Doorcounts is now Trakwell.ai!

What’s changing?

We have a new name and a new visual identity. By integrating the alwaysAI computer vision platform, Trakwell is able to improve object detection, counting, and tracking to deliver accurate, immediate data about occupancy and team performance.​

Why is it changing?

As the market landscape rapidly evolves, it is crucial for us to remain at the forefront of innovation and adapt our brand to reflect our vision and goals accurately. With Trakwell.ai, we are embracing a new era of limitless possibilities and harnessing the power of AI to drive our company’s growth and success.

Can I take a look at the new platform?

If you are interested in taking a closer look at what the new Trakwell.ai platform can do, head over to trakwell.ai and take a look.

We’re really excited about this new chapter!

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How sales managers can use our Goaling System to motivate their teams and make more sales.

When you have stores that are prone to lower foot traffic than other stores due to their location or a variety of reasons, it’s difficult to directly compare their results to a store that has high traffic.

Motivating your teams regardless of their day-end results requires finding small wins or positive behaviors that lead to desired results.

Focus on leading metrics

As a sales manager at La-Z-Boy Portland, John focuses on leading metrics, not trailing metrics. By using combined productivity rates with the data from Doorcounts, John is able to measure the productivity of their salespeople regardless of the level of traffic their stores have.

What are combined productivity rates?
“So if you closed your conversions at 30%, I believe you should have a combined productivity rate of 70%. And what I mean by that is you should close or get a prospect on four out of ten people to get to a combined rate of 70%.”

By using the Goaling Report on Doorcounts, John can set the exact goals he wants his teams to reach when it comes to the leading metrics that lead to desired results: sales conversion, average ticket, and prospecting.
Without any calculating or work on his end, he can directly see who is hitting their goals and who needs a little extra motivation.

The effect on company culture

Positive behaviors leads to the desired results. While other companies have a culture where their highest traffic stores and low traffic stores have the same goal of day’s ends sales, it sets the lower traffic stores to fail.
At La-Z-Boy portland, goals are set based on productivity by focusing on leading metrics, not based on the number of sales.

By creating a company culture where salespeople are not afraid to be in the red, they are able to stay motivated and strive to do better in the future.

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The Doorcounts Dance

This week on Dos Marcos, the Mattress Man from Sweet Dreams Furniture and Mattress explains how energy attracts foot traffic.

Each day when his team walks into the store, they hit a Doorcounts dance.

Since Doorcounts takes photos automatically when you walk in, all it takes is some dance moves in front of the camera to energize the team.

As said best by Dos Marcos, If you are having fun, you’ve already won.

Transcript

Doorcounts, I mean is the ultimate Retail Sales Cloud solution. But I mean, it’s, it’s this magical way for you to capture what’s happening in your store and make meaning of it. And that’s the thing about it, you can get all this data, but you got to make meaning of it, and you got to hopefully use it for fun. So yeah, Doorcounts as snapping a photo of somebody assigning them to a salesperson on an artboard. It’s a contact management solution CRM, and all of that stuff. But you gotta you I think you need to use it like, Matt man uses it.

So Andrew, this lesser, he’s, you know, he’s got his own podcast on the fam. And what he decided to do is, is think about it like this energy attracts foot traffic.  

Every day when he walks in his store, Sweet dreams Furniture and Mattress,  he uses the Doorcounts camera because it’s automatic. And so striking a pose and we have all these up on one of our on the episode with him on fam.news.

 It’s just such a cool creative way to take something that’s like a process, a kind of a technology tool. Then turn it into fun. The more you’re having fun, you’ve already won.

And we think you can have fun with Doorcounts and the Doorcounts team and actually make more money. You can prove to yourself with a 90-day free trial that you’re going to make more money. So go to Doorcount.com. Get a 90-day free trial, and if you don’t want to use Doorcounts at the end of it. Jerry’s going to peel off 150 bucks hand it to you and say thank you. And if you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it so there’s no risk whatsoever. 

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Brad Parker CEO of La-Z-Boy Chain and Founder of Doorcounts

If you have never tuned into The Dos Marcos Mattress Podcast, you are missing out! These guys manage to make each and every show not only funny, but make it a source of valuable information for anyone in the retail industry! 

