide multiple opportunities for customers to connect with you, via their vehicle of choice
• Use headlines, bullet points, and powerful web copy to sell more
• Integrate the ‘sizzle’ into your site that makes customers buy!

Cast off outdated thinking and move into a new age of profitability with suggestive selling. No one wants to be sold, but they all want help buying!  Reframing the sales process for you and for your team means adopting a non-threatening suggestion driven approach.  It also means increased sales, enhanced employee performance, and great morale. Enhance customer loyalty without ever having to drop your prices!

Designed to benefit both the experienced sales pro and the newest rookie, this program provides immediate results.  You’ll be able to see the difference on your sales floor, on your customer’s smiling faces, and on the bottom line!

Participants learn how to:

• Increase sales effectiveness
• Leverage the multiple sales mindset for extraordinary results
• Boost the fun and keep your customers coming back
• Reduce the fear of follow up and increase the value of the lifetime relationship
• Discover ways to WOW your customers
• Retain your best employees – and inspire your ok employees to become

While the benefits are clear, the move toward “going with the flow” inbound marketing raises many questions for retailers.  What do they need to know about this new approach? More importantly, where will they find the time to do it?

This easy to understand, high energy program presents the tools of social media and inbound marketing in everyday language, with a minimum of ‘tech speak’ and a focus on building your business through attraction. Everyone can benefit from this program, from the most tech savvy store owner to the total novice!

Participants learn how to:

• Recognize and evaluate the many new tools critical to marketing today
• Establish an online presence in alignment with your store’s branding and your customers’ interests
• Understand what a landing page is, how easy they are to create, and what they can do for your business.
• Learn why prospects aren’t entering your website through the home page but through words and phrases of interest.
• Learn the right words and phrases to use to attract customers to your store
• Understand why brand name products take on a  new and even more powerful meaning  than ever before and  new ways to use them
• Position yourself in your customers’ preferred online venues as a resource of high value
• Build long lasting relationships
• Turn customers into advocates: teach them to sell for you!
• Create landing pages that build your business and capitalize on local market appeal
• Stand out from the crowd and attract more customers

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I can’t believe she said that… Well, Believe it! Customers are demanding more from stores, sales people, customer service people, and especially from owners than ever before.   The reason why is because they can.  Regardless of the recession, the increase in competition from around the world is intense. Customers are throwing away politeness and common courtesies for getting what they want, when they want it, and how much they want to pay for it. You wonder why our employees have become as cranky as the customer.

We have no room for weak or bad management any more. This program addresses the everyday issues that can drive us crazy and steal productivity from our businesses.  You will learn to better understand the root causes of irrational behavior.

Participants learn how to:

• Implement the 7 strategies that  can diffuse any tense encounter
• Read the customer to determine which is the appropriate strategy to use
• Convert the crankiest of customers into fanatic followers
• Retrain and motivate their employees to look at these situations as opportunities, not threats
• Use the best words and phrases in a variety of situations
• Understand why confrontation is being replaced with “side step diplomacy

Participants learn how to:

• Implement the seven techniques of Breakthrough Marketing
• Develop a lead nurturing system
• Assess and evaluate their marketing initiative
• Use Call to Action Graphics to make their website stand out from rest
• Implement Opt-in Text/MCommerce to reach more customers

Join us on Wednesday, June 23rd at 4:00 PM Eastern and learn more about this system that will catapult your business to the next level.

There is brief pause in the video where the audio cuts out for a few moments but it will pick right back up where it left off.

Watch an actual hands-on presentation from  start to completion. Not by a techno wizard, but done by everyday people to show the ease and simplicity of this amazing marketing tool.  Watch how this Free Service can revolutionize your retail business.

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This truly is a Free for All!

A FREE webinar about retailers that use the concept of FREE. This program is based on the Survey conducted by Rick Segel & Associates last year, and will share some of the best uses of the concept of Free – THE business model of the future. Learn from the best of last year’s contest winners.

If you use FREE as a marketing tool and you want to want to contribute to this webinar, please write to be included at rick@ricksegel.com.

Great Harvest Bakeries offers a big hunk of bread with your choice of topping from sweet cream butter to honey. Plenty of places offer small samples but Great Harvest differentiates itself with the size of the sample.

I was just in a TJ Maxx store and they were giving away free, environmentally considerate shopping bags. Yes, there is advertising on it that will pay dividends for months and maybe even years to come but everyone wanted one of the FREE BAGS.

More and more products now automatically come with Free Trials. Sure you can give away stuff if you are a vendor or if you are selling educational products but when you are a clothing store, a gift shop, or jewelry store what can you give? PLENTY.

Remember the hottest trend in retailing today is in the area of education and expertise. Offer free reports about the “The 5 things to know about buying an engagement gift”. Special Reports and White Papers position a store as the expert plus you are giving something free.

On my website I offer a free download of one of my books, The 5000 Best Sale and Promotional Names Ever Compiled. This book sells for $19.95 as a paperback and $14.95 as a downloadable version. From the time I offered this book for FREE, the sale of the paperback increased by over 700%.

There is a bestselling book by Chris Andersen that is receiving both rave reviews and stirring up lots of controversy from many traditional marketers. The book is appropriately titled FREE.

I am a believer in the concept. Creating a buying frenzy has always been the mantra for sale promoters. Nothing does it better than free. Don’t get nervous — I am not suggesting to start giving the store away. What I am suggesting is this:

Start considering Free as a strategy and watch how other businesses are using it.
Start asking every vendor you do business with for FREE promotional merchandise that you can give away for free. Every company buys some type of promotional product, from T shirts to mugs, to tote bags and on and on.
Don’t be afraid to ask your vendors. Cosmetic companies have been giving a gift with purchase for years. (Do you really think Estee Lauder needs to give away all of that free stuff? But they do.)
Remember — make them an offer they can’t refuse.
Evaluate the success or failure of the offer. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.
I have spoken for Staples over 150 times. Many of these presentations occurred at their stores when they were having some type of Business Expo in cooperation with other businesses in the community. There were many events that were held away from the store as well.

The goal for Staples was simple. Get customers to sign-up for a Staples Credit Card or the Staples Rewards program. Why? Because the customers involved in either of these two programs bought significantly more than other customers. Therefore they gave away some of the coolest stuff for free just to get the customer to sign up.

There is one conference that I have been speaking at every year for the last 10 years. I have always given away lots of books. But last year the meeting planner told me that they would set up a table in the back of the room and give me plenty of time to sell my books. They scheduled me before lunch, which is ideal. I will never do that again. I made more contacts when things were free than I ever did when I charged. Weird but true.

There is a concept that Chris Andersen, the author of FREE, discusses and that is the study of “Behavioral Economics.” What it attempts to do is rationalize why buyers make decisions that aren’t always the most rational or logical. FREE is a powerful motivator. As it is described in the book as “Predictably Irrational,” I think I have been described that way a few times!

So I suggest you pick-up the book FREE (it’s not free.) But before you do that, let’s put our collective brain power to use.  If you have an idea about the subject or you are already using the concept of FREE, or you have been using a product or service that you are giving away for FREE, then share it with us. As an incentive, for the best three ideas, I will send you a copy of Chris Andersen’s book, FREE for free. Just email me at rick@ricksegel.com and put the words “radical pricing” in the subject line. YOU can’t say FREE. Why? Because every spam filter in the world will block it. Let’s start building a collection of free ideas that will be free for everyone who reads this column.

Footnote: Please let me know if you want your name and business mentioned or not. In your email, just say OK–you can use my name, or NO–if you would prefer to remain anonymous.