How do you establish and maintain strong relationships with teachers and school districts? In this competitive marketplace, you likely strive to deliver excellent customer service. Most educational supply retailers we contacted aim to please their customers by providing a value-added purchasing experience: giving their customers personalized attention; offering discounts (volume-purchase, frequent-buyer and so on); and providing other, more creative rewards.
In addition to doting on their most-valued customers, the retailers who talked with us reported they try to reach out to their communities through educational partnerships and volunteerism or giving. Retailers also try to stay on top of localized educational trends, as a way to combine community-mindedness with customer service.
Give personalized attention
The educational dealers we spoke with identified some of the ways they try to show appreciation to their customers. Simple and often obvious, these little touches are easy to forget, but they can make a big difference to a customer and to your bottom line.
“Selection, price and convenience are the keys – and a friendly exchange. No new discoveries there,” said Terry Brandon of the Shepard’s Nook in Annapolis, Maryland.
Danny Givens from Givens Books-Little Dickens in Lynchburg, Virginia, keeps extended hours, so customers can come in after dinner. He also tries to stay on a first-name basis with teachers and school secretaries and makes the shopping experience as convenient as possible by getting items fast and responding to their special order requests.
Others, like Elisha Scott from Educator Expo in Dallas, Texas, stressed the importance of helping the customer remember you and your store. He said he tries to remain in constant contact by stopping to drop off catalogs and e-mailing his store’s newsletters.
You don’t need to have a long-established brick-and-mortar shop to give customers excellent service and bring a personal touch to the sale. You don’t even have to see them face-to-face. Barbara Radisavljvic, an online retailer who operates BarbsBooks.com said, “Most of my customers are schools from some other part of the country or world. They find me on the Internet, where I try to give better descriptions than the publisher catalogs have. I try to make my site easy to find through the search engines. My site isn’t flashy, but it seems to be functional.”
She admits that it’s harder to offer the personal contact she could provide in a traditional store, but went on to say, “I do get repeat business from happy customers, nevertheless, because I try to ship the same or next day whenever possible and allow returns if customers don’t find the materials meet their needs.” She also tries to quickly order anything she doesn’t have in stock and offers volume discounts.
Though her site lacks a shopping cart function, she belongs to a search service that provides a check-out option. “I also have another site available with a secure server my customers can use to give me their credit card information after I give them a total, but most customers prefer to use school purchase orders or call me,” she added.
Offer customer rewards
You never know when a little “thank you,” delivered at the right time will tip the scales in favor of you over your competitor. The retailers who spoke with us often use discounts as a tool to encourage customer loyalty.
“We at The Teachers’ Lounge have The Lounge Lizard Club, where frequent buyers earn a $10 reward card for every $100 spent. It keeps them coming back in droves,” said Scott Gurley in St. Louis, Missouri.
Danny Givens of Givens Books not only gives teachers discounts but sends out “thank you” cards and gift baskets. He also said, “We do not take for granted their business. We are always very pleasant and hand-deliver catalogs from time to time with our business cards.”
Givens also employs creative customer appreciation techniques: “We hold a teacher appreciation night every November, offering food, drinks and 20 percent off on all teacher merchandise. We give out dozens of prizes that night to very happy teachers. This has turned out to be a very popular event for the last two years.” He noted that spreading word of the event is important, saying that he sends out fliers and e-mails and advertises it other ways, too. Special events can only succeed, after all, if customers know of them and show up for the fun.
Another approach is to include a small gift with the purchase. Who among us doesn’t enjoy the surprise of finding a bonus item – getting something for nothing?
“I occasionally throw something in the package for free that I think the customer might be able to use. The freebies are normally slightly damaged merchandise that publishers said to keep and donate instead of returning, or inexpensive books that used to do well when I exhibited at home- school and teacher conferences, but need to be seen to be appreciated. It’s a good way to get rid of scratch-and-dent items that have been around too long. It makes customers happy, and it sometimes leads to more sales of similar items, such as other books in the same series,” said Barbara Radisavljvic of BarbsBooks.com.
Stay abreast of trends
In order to serve them, you must somehow find a way to anticipate what your customers will need in the weeks and months ahead. What special projects do they do perennially? What new performance standards are they expected to meet this year? What’s the hot new trend or learning tool?
You can gather information in any number of ways, but asking your best customers about what they think would be a good start.
“We try to stay current with local teaching philosophies, trends, and authors by participating in school committees, boards, and volunteer opportunities. This allows us to offer the most relevant products for our area, and projects our caring partnership with our customers. Hopefully, it also helps them to think of us first when purchasing,” said Cindy Schoel of Educational Outfitters in Harker Heights, Texas.
Give back to the community
Volunteering can be a great way to elevate your business’ identity in the community. Good word-of-mouth can remind your repeat customers about you or increase your profile just enough that someone new will give your store a try. Even if it has little direct business impact, giving back makes people feel good and cements relationships in the community.
A 2004 survey conducted by the NFIB found that 74 percent of all small-business owners had volunteered for community and charitable activities within the previous year. On average, they contributed over 12 hours per month or the equivalent of 18 working days per year. Additionally, in 39 percent of small businesses, groups of employees volunteered for community activities on behalf of, or in the name of, the business.
The school supply industry is uniquely well-suited to this type of activity. Of those small businesses surveyed by the NFIB, 73 percent of those who contributed to anything gave time and/or money to educational programs or schools. Several retailers who spoke with us mentioned volunteerism as one way to forge strong bonds with their customers.
Artapalooza, a manufacturer of art cards and art activities, makes it part of its mission to participate in volunteer activities that give back to the community. “By involving our team in local museum educational outreach programs, we lend our time and energy to promoting and assisting art programs within the community,” said company director Claudia Swartz. “The local Arts in Education Council that teams up with schools always has room for volunteers to support arts education within the primary and secondary public schools. Recent volunteer activities have included chairing the local school-based Masterpiece Arts in Education program, which brings masterpiece art prints into the classroom and helps children with a corresponding art project,” noted Swartz. “Also, the Center for the Performing Arts hosts field trips to the museum, and our volunteers bring needed hands-on assistance to help explore and enrich the outings.”
She added: “Another opportunity is volunteering for the local school art fair – help with mounting and set-up of artwork is always appreciated.
“Building a teamwork approach with teachers and school staff and offering the valuable gift of time is the best way to foster a good relationship with the educational community,” Swartz concluded. “There is always room for involvement, and each step and hour spent dedicated to helping the students is time that builds a better life for all.”
Retain Those Repeat Customers!
Did you know?
• Twenty percent of customers drive 80 percent of sales in most stores (according to Marketing.About.com).
• “Businesses – on average – spend 80 percent of their marketing dollars going after new customers” (from The Thompson Group’s “Customer Retention” Web page).
• Twelve percent of small-business owners indicate virtually all customers are repeat customers.
• Another 35 percent say most are repeat.
• Forty-five percent report their customer base is mixed between repeat and non-repeat customers.
• Three out of four respondents said it is easier to retain an existing customer than it is to attract a new one, according to a 2006 survey of small-business owners from the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB).
• “It costs six times more to sell something to a prospect than to sell that same thing to a customer.”
• Repeat customers are more than 100 percent more likely to refer others to your store than are newer customers (from Marketing.About.com).
• Ninety-seven percent of small business owners say they try to build long-term relationships with customers (according to a 2006 NFIB survey).
• Of those who discontinue frequenting a retailer, “68 percent leave because of what they perceive as indifference from the merchant or someone within the merchant’s organization. They feel unappreciated, unimportant and taken for granted,” says Dan Kennedy in The Ultimate Marketing Plan. |
