You know what a Secret Shopper is, right? Well, have you ever heard of a Secret Student? Like a Secret Shopper who visits retail stores to learn about the typical customer experience, our Secret Students took classes at independent stores to see what consumers were learning.
Why? Classes are the independent retailer’s competitive advantage: Good classes sell product, create a relationship between a store and the consumer and establish a store as THE resource for ideas and techniques. So this fall we headed back to school to become Secret Students. We sharpened our pencils, packed our book bags and signed up, undercover, for classes at independent stores.
Here’s what we discovered, and here’s how our Secret Student experience can be a workbook for your success.
Teaching Tip #1: Promote the Product (And Have the Product in Stock!)
The bottom line is, you’re teaching classes in order to sell product. Don’t feel guilty—the reason students sign up for a vellum class is because they like vellum and want to learn how to use it. Consumers understand that a class will inspire them to try their new techniques with new product.
One class, taught at an independent scrapbook store, did a beautiful job of promoting Creating Keepsakes’ line of products in a “CK-Style” class. The instructor began with an overview of products available from Creating Keepsakes, from the lettering CDs to the idea books to the magazine itself. By the end of the presentation, every student wanted to get her hands on those CK products. And all 12 of us would have purchased the books, the magazines, the lettering CDs and more—except, the teacher said casually, the store was out of all of them.
What were the sales lost from that class? Imagine if each student was to buy only one of the Creating Keepsakes products—an idea book, for example, that retails for $14.99. Twelve students multiplied by $14.99=$179.00. Wow—this store lost a minimum of $179.00 in sales in one afternoon!
Wonder how many students flocked to other stores to find the product so skillfully presented by this independent?
Teaching Tip #2: Promote YOUR Store—Not Your Competition!
Retail is a competitive world. After all, you work hard as an independent retailer to compete with chain stores and other independents. You certainly can’t afford to promote your competition, and we’re betting you wouldn’t use the captive audience in your class as a promotional vehicle for the chain store down the street. But many stores are providing free advertising to their competition.
At a tag art class at a rubber stamp store, the teacher based two of her projects on beautiful specialty fibers. The students raved about the fibers, asking the teacher, “Where can we buy them?” The teacher’s answer? “No, this store doesn’t carry them. I got these at Michaels. You can find them in the yarn section.” Surprising? You bet—until you realize a store employee was sitting in on the class and added, “These can be pretty expensive, though, so be sure to clip that 40% off coupon before you go.”
Hmm, I have a referral on a great product, I even know what aisle to go to, and a tip-off on the coupon. What the heck am I doing at this store?
And here’s another surprise: this scenario didn’t happen just once—it happened at three different classes, held at three different stores, and taught by three different teachers!
Teaching Tip #3: Practice Customer Service
Set guidelines with your teacher on providing good customer service in class. Teachers should set all supplies at each student’s place before the class, pulling product from your store. Many teachers will argue that this is unnecessary, that scrapbookers want to pick their own papers to use on the project. As students, we found this arrangement certainly made things easier for the teacher but harder for us.
With the exception of one class, all of our scrapbook teachers instructed students to select their own papers for the project. “Go pick three sheets of bulk paper. No specialty, no patterned and no vellum,” they said at the beginning of the class. Chaos? You bet: now you have 12 students milling around the bulk papers, trying to mix and match papers from a limited selection. The process took 20 minutes—20 minutes we could have been learning!
The teacher surely thought she was making the class better for students, figuring we would want to choose papers to match our photos. Yet most scrappers don’t use pages created in class in their own albums; rather, they file completed class projects in an Idea Binder or project album.
Only one store handled things differently. My chalking teacher had all the supplies for each project ready for us: chalks, papers, vellum and die-cuts were at our seats when we arrived. Instead of spending 20 minutes picking paper, we listened to the teacher’s tips and ideas, saw a variety of chalked album pages and saw the products she used.
We were able to spend the class time learning what we came for (and paid for)—and the teacher was able to sell product.
Guess which class was taught by the store owner—and which classes were taught by independent teachers? And even more important, guess which store we spent the most money at after class? Our chalking teacher’s professionalism and preparation told us we were important. And spending that extra time spent allowed us to discuss more techniques (increasing the class’ value) and seeing more products (increasing sales).
Teaching Tip #4: Teach a Specific Project
One teacher, after sending students out to select bulk papers, directed us to a table at the back of the classroom to pick out our brads, buttons, fibers and other embellishments we wanted to use on our album page. We were instructed to sit down and she would come around and help us design our pages individually.
What a way to stretch one technique into a three-hour supervised playtime!
Want a quick and easy way to provide class projects that sell product? Pull out a copy of a Paper Pizazz™ book and look at the album pages on the front cover and the inside back cover. Each page features a technique designed by professional designers. Build the cost of the book into the cost of the class, then teach the page. Students will be able to pull papers from the book, then take home the rest to use later. Some teachers list a “supplies fee” in addition to the class fee. Let potential students know they will take home a book of papers plus a completed page: say the class fee is $5.00 and the supply list is $10.00 to include a Paper Pizazz™ book, perhaps a few sheets of bulk vellum and a pen. The going rate of a two-hour scrapbook class is $15.00-$20.00, with take-home supplies being three sheets of bulk paper. Why not let this value be your competitive advantage?
Teaching Tip #5: Bring Them Back!
Classes aren’t just a one-shot purchase for consumers. You want them to take a class, shop, then return for another class. One big surprise in our Secret Student experiment was that not one store offered any handouts, newsletters, or information on the store’s other classes, crops, events or services. Here’s a great way to maximize a captive audience! While students are cutting and gluing, tell them about upcoming classes, then make sure each student leaves with a store newsletter and class calendar.
Great classes will have an impact on your profits. But poor quality classes will also have an effect on your store’s profits. Our Secret Students decided that from classes attended at local stores, only one was worth the $15.00 fee. Will we go back to the others? Why should we? After all, we ended up paying $15.00 for supervised playtime where the teacher wasted nearly a quarter of the class time forcing us to pick out project materials. And we know teachers are shopping for their projects at chain stores (remember, we even know what aisle to go to).
The consensus of our Secret Students? The quality of the classes taught by the store owner was ten times better than the classes taught by independent teachers. This can be an easy lesson for retailers: Always, always have potential teachers audition before you hire them to teach a class. Make sure they understand what you expect them to say, do, and promote. They are your employees, even if it’s for just a few hours on a Saturday afternoon.
Great classes are your best competitive advantage. You can easily maximize the sales and service opportunities of a room full of students who are looking to your store as a resource. By carefully selecting and training teachers to promote your products, your store and your customer service criteria, you can use the experience of our Secret Students as a workbook for your success!
