By Christine Sutton
Copyright © 2003 Christine Sutton

Want to grow your business BIG? Help your customers think small!

Think small! It sounds strange, doesn’t it? We’re always told to think big; after all, it’s the key to success. Well, when it comes to your customers’ scrapbooking, we’d like you to start thinking small.

So many people miss out on the joys of scrapbooking because they look at the “big” picture. They see years and years’ worth of photos and think they could never get them all scrapbooked, so why bother? If you want to grow your business big, you need to help your customers
think small so that they can get rid of that “all or nothing” mentality.

Scrapbooking is truly a magical activity, and we’re blessed to play a role in something of such significance. There is a dizzying array of great scrapbooking products on the market and an amazing pool of talented people. It’s easy to get swept away with the excitement. As storeowners, we feel the pressure to have all the latest and greatest products. Our scrapbooking magazines are filled with dazzling new techniques. This translates to our teaching as we create classes for every new technique.

All of this is great for generating excitement, but ask yourself this: Do you want to impress your customers or inspire them? Of course, you want impress your customers with your fabulous service, but I’m not talking about customer service here. I’m talking specifically about your customers’ motivation to scrapbook. If we’re not careful, we’ll dazzle our customers right out of a rewarding hobby and ourselves right out of business!

Consider making a few small changes, and you’ll see big rewards. As you’re allocating budgeting dollars and designing your selling area, remember to give equal focus on the simple products that help your customers save time. You might even designate a part of your store as “shortcut central” and group timesaving products together.

Think about your class offerings. Continue to have fun with the latest techniques but be sure you balance that with classes that help customers get the job done.

How about your events? The typical page layout contest is a great motivator for your most talented customers. But what does it do for the motivation of the majority of your customers who can barely find the time to scrapbook? So how do you help your customers think small? The first step is to help your customers set reasonable expectations. You can guide them to choose a manageable project, such as a theme album, so that they can enjoy a sense of accomplishment.

You can also help your customers overcome that “all or nothing” mentality by teaching them to take advantage of small blocks of time. People think they need hours of scrapbooking time in order make it worth their while. Actually, they would be amazed at what they can accomplish in 15-minute intervals. Here are a few ideas for starters:

Sort some photos into categories for layouts.
Jot down some journaling notes...while the thoughts are still fresh.
Pick out papers and embellishments to enhance a page.
Put the finishing touches on a page.

By helping your customers choose small projects and use small blocks of time, you will help them enjoy success!

In our retail studio, we’ve prided ourselves with our ability to pamper our customers. During each crop, we treated customers to a small goodie bag of miscellaneous supplies. We came to realize that this did nothing to inspire people. In fact, it just added to their organizing dilemmas! Now we treat each customer to a Make ‘n Take packet. We include all of the directions and supplies needed to create one page, and we make sure that the theme relates to recent events. This one small change had a big impact on the way our customers felt after our events. Our customers have said that they love the creative jumpstart. It helps them feel a sense of success and spurs them on to do more!

How can you identify areas of your business that would benefit from some small thinking? Evaluate your classes, your store layout, and your crops by asking yourself these questions. What do your customers think when they walk away? Are they thinking, “That’s impressive, but I could never do it.”

What do you want your customers to think? The answer is obvious. After every interaction with your store, you want your customers to think: “I can do this!”

Copyright © 2003 Christine Sutton