Chapter 15
15
As the door slammed shut, Dennis turned to me.
‘Before you say anything?—’
‘How do you know I was going to say anything?’
‘Well, your face was like thunder earlier and the fact that you’ve gone from your hands on your hips to the crossed arms and puckered mouth with slightly less thunderous glares, I thought it was quite a good indication really.’ He looked over at Mum. ‘It’s a good job Phil softened the way for me a little, don’t you think, Wendy?’
‘I’m off,’ she said in response. ‘You can leave me out of…’ she turned her index finger around in a circle in the air ‘…whatever is going on here.’
Mum scooted off after giving me a very quick kiss on the cheek and Dennis a shy little wave.
‘So, would you please just hear me out?’ he said. ‘Shall we have a drink and a sit down?’
‘I suppose you want me to make that too, don’t you?’
‘I’m happy to make it, but I don’t want you to feel like I’m getting in the way.’
His eyebrows raised at the extremely loud huff that escaped me but he walked towards the coffee machine anyway and poured us two mugs full of coffee, putting just the right amount of milk in mine. As I sipped the drink, I realised it was exactly how I liked it.
I narrowed my eyes at him.
‘Nothing to be suspicious about. I noticed how you had it yesterday. Now, I hadn’t obviously had a chance to mention anything before Phil came in, but it was the perfect opportunity to show just how much you can upsell things.’
‘Upsell?’
‘Well, firstly, and I hope you don’t mind me mentioning it, but I’m going to because I am here to help and it wouldn’t be right for me to not say anything. When you told Phil that you hadn’t got the book he wanted, he would have left, without buying anything.’
‘Yes, because we hadn’t got what he wanted.’
‘But he’d have gone somewhere else to buy it if we hadn’t shown him the other books and offered to order it for him. You don’t really want customers to leave without buying anything, so you have to upsell. Upselling is kind of telling the customer what they want. Or highlighting it to them, should I say? Offering them something they didn’t even know they wanted. Like the other classics, and then the gift wrapping. And that’s something you could be offering anyone, not just at Christmas. You could just keep some nice paper under the counter and learn how to make pretty bows and charge them an extra fifty pence or a pound to have their purchases wrapped. Who, in this day and age, can be arsed to wrap presents? Who has the time?’
‘I love wrapping presents. It’s one of my favourite parts of Christmas.’
Dennis raised a brow.
‘Well, there you go. Wrapping doesn’t just have to be for Christmas. Who wouldn’t want to receive a book that’s been beautifully wrapped up in gorgeous tissue paper? That’s why the brand Jo Malone does so well. The way they gift wrap their products is second to none. Tissue paper, a spray of their fragrance and then in a lovely gift bag. It makes the buyer feel valued and they always leave the shops with a smile, swinging their gift bag.’
I tilted my head to one side. It would be nice to get a present wrapped up beautifully like that, I had to admit. Even if it was something I was buying for myself. Dennis really did seem to know his stuff and these could be little ways we could help others, and help my business at the same time.
There were still questions I had though.
‘You don’t think it’s being too pushy? That’s what I always worry about.’
‘I honestly think these days we have so many choices thrown at us on a daily basis, we don’t know whether we’re coming or going. Anything that takes choices out of the equation, and makes the consumer journey as short as possible, I reckon is worth all the money in the world.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘So, when I’m talking about the consumer journey, I mean give them what they want but not only that, give them what they didn’t realise they wanted. For instance, cards. If you sell something you know is a present, and you’ll know that because you can ask whether they want it wrapping, you can offer them a card. You’re offering them something they already need and they can always say no, but if you have some here, then there’s no need for them to go elsewhere.’
My brain clicked into place. So pretty hand-painted cards might be a nice addition to the shop stock too. Something else I could be doing in my spare time, which was reducing quite dramatically. Another thought occurred to me.
‘Ah, so I suppose you mean like offering table service in a pub or restaurant?’
Dennis looked delighted with my comparison. He looked like a proud parent when something had finally clicked in a child’s brain.
‘Yes! Exactly that! So, you probably spend another tenner or so on drinks, which you wouldn’t have spent otherwise if someone offers to get them for you.’
‘But isn’t that wrong? Too pushy?’
‘Not when it’s something they need or want. You just have to make it easy for them. It’s like everything you do on your website or Facebook page. You need to make sure it’s easy for people to see the thing they want, click a link, and buy it. They don’t want to be searching around for other stuff and getting distracted on the way.’
‘Well, we don’t have to worry about those because I don’t have either.’
