W · W · M · C · W
What would my
customer want?
Five words. Ask them before every decision you make and everything gets easier, everything gets more fun, and your store gets a whole lot more profitable. Bob Negen calls it the number one philosophy and strategy an independent retailer can build a business on.
The Idea
It works two ways at once
Most business advice is either a nice sentiment or a practical tactic. WWMCW is unusual because it's both — a way of seeing your customers, and a rule for deciding where your money goes.
How you look at things
A philosophy is your way of looking at life and at your business.
- You make a point of trusting your customers.
- You make a point of loving your customers.
- You understand that givers give to get. Your focus becomes service — you lead with a heart of service.
- Love, respect, and trust go out. Loyalty, word of mouth, and money come back.
- The occasional knucklehead stops being an annoyance. Breathe, acknowledge, move on — you've got better things to do, and great customers to serve.
Where you put your resources
A strategy is simply where your time, money, and energy go.
- You stop asking what you want out of the business and start asking what your customer wants from it.
- Then you fund the answer — deliberately, and in that order.
- Most of your resources should go toward giving your customer the experience they actually want.
- It's the single biggest correction Bob sees retailers need to make.
“One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is they focus their business lives on what they want out of their business.” — Bob Negen
Where the money goes
Three places, and the reason for each
Ask the question, and your budget starts answering it for you. Every line below is followed by the same word: why? And the answer is always the customer.
The customer experience
Because your customer wants a great experience when they're in your store.
Your team
Because your customer wants a kind, friendly, skillful, helpful person to meet them when they walk in.
Professional services
Because your customer wants to shop with a business that has a real, true sense of professional competence.
Real Retail TV · Episode 168
Bob explains it in six minutes
He filmed this one outside in the snow, on purpose — because someone in the community had just told him it was 110 degrees in Australia. That's Real Retail TV.
“Your business exists to serve your life. But how do you build it the right way? You build it by loving your customers. Love your customers — the money will follow.” — Bob Negen, Episode 168
Every week
There's a new one of these every week
Real Retail TV is Bob's weekly video series for independent retailers — one practical idea at a time, from someone who ran stores for nineteen years before he ever taught anybody anything. No fluff, no theory for its own sake. Just the next useful thing.
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Who's behind it
About WhizBang! Retail Training
We're in the business of successful businesses — helping independent retailers get the nuts-and-bolts skills they need to run a store that thrives.
Bob & Susan Negen
Founders, WhizBang! Retail Training
Bob and Susan founded WhizBang! Retail Training more than twenty years ago. Since then they've worked with hundreds of thousands of retailers, presented at trade shows and conferences all over North America, built courses for owners, managers, and employees, and written a best-selling book on retail marketing.
Their perspective comes from more than 40 years of combined on-the-floor experience. Bob founded the Mackinaw Kite Co., an award-winning chain of kite and toy stores, and ran it for 19 years. Susan started out as an executive at Bloomingdale's and Macy's before joining Bob at the Kite Co.