Naturally, when Dos Marcos asked one of our founders, Brad Parker to come on the show, he jumped at the chance

The Doorcounts team was super excited for this podcast to be released! Enjoy

Here’s what Dos Marcos wrote about the episode:

Brad Parker is the founding partner of Doorcounts and the CEO of a six-store chain of La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries located in the Portland, Oregon area.

In the episode, Dos Marcos trace the origins of the first door counter back to Peter, a Russian transplant who spoke no English and put together an innovative ticker to monitor how many people walked into Brad’s stores.

You’ll find out how Brad’s team became lean practitioners and implemented TWI Training (combining doing and teaching). Why does Brad have his team tie a Fire Underwriter’s Knot on the first day of TWI training? That conversation kicks in at the one-hour mark, so keep listening.

Also, discover how Brad’s group generated 5,000 ideas in one year with less than 100 employees, implemented all of them, and won the Shingo Prize for Research (it’s a big deal).

We cover surfing to work, sleeping in recliners, and our Wizard Academy connection.

One thing we didn’t get to is the all-new foot traffic report you can get direct to your inbox. If you’re curious to find out how your store traffic compares to nearly 700 other mattress and furniture stores in the USA and Canada then subscribe to the Retail Traffic Index by Doorcounts—a daily digest of the previous day’s average foot traffic.c

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Introducing the Daily Retail Traffic Index

It’s finally here!

The Daily Retail Traffic Index lets you compare your store traffic to your industry’s average daily foot traffic.

Now you can bask in the satisfaction of knowing you’re beating the industry average. Or maybe the Daily Retail Traffic Index will inspire you and give you something to strive for.

Either way, when you get the Daily Retail Traffic Index delivered to your inbox every morning, you will also receive the Doorcounts Monthly Benchmark Report. This replaces our quarterly report and is chalk full of even more key performance metrics, as well as many other insights, so you can maximize every sales opportunity.

There is no denying this has been a challenging year, and now’s the time to make improvements to your business.

No one knows what the future holds, but if you have a way to see what’s happening across your industry, then you can sleep a little better knowing how you measure up and what you can do to improv

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How Much Money Are You Leaving on the Table?

How much money are you leaving on the table? See for yourself.

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According to an informal survey we conducted during a recent seminar, 78% of the retailers surveyed did not know their sales conversion rate. 

It was Jonathan Raymond who first said, we can’t know what we don’t know. What he meant is we can’t know things we’ve yet to discover. 

Those fine folks in our survey have yet to discover what they don’t know about their rate of sales conversion.

During the shutdown, we had a lot of time to talk to our customers and learn that not everyone knows the full power of Doorcounts. Like…

Not everyone knows Doorcounts 2.0 is one of the industries most powerful CRMs that connects to every area of your business.

Not everyone knows Doorcounts 2.0 can connect to their POS system though an API

Not everyone knows Doorcounts 2.0 tracks over 70 metrics, real time, by the minute, on smart phone from anywhere.  

This is understandable because we’ve added over 20 new features in the past 12 month is alone. And who has time to keep up with all that improvement, anyway?

This is why we can promise a 10x ROI for every 1% increase you make to your sales conversion. 

How much do you know about your sales conversion? Or maybe a better question is…

Talk to one of our experts to see how Doorcounts can help you convert more sales faster.

⏰

In just 30 minutes, you will walk away with actionable ideas to increase your sales conversion and make more money.

🎣

So what’s the catch? There 
isn’t one.

We’re here to help to you think about your sales conversion in a different way and share the insights we’ve gained over the past eight years. If we can help you close more business then we all win.

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[Webinar Replay] “That’s My Customer!” – Building Personal Trade

Did you catch our last webinar with the Friedman Group? 
 
Over the last 14 weeks we have partnered with Karen Barry of The Friedman Group, to do some deep dives into 7 different hot topics in Retail Sales.

This last webinar of the series was entitled, “That’s My Customer!” – Building Personal Trade

What is Personal Trade, and why is it so important?

Here are some of the highlights Karen covered:

  • Customers who ask for a specific sales associate on any visit or telephone call
  • May be repeat customers or referrals
  • Personal trade clients are much more likely to buy.. And when they do their average sale is higher than the store’s average sale.
  • It’s always easier to sell to a repeat customer

How do you earn the right to follow up with clients?

