July Mastermind Recap

What Do Sweatbands, Frozen Pies, and Product Sync Have in Common?

If you came to our July meetings, you’ll know the answer! We brainstormed the best impulse buys to help bump that average ticket price, how to leverage Product Sync in strategic ways, and more. Another fantastic meeting with folks joining from all over the U.S.!

If you’re on our email list, you also will find examples shared by HomCo of Customer Satisfaction Surveys and Team Member Feedback for Marketing Strategy. Getting the community – and your team – on board will wonders for your store. If you want to learn more about how to engage your community and how it can impact your bottom line, join next month’s meeting!

Key Takeaways

Marketing Mastermind Takeaways:

We excitedly welcomed store marketers from Arkansas, Montana, Colorado, and Florida. We ended up with more questions than answers, some discussions framed around brand identity crisis and how members are stumbling their way through the adoption of the larger brands vs. non-Ace related items. The big takeaway is that products like STIHL and Big Green Egg (and accessories) are helping SEO and, when used with Local Lift, are driving traffic and what some are hoping is sales. Another great point was the goal of ensuring that a customer’s experience is the exact same on the phone as it is online as it is in the aisle.

Members are excited to meet people who have been using Sync for a while and sell non-Ace related products like appliances, furniture, home goods, kitchen, etc, as soon as possible. With large brands in these categories often having exclusivity with these stores, once listed and indexed by Google, they should start to really drive sales. A meeting with corporate to discuss more possibilities is being planned, and we’re excited to reconvene next month for a Product Sync part II meeting.

STIHL and Big Green Egg do wonders for SEO.
Customer experience should be the same on the phone as in the aisle.
Product Sync meeting II is coming soon!

GM Mastermind Takeaways

We welcomed GMs from Florida, California, Montana, Utah, Arizona, and Missouri. What an amazing call. We started by throwing out some numbers, talking through the types of reports that each GM uses, how they communicate these reports to their team, reporting software options, the frequency of different tracking, and what KPIs are most useful, and then shared insights into the importance of certain KPI’s by comparing things like labor percentage, rev per square foot, rent, sales, how many buyers you have compared to revenue, avg ticket price, etc.

The fun snuck in as we started talking about favorite impulse section items that perform really well. Among the funniest recommendations shared were frozen pies, sweatbands (at first what sounded like sweat pants), and maps on wood. Can you imagine sweatpants hanging by your checkout? Lastly, we had a brainstorm about end cap choices, what works, what doesn’t, and new ideas to go from 1% of sales to 10% of sales. Among the stand-out ideas here was seeing successes with high dollar items like YETI hammocks, full battery-operated tool display cases, $1 clearance items bought in bulk, to items that are easy to stock, easy to turn, and always available.

Impulse buys are easy ways to boost sales.
YETI Hammocks do well as a high-value item.
Items that are easy to stock, easy to turn, and always available.

Calling all Owners and B2B Reps!

Overall, we’re scratching our heads a little bit with our lack of engagement with owners and are considering shifting our B2B meet-up to include Contractor/B2B sales. If you have any groups that you know of who may be interested in us helping them grow a mastermind community, please let us know! Handyman owners, maybe? Buyers? Thanks in advance for your feedback and continued support as we grow each of these groups!

Are You On Board?

Does the idea of a monthly meet-up with other hardware stores sound valuable to you? Are you interested in sharing resources, asking questions, and participating with your peers on-demand with an exclusive slack channel?

Join the Hardware Innovators!

Learn more about us here.