Download - Music Inc. Magazine

THE GOSPEL
OF RETAIL
Chip Averwater adopted the persona
of a southern preacher to
spread the gospel of Retail Truths, his
new book. During his session of the
same name, the Amro Music chairman
and former NAMM chairman
shared 30 of these truths. Highlights:
+ A company is known by the
people it keeps. “A store is the product
of the people it sells.”
+ Love your products, but only
for their sales. “We’re stocking a
store, not a museum or a trophy case.”
+ The measure of a manager is
the situations he can handle amiably.
“A good manager can deliver
a difficult message with respect and
consideration.”
+ Volume feeds egos; profit feeds
families.
+ A manager is not a referee.
“A manager cannot resolve disputes
between employees.
“The solution is we need to ask
them to work it out. ‘It’s not good
for the company for the two of you
to be fighting.’”
+ Happy customers come and
go; unhappy customers accumulate.
“It’s worthwhile to find them and make
38 I MUSIC INC. I JULY 2012
Chip Averwater
‘Happy customers
come and go;
unhappy
customers
accumulate.’
up with them. They can be as great an
advocate as they are an adversary.”
+ A good salesman makes a
bad buyer. “They have too much
empathy with other salespeople. Their
personality is at odds with detail.
“And why do we want to keep them
from the sales floor?”
+ An aggressive competitor deserves
the bad deals. “A lot of sales
don’t make sense. Let ’em go.
“Sometimes, when we raise our
prices, the competition does, too —
eventually.”
+ A retailer’s effectiveness can
be measured by the animosity of
his competitors. “There’s no good
sportsmanship in retail.”
+ If at first you do succeed,
try not to believe you’re infallible.
“We really need periodic failures to
keep us realistic.”
Maribeth
Barrons
MERCHANDISING
NO NO’S
During “What NOT to Display,” Hal
Leonard’s Maribeth Barrons showed
retailers how to “eliminate decades
of display deficits,” as she put it. The
humorous session outlined what she
sees as three major mistakes dealers
make in merchandising print music
and how to correct these blunders.
1. Don’t display that you have
the lowest price. “Dot-coms with
their low prices aren’t the end all and
be all. Seventy-eight percent of consumers
list information as the most
significant purchasing factor. So don’t
advertise that you have the lowest price.
“And I’ve seen stores prohibit consumers
from using their smartphones
in-store. Don’t do that. That consumer
is trying to make a buying decision.”
2. Don’t display method books.
“What the heck are you doing giving
that kind of space to an item that’s
already sold? Milk and eggs are not
at the front of the grocery store.
“Indeed, method books are already
sold. You or a publisher already
did the work to sell them.”
3. Don’t use header cards to
display print inventory. “Trust
me, I want you to be able to have
all that product in your store, and I
want you to be able to sell it, too.
“Add tiers to your displays to create
more selling opportunities.”