Throughout the selling process look for opportunities to gather some personal information such as:

  • Family details
  • Work
  • Personal tastes for future recommendations
  • Lifestyle and hobbies
  • Language and culture

Be practical about this. Don’t make it into an interrogation

Record details in a system like Doorcounts. In the Doorcounts CRM, there is a searchable database. (Check out this video if you want to have a peek at it)

For example, your store is having a sale on leather loveseats. You know you have spoken to several people in the last month about their need for ‘a new loveseat’ . Now you can search and filter everyone that has expressed an interest and use that as an opportunity to build personal trade with them!

Karen said it best when she said:

“You earn the right to follow up later, by the work we do while they are inside the store.” 

What are some strategies for building long term client relationships?

Diligent follow-up sets you apart from the competition, creates trust and generates sales.

Some follow up ideas:

  • Thank you notes
    Send a personal, handwritten thank you note.This creates a powerful and positive impression on your customers.
    Don’t make it about a discount or coupon.

  • Telephone
    • Getting permission to talk.
    • Identify yourself and confirm that they have time to talk.
    • Use your words to enhance communication. Deliver a headline. Make it brief.
    • Gaining a commitment or having an action plan

  • Email
    • Use a non-robotic subject line.
    • Keep it short and simple. Include photos and/or links.
    • Close with your plan for follow-up.

  • Social media 

    • Keep tone positive and lighthearted when tagging customers.
    • Remember the effect of social media is meant to be cumulative.
    • Report and react at every opportunity, and remember others are reading.
    • Know when to switch to private messaging.
    • Don’t flood their feed, but stay top of mind.

  • Text messaging
    • The customer belongs to the store, not the salesperson.
    • Less formal does not mean unprofessional.
    • Don’t overdo it.
    • If possible, use a store-owned device.

When it comes to developing your personal trade business, the most important factor isn’t technique or even strategy. It is simply your understanding of the value of personal trade and your commitment to fully realizing that value.

If you would like to schedule a consultation with the Friedman Group to see how they can help you turn your retail staff into sales generating rock stars: click here.

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Looking Forward to a Q3 Comeback

Did you know that some of the most successful companies were born in times of severe economic downturn? 

Here are some that you may be familiar with:

  • Thomas Edison launched General Electric right as the world was heading into The Panic of 1893
  • The Disney Brothers started the first Disney company in the 1920’s  just as the Great Depression came upon them
  • Trader Joe’s launched in the Recession of 1958
  • Microsoft started at the onslaught of the 1973 oil crisis and stock market crash
  • Google and Salesforce launched right before the dotcom bubble burst in the early 2000’s
  • Uber got going in 2009 right after the 2008 stock market crash
  • Netflix started in 1997 at the start of a worldwide financial crisis 

During our last Friedman/Doorcounts webinar, Grabbing Sales by the Roots, we polled our audience. We asked a couple of questions about how things are going for them, in this new “normal”. [By the way, if you haven’t had a chance yet, check out the webinar Doorcounts hosted with Friedman, entitled “Opening in the NEW NORMAL-equipping your staff to handle the change.” ]

 

  1. What percentage of “Normal” are you currently operating at? 

Answer 1: 40-60%: 30.4% said they were operating at 40-60%

Answer 2: 60-80%: 56.5% said they were operating at 60-80%

Answer 3: 80-100%: 13.0% said they were operating at 80-100%

Looks like 56.5% of our retailers that were on that webinar are back up and running at 60-80% of their normal capacity. 

  1. What concerns you most about reopening?

Answer 1: Customer openness to the New Normal 39.1%

Answer 2: Employee openness to the New Normal 39.1%

Answer 3: Making the right decisions about how/when to open 4.3%

Answer 4: Something else 17.4%

Employee and customer openness look like they are top of mind, receiving 39.1% each of webinar attendee votes.

  1. Do you know what your current conversion rate is?

Answer 1: Yes 21.7% 

Answer 2: No 78.3% 

78.3% do not know what their current conversion rate is. One of the things we say at Doorcounts is, “What gets measured gets improved.” Just knowing what your conversion rate is will improve performance among your employees. PSST!!… Check out this video on our new website where we address this very subject!

  1. If you do track conversion rate, do you track individual along with store conversion rate? 

Answer 1: Yes 56.5% 

Answer 2: No 43.5% 

This is good news. If attendees did track conversion, they tracked individual sales reps’ conversion as well! It’s important for employees to know how they rank among their peers, as well as overall.

We would love to hear what you’re doing to make Q3 a successful comeback. What are you struggling with? Is there anything Doorcounts or The Friedman Group to help you transition back?

 

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