A common frustration among newsagents is the customers who ask you to check their instant lottery tickets when they know they have not won. Newsagents are frustrated because the checking takes time and often customers don’t buy anything. The icing on the cake comes when you say: “sorry, it didn’t win anything†and they responds with “I know but I wanted to be sureâ€.
Rather than wallow in frustration we are experimenting with trying to turn the prize check request into an opportunity. We give them one of our Magazine Club Cards with the pitch of: sorry, but you’re a winner if you buy your magazines from us! Then we hand them the Magazine Card which pitches our loyalty discount. Okay it’s corny. The idea is to embrace the opportunity and make it positive for us. The worst response we could get is a grunt and the best is that they wander into our magazine area and make a purchase.
Newsagents are blessed every day with fantastic traffic for newspapers, magazines and lotteries and we have to work hard to make every pair of feet worth as much to our businesses as possible.
Trying to turn ‘dead business’ – the lottery ticket check – into a browse and purchase elsewhere in the business is what retail is about.
This is how strong businesses are grown. Transaction by transaction, customer by customer.