For the term of one 3 year lease I co-owned a convenience store. It was an interesting project for me and I got to meet a lot of people. It was something I was doing to supplement my income during college but it wasn't how I envisioned my life to unfold so I eventually moved on to other things.
I did have a small epiphany during my tenure with the store.
We have a local businessman that owns a chain of convenience stores and he has done quite well. My business partner managed to wrangle him into coming by our store to take a look and maybe offer us suggestions on how to improve our bottom line.
He went through our store foot by foot and did offer us a lot of good advice on how to improve sales. There was one particular phrase that he used over and over. During the course of the hour that he was with us he must have repeated it at least twenty times. Here is the phrase: "Sell the sizzle and not the steak"
What he meant by this is that we should push the meaningless and empty high sugar and high eye candy items (these items have a high profit margin) and we should not push the items that are of low sizzle factor.
Let me give you some examples; and these are tricks that convenience stores use to get more money from you.
1. Put your milk and bread all the way in the back of the store. People need these items on a daily basis but there is low profit in them. When people walk all the way to the back of the store then to the counter in front they have to walk by a lot of your sizzle items twice. This means they may crack open their purses and buy something they didn't originally come in for.
2. Fill your countertop with lots of little sweet things and interesting looking little trinkets. While people are waiting in line they will add these items to their purchase.
3. In the front of your cashiers counter, down low near the floor, put lots of candy. Children will see these items and pester parents to buy them.
4. When you put a new case of an item out, lets say a box of 48 candy bars, take one candy bar out of the box. Don't leave a perfectly full box on the shelf. People are hesitant to buy from a full box. they will more quickly buy from a case that someone else has bought from. This is a follow the leader type of psychology. (If someone else bought one then they must be good. If the case is perfectly full, nobody has bought any and maybe there is something wrong with them or they are not good.
Okay, that is enough of the examples. My point here is not to teach you convenience store tactics. My point is to show you that there are very specific tactics that do work. And these tactics are all about selling the sizzle and not the steak.
This psychology never held well with me. It is hard to describe but it feels like we have built an ocean that is one inch deep yet hundreds of miles wide. Theres no real substance.
Is this what our culture is about? A never ending search for sizzle? Is this what you need to do to be successful in our culture?
Note: Does selling the sizzle work? Of course it does but here is a bit of proof:
My third year gross income for the convenience store was 160% of my first year revenue.
