Pricing Labels and What They Say to Customers

When you get new product into your store or when your older products go on sale, you need to get the right pricing labels on them so your customer can see how much it is without having to go through the hassle of asking to find out. Everything should be conveniently displayed for them. But depending on the pricing labels you use, the actual color and design can convey different things to the buyer.

Your typical white sticker pricing gun labels are easy to apply to any object with a hard surface. They are simple and direct, they say how much the item is, no more and no less. But they also let the customer know that this is the full retail price and it is possible that the price could drop. They'll debate, much like you do yourself when you shop, whether they want to buy it now or wait and see if it goes on sale.

Red sticker pricing gun labels are the ones that scream clearance. We automatically associate the color with letting us know that this price is probably the lowest the item is going to go in terms of price. It also gives the customer a sense of urgency, that they should act now and buy before there are no more left in stock. This is really important if you have product you need to sell through as soon as possible so you can put out new items in their place.

Besides just your labels on the actual products, you also need to pay attention to the pricing labels you set up on shelves. It's very important that any labels on the sides of shelves or signs match up with the products placed there. It can be very confusing when a customer sees a price and just assumes the product placed above it is the right one, only to find that it was misplaced. A disorganized store is going to lead to customer complaints when they find out that $9.99 item is actually $19.99.

You also need to make sales clear from a distance. You should attract people to that area with a larger, colorful sign announcing sale prices, not force them to search items to see what is discounted. Everyone is looking for a good deal these days so make it easy for them to find as soon as they walk in the front doors.

With the right pricing label set up, you'll make the shopping experience in your store easy and quick, which is what everyone is looking for if they want shopping to be enjoyable. Provide that for your customers and you'll be set.

Read more »

The Electronics of a Modern Office: High Speed Scanners to Smartphones

The modern office looks a lot different from its predecessors of about fifty years ago. The typewriter has evolved into a laptop, the rotary-dial phone into the softphone and the office chair has become much more ergonomic. What else?

High speed scanners are a great way to upload images and documents onto your computer. Similarly, copy machines still are the best way to physically reproduce an image. Printers have become faster, smaller and more accessible than ever. All your important garbage you probably want to shred. Office shredders are the way to protect yourself from identity thieves and other con artists. Even clocking in has changed - no more punch cards; instead it's all done online, or even cooler, with hand scans.

Softphones and smartphones are the primary ways we communicate with our voices. But they also allow us to send quick messages without having to speak directly to anyone. Getting voicemail via email and being able to access your business emails in your pocket on the go means that business is streamlined to be more effective and less back and forth. International conferences can be held via VoIP in order to save time and money. And there are lots of special features that come with these technologies, such as three-way calling, area code switches and music while waiting.

Laptops have replaced desktops as the way we compute, largely due to their mobility. We can take them on the go, and do all of our work with a battery life that stretches for often more than three hours, and that's while running multiple programs. With the preponderance of email and instant messaging, laptops are the main way we share information with each other. However, tablets are emerging along with smartphones as alternative computing tools. Even more geared to the traveling businessman, these little computers work as e-books, email retrievers and media players. Lightweight and fast, they act as a medium between smartphones and laptops. And you can expect them to get even smaller and more powerful in the near future.

Cameras too, these days, are practical pieces of office equipment. They all record video in hi-def and make it easy to put videos and pictures online to update your business' social profiles, which are also relatively important these days.

All of these changes in the modern office don't necessarily mean that business is getting easier. In fact, it may be more complicated now than ever before, thanks to the myriad social networks, burgeoning technologies and constantly updated emails and messages. But the sooner you learn how to use these amenities, the better a business you will run.
http://rosyidbusiness.blogspot.com/

Read more »

Frame Control - The Power of Context

Great influencers have long recognised the power of setting the context of any conversation. For example, pick-up artists discuss "frame control" and assert that "In an interaction between two people, whoever has the stronger frame/reality wins".

Of course, I don't accept their win-lose frame! Influential interactions can be, and in my opinion should be, win-win, especially in the context of sexual relationships.

But I do agree that setting the context of any interaction is very important, and that once the frame is set, it can be very difficult for either party to escape from it.

A colleague said recently: "The first thing anyone wants to know when they visit a website is 'what can I buy here?'" But that's only true if the frame is "website = commercial resource".

If, on the other hand, the frame is "website = research resource" then the instant question is more like "what can I discover here?" If the frame is "website = social resource" then the question is "who can I meet here?"

One of the most important ways people set frames is by using metaphors. I might want you to think of my website as like a shop, or as like a library, or as like a cafe. And so great web designers use language, graphics, images etc to deliberately bring the relevant metaphor to life, so that visitors automatically and immediately grasp the frame of the interaction. (I'll write more about this in a future post.)

But it's equally important to note that we can't not set frames. In Clean Language we aim to minimise the use of frame-setting assumptions and presuppositions in our questions - but the conversation still takes place within a frame, a context. The original context of Clean Language was always a psychotherapy session, or a training workshop for therapists. Later it was used in the context of coaching sessions. People arrive to take part in these conversations with a fairly solid frame already in place.

I contend that Clean Language can be very valuable within other contexts, such as sales. And in these contexts, the Intelligent Influencer pays attention to setting an appropriate frame for an interaction. Marketing materials are awash with metaphors, assumptions and presuppositions, whether we are aware of them or not: I think that being aware of them opens the door to using them more purposefully and more effectively.

After all, we can't not set contexts, and we can't not respond to them.

Iain McGilchrist in The Master And His Emissary puts it well: "The nature of the attention one brings to bear on anything alters what one finds; what we aim to understand changes its nature with the context in which it lies... we cannot see something without a context, even if the context appears to be that of 'no context', a thing ripped from its moorings in the lived world. That is just a special, highly value-laden kind of context in itself, and it certainly alters what we find, too."

Author, trainer and consultant Judy Rees is an expert in the questioning and listening technique Clean Language, and the co-author of the category bestseller Clean Language: Revealing Metaphors and Opening Minds.

A former journalist and media executive, she has been working with Clean Language since 2005, and has developed a number of practical applications for these powerful consulting skills - reducing misunderstandings, improving rapport and obtaining deep insights into what customers and others really want, so boosting sales.

Read more »