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Being on the road for most of the year working with garden centers and visiting many other retailers has its ups and downs. Not counting the four to six flights each week.

Over the years I've discovered the answers to pretty much every business question can be better found on the streets than cooped up in an office. So when the opportunity to attend trade shows or seminars outside of horticulture is available, what's one more flight or another night in a hotel? Sign me up.

Here are a few comments based on workshops I attended outside of the traditional industry offerings. They were pulled from past communication pieces garden centers in the Group receive each week.

LEARN FROM THE FOODIES

I was hoping that by hanging out with a bunch of upscale, specialty food store owners (affectionately known as "foodies"), I could gather useful insight into how they approach running companies not that much different than garden centers. I believe that the best of them do retail a lot better than most garden centers.

Spend some time at any of these stores and you'll discover that they're targeting and attracting the same type of customer base as most progressive garden centers. That's one of the reasons that make attending their trade shows so appealing.

The two days of workshops that ran prior to the Fancy Food Show seemed promising and did offer several helpful tips that can be transferred to garden center operations. But like most industry events, there's also a lot that can be learned between sessions as well as sitting in the classrooms.

Wisdom from Zingerman's Deli

During a bus ride from the hotel to the trade show, I was lucky enough to sit with one of the owners of Zingerman's Deli. While discussing training programs, he mentioned that his company had just recorded the largest profit jump in the company's history.

He attributed the increase to the fact that all of his employees had recently completed a nuts-and-bolts training program that focused on basic accounting. The program was designed for all staff levels, not just managers. With new insight into how every employee can impact success by "watching the numbers," there was a noticeable change in attitude from "the company" to "our company," especially when increased profits result in increased wages.

If our industry paid as much attention to numbers as we do nomenclature, perhaps the profit picture would be better.

An Underhill viewpoint

The downside to having Paco Underhill lead off with the first seminar of the day is listening to all the infatuated people who follow him grovel with "Paco said this and Paco said that..."

The best thing Paco said in his opening session was, "My wife and I are every upscale retailer's worst nightmare. I already own all I need and most of what I want. Other than cheese, wine, crackers and a few pairs of underwear and socks, I don't need to go shopping for the next several years. And my wife thinks it's fine to wear a $25 pair of slacks from Target with an $800 handmade blouse when she plays Carnegie Hall."

There's a lot to glean from a view into Paco's personal life. First, the Underhill family isn't that much different from a lot of the shoppers visiting garden centers. All of our best customers already own more stuff than they'll ever need. Trying to convince them to add one more item to their treasure chest first has to get past the "this better be good" litmus test. For more shoppers, if it's not special it's probably not wanted.

This also demonstrates why it's important to focus more on product quality rather than quantity and why our advertising needs to relay a compelling story rather than a laundry list of goods.

Add grocers to your tour list

The specialty grocer industry closely resembles the garden center industry in that there are a few really good, high-profile shops like Dorothy Lane Market and the Fresh Market that set the standards, then there are tons of smaller stores working really hard trying to just hold on, while they all try to fend off the impact of their industry's box stores like Whole Foods and Wegman's, which are vying for the same upscale shopper. It all begins to sound and look very familiar.

If you want to pick up a few pointers on store design, merchandising for impulse sales, signage, traffic flow and efficient checkout processes, stop by a really nice upscale grocer during your next road trip. Chances are there's a lot more to learn from the food industry about doing retail right than from garden centers that tend to continually copy each other.

DOUG HALL WISDOM

Before he became famous on the new television show "American Inventor," Doug Hall was already one of my favorite business authors. So when it came time for the next Group staff meeting, we decided to add a day and schedule a workshop at Eureka! Ranch, which is part of Hall's business strategy company.

The firm has worked with many major retail and manufacturing companies helping to devise marketing, packaging and branding strategies. Here are a few tips we picked up hanging out at Eureka! Ranch.

Don't discount new customers

Mega growth comes from getting new customers, not continually focusing on your current customer's undying loyalty.

Given all the discourse making its way through the garden center industry regarding loyalty programs, this statement is sure to cause a moment of reflection. Years ago this so-called customer loyalty thing became the new retail buzz word thanks in part to a Peppers & Rogers Group book, "1to1 Marketing." I called the authors' office and asked: "So how many loyal customers does it take to spend the majority of our marketing budget on them instead of the general public?" There was a moment of silence, then they hung up.

Since then, the folks from Eureka! Ranch have proven that one-to-one loyalty programs have to work alongside a continuous search for new customers. Their research has shown that finding new customers is three times more important to sales growth than relying on current customer loyalty no matter how many people are in the program.

Average sale trumps number of visits

Increasing the average sale is 3.5 times more important than increasing the frequency of shopping trips, Hall said in his seminar.

If your intent is to get customers to spend more with you over an entire year, make sure they spend as much as possible each time they visit. This finding should cause every garden center to pay a lot more attention to shopping carts, paving, signage, traffic flow, merchandising, customer service and employee sales skills.

Each year garden centers in the Group complete an online worksheet that records sales and expenses according to predetermined line-item categories. As far as we can tell, it's the only yearly, complete financial study in the industry. Part of this comparison program also tracks customer average sale.

In the 2004 P&L Comparison Report, the total mix of garden centers reported an average sale of just under $50. A year later, garden centers in the "best practices" division increased their average sale to more than $60. During peak season, average sale at these centers often reaches $90. As a result, these centers achieved a net profit for the year of more than 10 percent.

And no, these aren't just the large-volume centers the industry tends to spotlight. Many are midsize centers that have learned to pay close attention to the financial benchmarks we've set for them.

The largest jump in average sale took place at centers that made a concerted effort to also pay attention to the people issues that matter most, like customer connection.

We changed the terminology from customer service to customer connection to help clarify the process. Customer service has become an ambiguous statement. Customer connection, on the other hand, requires direct contact between shoppers and employees. Customers receiving personal assistance should always out spend self-service transactions.

Pare down selection

The easiest and least expensive way to increase sales is to reduce inventory selection.

For some time we've been hearing about the clutter revolt and paradox of choice where shoppers presented with an overwhelming array of goods sometimes shut down and make no purchases at all.

Tests run by Eureka! Ranch proved that stores that eliminated 10 percent of their slowest-moving items saw an immediate 4-percent sales increase. Makes you question whether you really need all those choices in every department. If more companies used information available through their POS system to identify slow sellers, then took action to remove them from the inventory, this revelation wouldn't have been so eye opening.

Whether or not you believe these statements, Hall has the research to back up his claims. Given the current state of a lot of garden center's profit picture, taking an "I don't believe it" -- or worse, a "But our company is different" -- position seems very risky.

For more insight, read two of my favorite Doug Hall books, "Jump Start Your Business Brain" and "Jump Start Your Marketing Brain."

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© 2006 Branch-Smith Publishing