‘Yes, I know. And that’s something else we’ll be talking about soon too, don’t you worry! Social media and websites will probably take up a whole other day!’
This time it was my eyes that had gone wide. It sounded like I was in for another lecture. Life was a dream with Dennis. It was a blooming good job he was easy on the eye, even if I did wonder where that thought had sprung from.
‘Let’s go back to choices. Think about when you go to a large supermarket, you know you want milk, but there are so many varieties of milk that it’s like a brain overload. There’s fresh, skimmed, there’s semi-skimmed, full fat, sterilised, UHT, and now you also have soy milk, almond milk, oat milk. Your brain is just being fried constantly with loads of information and choices. That’s before you’ve even got out of the milk aisle and you’ve probably got a whole week’s worth of other food shopping to do too. I’m a firm believer that we have to do all we can to calm our brains. Does that make sense?’
Much as I didn’t want to give him the benefit of the doubt and let him think he’d won, he was right and I had no alternative but to admit it, even though the words stuck in my throat a little.
‘Yes, it does. I suppose.’
‘So, if you can limit the choices in as many situations as you can, people will normally say yes. He’s gone to the trouble of visiting your store, and you want him to buy from you, and come back, and not only that but tell all his friends about you too. So they come and visit and spend their money here instead of online or elsewhere. There’s so much competition out there these days. And the most appealing one, most of the time, is the one we take when we can just click a button or use an app on our phones. So, you have to make the in-person shopping experience an incredibly good one and be super helpful, therefore making it a no-brainer for them not to use you again. It’s not being pushy, it really isn’t.’
My brain was working overtime taking all of this in. Dennis talked a whole lot of sense and I did trust him to be giving me good advice. Sometimes, though, there’s a huge gap between giving advice and receiving that advice, taking it on board, but I knew I wanted this business to work. I needed it to work more than anything else in the world. And so Dennis was a little gift sent to me from heaven. Maybe via Aunty Theresa. Who knew? What I did know was that he charged a fortune for this type of advice and he wasn’t charging me a penny. I’d be very stupid not to look this gift horse in the mouth.
‘OK, smarty-pants. I presume you might have lots of other little gems like that up your sleeve and I’m ready to hear them. Only I have a favour to ask first.’
‘Knock yourself out.’
‘Next time you have a bright idea, can you maybe let me know first, so that I can get my head round it before announcing it to my customers, please?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
He clicked his heels together, saluted me and gave me a wink that turned my insides to jelly. I needed to change the subject before I got lost in those eyes again.
‘What are you up to tonight, Dennis? Anything exciting going on at Chez Vi’s?’ I asked as I started to cash up.
‘I’ve got some papers to read through and a great book I’m reading.’
At that, my eyes widened. Nothing excited me more than discussing what people were reading. The poor people who stood next to me at the huge supermarket in Truro when I was browsing the books section didn’t know what they were in for when they asked me if I had any recommendations. They’d be there for hours desperately trying to get away.
My guess for Dennis would be a gritty crime thriller. Couldn’t put my finger on why, but I could imagine him cosying up in an armchair, putting his glasses on and settling down to read one of those, maybe with a whisky over ice in a cut-glass tumbler by his side.
‘What are you reading?’ I asked, not quite believing that we’d never had this conversation before.
I was dying to know if I was right.
‘Oh, it’s an autobiography of a businessman who lives out in America. He turned things around from a struggling start-up to being a multimillion-dollar enterprise and selling out to a big conglomerate. Things like that fascinate me.’
‘Do you ever read fiction?’
‘Nah.’ He dismissed it immediately. ‘I find fiction a total waste of time and energy. If I’m not learning from it, I don’t want to be reading it.’
‘But there’s so much to learn from novels and stories. Lots of books have realistic characters and storylines and the way that they overcome obstacles in their life is totally inspiring and makes you want to up and change the world.’
‘Nance, don’t you think you try to change the world enough as it is? It’s a big world out there and you can’t change it all.’
‘No, but I remember reading a quote once that said, “helping one person might not change the world, but it might change the world of one person”, so for me every small change makes a difference. Imagine if everyone did the same.’
Dennis stared out of the window to the bay beyond.
‘Maybe you’re right, Nance, but I’d need a lot more convincing than it’s worth it.’
I loved nothing more than a challenge.
‘You’re on!’
He turned and winked at me again and my brain went to mush. I sighed. I knew that I was in trouble because I was finally ready to admit to myself that I liked him. Really liked him.