The other day I needed a few things for the house, so I headed to the design district in Dallas. In Dallas there is a part of town that has at least 20 furniture stores all within about 3 blocks. The first place we stopped at was closed at noon on a Sunday. Most people can’t shop for furniture during the week, so this first place killed 50% of their prime selling time.
The second place we went to was even worse. I fully planned on spending a couple grand cash that Sunday. With that in mind, Amy, the boys and I walk into the show room floor of this massive furniture store only to be greeted by no one.
That’s right, we were in there, kids running around crazy, for 10 minutes before we even saw another human. Then, once the human spotted us she said “I don’t work here but someone does and they will take care of you” WTF?
Add another 5 minutes on top of that and a salesman finally arrived. When he showed up, I was trying to pay cash for an item and instead of closing me and taking my money, he showed me a catalog with more choices for me to think over. If you follow my philosophy on sales, you know that once a decision is made – YOU F’N CLOSE!!
As Amy is looking through the catalog, asking a million questions, she stops and just says “do you guys have a website that I can just go on and pick stuff out from?” The response from the salesman made it damn near impossible for me not to laugh. He said “we’ve been in business for 27 years and we don’t need a website. Our entire business is built around ZERO advertising and 100% word of mouth and referrals.” The store was completely empty lol.
Within 7 minutes I had already had two serious WTF moments.
Allow me to break down what’s going on here. First off, the salesman was not a long term employee. He was in his late twenties at best. This means someone trained him to use that wordtrack about not needing the internet. From the looks of things, they didn’t think they needed to say hello to walk ins either.
Despite all this I made a purchase. Granted it was for $377 vs the $2,000 I planned on spending. It’s not that they saved me cash, I’ll end up spending the other $1627 elsewhere. It’s that they didn’t have the means or ability to sell me anything else. A showroom can only be so big and without a website, I’ll never truly know what’s possible to purchase from them.
I’m not going to spend all afternoon flipping through a catalog with 5 million pages. On the internets I can use a search bar and find what I need in minutes. Not only where they not advertising online via website, they were inconveniencing clients by not providing one. Not to mention losing sales.
Let’s talk about the cost of stupidity vs the price of ignorance. To start this talk off, let’s define stupidity and ignorance in order to distinguish between the two for reader clarification.
Stupidity is defined as a behavior that shows a lack of good sense or judgement.
Ignorance is defined as a lack of knowledge, understanding or education.
Basically stupid means you’ve been informed of what’s available and chose to make bad decisions. While ignorant means you had no idea of what’s available. In this instance the store owner and salesman know the internet exist, yet they stupidly decide not to invest the $500 it takes to set up a website.
In one instance, with one customer (me) in a 30 minute period, they lost $1627. I was the only person in the store at the time too. so not only did they get less from me than I planned on paying, they are not getting anything from the people who weren’t in their store.
I picture the store owner proudly telling his employees “we don’t need no stinkin’ internet.” Sometimes I look at businesses and wonder how in the hell are they even still around. It’s like watching Bar Rescue, and realizing the only reason half of businesses are open is due to their not being any equity in the business and the bank not wanting the hassle of foreclosing on the loans.
The other store, closed on Sunday chose to be stupid too. The majority of shoppers can’t shop Monday through Friday, so Sat and Sun are the main two days to get it done. For them to take 50% of the prime shopping time off, is truly stupid as shit.
Ignorance is one thing. While not acceptable, it is understandable if you don’t know. However, knowing and choosing not to do something is well, stupid. How many times do you think shoppers show up on Sunday only to be disappointed and spend elsewhere? How much business the owner missing out on by choosing not to have a website? The answer to both those questions is a shit ton.
Look, don’t let laziness or “thriftiness” keep you from having a flourishing business. More over, don’t bring your stinking thinking to spread with your employees. The poor salesman who was prideful about not having a website, will look like a fool if he was to say some shit like that on another job interview. The ripple effect with ignorance and stupidity is profound.
If you feel like you’re ignoring social media marketing, your stupidity is costing you significantly. If you’ll fill out the form below, be honest and specific to your needs, I’ll either email or call you with a solution that fits what you need. Nothing more nothing less. Simplicity. If you like the solution you can pay me for it, if not we can part ways as two folks who had a cool conversation or email exchange. How’s that for a CTA?
