Professional Distributor - 36

Would you buy from you?

Is your store layout and presentation helping or hurting your sales?

efore we get into the topic
at hand, let me assure you
that I realize as a mobile
jobber you are trying to get ten
pounds of stuff (tools) into a
five pound truck and that every
BY ALAN SIPE
square inch is important. Today,
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
we are going to talk about
Alan W. Sipe has spent the last 42
years in the basic hand tool industry how you use those valuable
including positions as president of square inches.
KNIPEX Tools North America, senior
Back in Latrobe, Pennsylvavice president of sales and marketing at Klein Tools, manager of special nia, in the Fifties (yes, I mean the
markets at Stanley Tools, and sales 1950's), we had one local hobby
manager at toolbox manufacturer shop: Stumpf's Hobby Shop.
Waterloo Industries. Currently, Sipe
is the owner of Toolbox Sales and It was crammed with so much
Consulting, a company specializing stuff that "Stumpfy" had to litin sales strategy, structure, devel- erally set products out front on
opment, and training. Sipe can be
reached at alansipe@gmail.com or the sidewalk so he could get in
847-910-1063. the door. If you knew what you
wanted, he knew exactly where it
was, but there were no displays
- just piles and stacks of models, guns, baseball stuff, football
stuff, hunting stuff, fishing stuff,
and lots of other stuff! As a kid,
you feared for an in-store merchandise avalanche crushing you
as you squeezed down the aisles.
Unfortunately for Mr.
Stumpf, when I was about ten or
12 we got a Walmart and a well
merchandised sporting goods
store which soon put an end
to Stumpf's Hobby Shop. I will
tell you as a kid in those days
Stumpfs Hobby Shop was the
coolest place on Earth!
Now let's think about shopping location preferences today.
I'll bet your grocery store is spiffy
clean at all times and laid out logically for customer convenience
and selling success. The milk and
eggs are in the back of the store,
so you must walk by all the other
36 Professional Distributor I August 2020 I VehicleServicePros.com

products, and you probably buy
something additional as you run
in to pick up a dozen eggs. I'll also
bet that if you walk in a grocery
store and it is a pit and smells
funky, you will not be shopping
there again.
Go to Costco for a $4.99
rotisserie chicken which is displayed in the back of the store.
If you're like me, you will come
out with $100 to $200 of other
"had to have" merchandise
that you didn't even know you
needed when you walked in the
front door.
So, here's the question for
you: Is your mobile store a
Stumpfs Hobby Shop or a Dick's
Sporting Goods? In other words,
is your store a clean, neat, well
laid-out selling environment, or
a pile of tools riding around in
the back of your truck?
Shoppers come on your truck
with many thoughts in mind.

The following are probably the
most common shopper mindsets,
followed by my thoughts on each.
1. I have no idea what I want,
but I like looking at new tools.
Having a well merchandised
store will be the key to success
with this technician. They want
to buy something; you just need
to capture their interest. These
are the plus sales.
2. I know pretty much what I
want, but I want a choice.
The objective here is to provide the correct value for this
customer. If the prospect does
body work and does a lot of wiring, they need a great heavy duty
wire stripper. If this person is a
general technician and crimps a
wire about once a week, a good
mid-range tool will satisfy them.
If all you are showing is a highpriced tool, you may be forcing
your customer to go to Home

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