What separates Wayfair from your business

OK, let’s get the obvious out of the way…

-Wayfair is Internet-based, while you’re brick and mortar

-Wayfair’s business model is based on the familiar ecommerce model– an extensive website where the visitor can order products right from the website

-Obviously Wayfair has a huge advertising budget

Now let’s talk about the two points of difference that aren’t so obvious…

The first is tabulating, quantifying and measuring. There’s no number that Wayfair doesn’t track. And in that essense Wayfair is more like an old-fashioned catalog company, with catalogers and mail order folks being the masters of number tracking.

And by tracking everything, it allows Wayfair to make decisions based on fact rather than emotion.

I can talk to 10 retailers and 9 out of the 10 NEVER track how many folks come through the door, how many phone calls are taken, what the closing percentage is, how a person heard of the business… and others.

The fact is most retailers do little or no tracking and measuring. And by not tracking and measuring, a retailer ends up making decisions by the seat of their pants– and we can do better.

The other area that Wayfair shines is follow-up. You buy something from Wayfair and you’re going to be reached out to on a very regular basis. Once a Wayfair customer, and Wayfair is going to do their best to keep you a Wayfair customer.

Now contrast that with the typical brick and mortar retailer who in many instances won’t even bother getting an email out of prospect or customer. And if they do, their follow up is haphazard and irregular. A retailer may send out an email once in a while… or it may be months between emails.

That won’t happen with Wayfair who maintains a very regimented schedule of email follow up which accomplishes two things (other than keeping them under Wayfair’s “thumb”)…

The first being that it causes the customer to think about Wayfair on a regular basis even if they aren’t in the market for another product.

The second being that all this follow up pushes customers to post positive reviews and talk about Wayfair on the social marketing networks like Facebook and Pinterest.

I’m always floored when I start working with a new client and look them up on Google and they have very few if any reviews… And these are businesses that are selling thousands of dollars’ worth of goods per week but if you Google them, it’s like they don’t have any customers at all.

Bottom line is that while you may not want a Wayfair type of business, but the fact is if brick and mortar retailers want to stop the bleeding, they need to “borrow” from the Wayfair playbook.

Making retailers rich… one at a time…

Mike W.