It’s Zero Percent Off!
A 4-week crash course in how to earn higher retail margins, selling online at full-price without discounting away your Christmas profits
Why Now
This is for you if:
- Whether you make it to next Christmas depends on profits made now
- You’re exhausted by settling for reduced-margin sales
- The words “discount death spiral” are uncomfortably descriptive
Join course author Patrick Pitman in a year-end exercise to keep more of what you make right now by winning full-price customers.
This course will help you aim toward higher margins AND higher sales – especially if you’ve been accidentally training your customers to expect discounts. You’ll discover opportunities right now to change what’s under your immediate, direct control. Join us on the road to Zero Percent Off!
All course materials are conveniently delivered by email, always online, actionable in small bits, and concise enough to share around the office. You’ll also like the sliding scale, “pay what you can” pricing…
Profitable order-taking at zero percent off
Every order a full-price customer places strengthens your company. Converting discount customers to profitable full-price customers is the best way of making your business – and your job – more sustainable. Can you pull it off?
- Maybe there’s doubt as to whether your company will still be around next Christmas. Does it depend on the success of the 2011 holiday season?
- Maybe there’s even doubt whether your company will be around at the end of the winter. Will you manage to squirrel away enough full-profit orders to survive?.
- Or maybe you’re holding your head above water, but better margins would mean you could float a little more comfortably. And that’d feel good.
Whatever today’s situation for you, I’m rooting for your success as a small retailer, and for the health of the ecosystem you support.
A shift you can make at this late hour
So I’m writing to you about something that’s so within your control, so front and center to your operations and how customers perceive you, that you might take it for granted.
Patrick’s Rant
Retailers know that half or more of our yearly sales are to be made in the weeks ahead. It matters what we do now. Big or small, retailers will hustle and keep the lights on late.
Here’s the part that worries me: How will the smaller retailers be standing once the holidays are over?
I’m talking about small business profits. This so matters right now.
How many of you will step into 2012 with enough cash to carry your entire team through to the next season?
Small business profitability can be like a salve to a world rubbed raw…
Today we find turmoil in the streets, born of frustration. And at the same time, shoppers scurry about those same streets looking to buy gifts, as ever before. What a contrast! It’s mirrored online, too: protest AND commerce. What to make of these times?
Dare I say that small business has never been more important to the the vitality — the civility, even — of our world.
Can you imagine being among the innovating, job-creating, entrepreneurial-minded merchants who stand tall and forge ahead with hiring and investment? That vision rests on your profitability. That vision becomes more than a slogan when you’ve got cash on hand!
What if, for every sale, you kept more in profit?
And all because you turned a couple dials now that you can directly, immediately control?
Retailer’s Story
Here’s a real-life story about margins. Really, it’s about discounting.
Sadly, it’s also a story about how a retailer that I love is training me to love it less and less, while selling itself short and jeopardizing its longevity. But before the story, let’s jump to the punchline:
You’re sending email newsletters or offers, right? If you’ve ever reached for the crutch of coupon codes to headline a holiday email campaign, you know what I’m talking about. Hey, I’ve done it, too. And so does that retailer I love, the one this story is about.
See this list of every email that retailer I love has sent me over the last 18 months:
If you knew nothing more about this creative, cool, international, multi-channel, niche, husband-and-wife-led retailer than that list of subject lines, would you even care to know their name?
Eh. Whatever they have, you can find on Amazon with cheaper delivery, right?
No, actually, you cannot.
But send me 18 months of such emails and I might nearly forget their name. As I browse their website today, it’s little better than their emails: I’d still be challenged to match my overwhelmingly positive first impressions upon visiting their amazing walk-in storefront and talking one-on-one with the owner.
For that retailer, savvy in so many ways, to send me a series of emails like that makes me more than cringe. He’s actually training me to devalue his uniqueness and quality when it could be so REWARDING.
Is that where you want me to be, as I evaluate whether to buy from you as a niche retailer? There’s a couple simple dials you could turn instead, you know. Because you’re not hoping to make it up on volume of orders, are you? Think you can beat Amazon at that game?
This concise, crash course shows what he could do instead, what you could do instead.
Course Details
Course begins: 8 November 2011 through 13 December. Join us in-progress today!
- After you register, you’ll get sent a quick survey, which you are welcome to answer in as much or little detail as you like.
- Then you’ll also be asked to subscribe to an email list, as all course materials will be delivered to you online, linked in easy emails. (If you miss the emails, you can also reference them as web pages and go back to review anytime).
Format: Materials will be sent you on a firm schedule. But there are no class dates and times, no phone calls to schedule (or miss). Course materials delivered via email, with links to downloadable PDF worksheets and MP3 audio files.
What you’ll learn: That if you turn DOWN the Discounts dial, there are two other dials you must also turn UP. You’ll learn what these dials are, and how you can carefully adjust for higher margins and healthy sales right now.
Cost: $197 USD or “pay what you can”
“Pay what you can” means that the price you pay can be adjusted by you during the check-out payment process.
We’ve all got different circumstances. Everything will work out in the end. Did you read Patrick’s Rant? Try this course today.
About the people behind this course
Patrick Pitman created Frank Learning after a decade running E-business Coach, Inc. He led the design of a proprietary ecommerce platform (2002) that set the standard for search engine friendly features and was early to achieve PCI certified security.
E-business Coach clients demonstrated year over year growth in web sales that doubled the industry average for online retail (Forrester, ’06, ’07). For our efforts we earned a percentage of sales.
Patrick’s learned first-hand the reasons why, and what works from 2000 to today. We’ve shared in the hard lessons and our clients’ sweet successes.
Murray Kenneth, mail-order entrepreneur from the UK, co-founded Frank Learning. Murray brings a practical merchant’s perspective that sharpens each lesson. He has worked as catalogue retailer, winning industry awards in the UK. Today he is an investor and consultant, helping entrepreneurs.
Frank Learning exists to bring this kind of unique training to entrepreneurial companies. Questions? Contact us.
A 10 year case study
The effectiveness of the methods taught here are proven with merchants like Red Oxx Manufacturing, with whom Patrick began a collaboration in 2001 that continues to this day.
Customer enthusiasm for redoxx.com’s engaging, story-driven, no discounts approach has helped sustainably drive annual web sales from five figures to seven. Sales remain strong in times that are tempting many retailers to discount. In 2011 Internet Retailer honored Redoxx.com as a Top 1000 retailer.
Pay What You Can
Participation in this course is priced at $197 USD.
And it’s “pay what you can.” That means you can set a different price during check-out.
Update: Before you think about leaving an explanatory ‘notes to seller’ when paying less, don’t sweat it. Really, no excuses needed. You can do this!
Daily I’m pulled into the ups and downs of multi-channel retailers on both sides of the Atlantic. I know the budget choices, the eagerness to bet big, the hesitation to get burned, and the constraints of small teams. Here’s a low risk investment that will add points to your bottom line.
You have my 100% money-back guarantee of satisfaction with what you can learn from this course.
What you’ll learn here can grow into a longer-term strategic decision about how you market and position yourself as a retailer. But there are immediate steps you can take right now for this Christmas season. Join us.
And if you know someone who may want to consider this opportunity, please pass the word.
Sincerely,
Patrick
P.S. Did you read “Patrick’s Rant”? It’s not as if all civilization hangs in the balance, but there are good reasons all the same. You know them. Don’t be shy about what you’ve got left in your Paypal account now.