The old saying, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” is more than folklore. One medium size, unpeeled apple provides over 3 grams of fiber, more than 10% of the daily fiber intake recommended by experts.

The apple’s two types of fiber lower cholesterol levels, and thus reduce your risk of heart attack, and stroke.

Adding just one large apple to your daily diet has been shown to decrease cholesterol 8-11%, and eating 2 large apples a day has lowered cholesterol levels by up to 16%!

A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine confirms that eating high fiber foods, such as apples, helps prevent heart disease. Almost 10,000 American adults participated in this study and were followed for 19 years.

Lowering cholesterol levels isn’t the only benefit of eating apples. The pectin they contain removes toxins like the heavy metals lead and mercury, from your body.

Another antioxidant, vitamin C, also found in apples, will boost your body’s immune defenses, providing yet another way that apples protect against cancer.

For me, eating apples sounds better than going to the doctor. You?

How Important is Selling in Retail?
How well do you know your job? Unfortunately the answer for many in the retail sector is, “Not well enough.” The sad thing is that they don’t know it. Many people believe that customers know what they want, will ask questions if they have them, and seek help if they need it. All of these assumptions are wrong. Selling in a retail store is a trade that must be learned.

Money Down The Drain
You cannot count the money that runs out of the faucet and down the drain when customers fail to get the information they need to make intelligent buying decisions. It is not enough to ask, “May I help you?” Your job is helping customers and you do not need to ask for permission to do your job.

If you work in a retail store and find yourself struggling, get yourself a copy of RETAIL SELLING MADE  EASY today.

“Sukoshi”
This is a “re-birth” of this information from the early days of this Blog. We are still seeing large numbers of Japanese visitors in the United States, and I continuue to see American salespeople feeling handicapped because they cannot speak Japanese. It’s a fact that you don’t need to speak Japanese to sell to the Japanese!

English Taught in Japan
Japanese students today must take 6 years of English to graduate from High School.
Anyone under 40 (approx.) has had major exposure to English.
The older the person, the less practiced the English is.
Many Japanese hide their English abilities for 2 big reasons:

1. They are not comfortable with their pronunciation, and do not want to embarrass themselves.

2. They can understand you, but you can’t understand them. Nice buying edge.

Your goal with this program is to get your Japanese customers to admit to their understanding of English, at least a little bit, (sukoshi). You can achieve this by demonstrating your interest in their language, and your willingness to mispronounce it.

To help you, I offer what I call Hauole Phonetics, in parenthesis.

It all starts with the GREETING…The first impression in Japan, for customers is a greeting at the door with “IRRASSHAIMASE”, (ear-ah-shy-maw-say), meaning, “Welcome to our store”. This is good to know, however (unless you are Japanese), your initial greeting should be in English. You do not want to sound patronizing.

In Hawaii say, “Aloha”, they will have fun returning the greeting, and you have already begun to establish communication.

You can now (if you want to) add to “Aloha” with a follow up comment, in Japanese, as clumsy as you might say it.

OPTIONAL GREETING ADDITIONS:

Welcome IRRASSHAIMASE (pronounced> ear-ah-shy-mah-say)
Good Morning OHA YO GOZAIMASU (pronounced> ohio-go-zye-moss)
Good Afternoon KONNICHIWA (pronounced> cone-eech-chi-wah)
Good Evening KONBANWA (pronounced> cone-bon-wah)

Your first 2 Japanese phrases to learn are:

1.) “Do you understand English?” - EIGO GA WAKARIMASU KA? (pronounced> Egg-oh-gah-wa-car-eee- moss-ka)
Nine times out of ten your customer will reply, “Sukoshi” (a little bit). Then you say:

2.) “I don’t understand Japanese.” - NIHONGO GA WAKARIMASEN (pronounced> knee-hone-go-gah-wah- car-eee-moss-sen )
More times than not, your customer will laugh, and communication has begun.

Using these two phrases will begin communication and establish which language will be used. Copy them; carry them with you and practice them until you have it down. Any other Japanese phrases you can learn will serve to add to this experience and your communication, but none are necessary beyond this point with most customers.

In future posts I will add more information on selling to the Japenese.

People Love It
Of course there are exceptions, and some e-mail is better received than others, but generally speaking, “You have mail” are welcome words when opening your e-mail program.

Yesterday’s Inbox
The same was true in times past when all mail came to your physical mail box. The more there was, the better you liked it.

“Thank You.”
When was the last time that you went shopping, came home and opened up your e-mail to find a simple “Thank you” e-mail from one of the stores where you shopped? Such e-mail would likely be well received, especially if it came from someone you did NOT buy from, and does NOT have a “sales pitch” as a part of it. A link to your web site is enough. Everyone likes being appreciated.

CRM’s
I talk with many companies that have Customer Relationship Management systems (CRM) in place to gather e-mail addresses and other customer information, but in too many cases it stops there. Or, they go into a data base somewhere with good intent to send e-mail about upcoming sales, promotions or new merchandise. In some cases even that doesn’t happen.

Pick One!
A good way to get e-mail addresses is to have a weekly or monthly drawing of some sort with winners posted on your web site. Be sure that you do not ask for too much information on the drawing ticket; name and e-mail address is all you need. I dropped my business card in a fishbowl at a cafe recently and got a return e-mail telling me who the winner was (not me), but offering me a consolation prize of a free bowl of soup with my next purchase.

Get it Together!
The names in your data base are pure gold. Get creative; e-mail is free, and properly used can be the most effective and inexpensive marketing tool of all.

Keep Score
Sometime in the 80’s I read Chuck Cooradt’s book The Game of Work and it clarified what I have been feeling my whole life.
Work can be fun, and when you think of it as a fun game everything changes.
What do games all have in common? Right; some form of scorekeeping. Coonradt say’s, “We watch the score while the game’s in progress so we can change behavior to win BEFORE the time runs out.”
When I was first exposed to retail I was shocked at how many businesses tallied up the totals at the end of the month, or even worse 20 days into the following month in order to calculate percentage rent.
Keep score day by day, or even better hour by hour. You will have more fun and make more money as well.

It Pays Off
To have greater results in life, have a positive attitude. Your attitude will determine the impact of your experiences. There is a chapter in Success Made Easy entitled STUFF HAPPENS! You cannot control the “stuff” but you can determine the attitude you approach the “stuff” with. A positive attitude creates more positive thoughts and results. Choose to have a positive attitude and you will live extraordinarily - Every Day!

Half Full!
Always see the glass half full. It works for me and it will work for you. You choose your attitude and your attitude shapes your surroundings.

Why the Rooster?
Many people do not know that the sound the rooster makes in the morning (cock-a-doodle-doo) is called his “Report”. The rooster “reports” early; sometimes too early.

Our Morning Report also arrives early. We say, “Send us your numbers at closing time, and you will have your Morning Report BEFORE the rooster crows in the morning.”

The Lion King musical had a great Morning Report tune in the play. You can see and hear it HERE:

Businesses are famous for reporting monthly numbers after it’s too late to do anything about them.
When you get the Morning Report you will be able to see trends in plenty of time to impact them, well before the month ends. CLICK HERE to see examples of how it works.