My drawing comparing our sales funnel for indie stores vs. traditional methods.
Austin mentions a sale using text at the start of his email.
At the bottom of his email, Austin shows a hand-drawn image promoting his 20% off summer sale. I find the image much more engaging than the text mention about the sale at the top of the email.
Austin’s hand-drawn sale image inspired me to draw this diagram comparing traditional registry services to ours. (The funky lighting and table design is thanks to Mud Cafe, an East Village staple.)
Happy 4th of July.
How a Drawing Helps Share the10x Improvement We Deliver to Indie Shops
At breakfast in the East Village this morning, Austin Kleon’s email image struck me. His hand-drawn summer sale sign by a pool was much more heartfelt than the text-based offer. His drawing shows how our minds may become immune to text offers but react and perk up to new and authentic imagery.
I wondered what I could draw for my business. I often communicate using text and sometimes rely on stock images. Since we help indie stores grow their registry businesses, I decided to draw the wedding registry sales funnel. If Austin could convey his summer sale with a pen, I should try it, too. I drew our sales funnel on a cafe napkin. When I got home, I redrew it on a white piece of paper.
The drawing helped me realize that we likely help our 1,400 indie shops sell 10x more vs. them using a traditional website. That’s no small feat: 10x is the goal most venture capitalists seek when investing. A 10x swing is a big change in any industry, and we’re happy to bring this sales surge to Main Street stores.
This drawing exercise helped me realize how traditional sites compare to our platform.
Traditional indie store wedding registry experience:
- Offers 500 products for sale and addition to a registry.
- Registrant (e.g. bride) picks 5 products to go on her wedding registry list.
- One sale is made off the registry.
Summary: Small website selection = > Small number of picks by wedding registrant => Small number of sales.
Shop Local indie store wedding registry experience:
- Offers 5,000 products for sale and addition to a registry.
- Registrant (e.g. bride) picks 50 products to go on her wedding registry list.
- Ten sales are made off the registry.
- The traditional path produced one order and Shop Local's produced 10 orders. Shop Local produces 10x more in sales than other registry services.
Summary: Large website selection = > Large number of picks by wedding registrant => Large number of sales.
Lesson: If one starts with a small sales funnel, one will receive few orders. The larger the website selection, the larger the sales funnel.
How We Increase the Sales Funnel Size
We are able to instantly enable our indie shops to show thousands of products online and to registrants via our Syncing service. One hundred and ten premium brands, including Le Creuset, Baccarat, and Kate Spade, use this service to share 70,000 products with their authorized indie stores.
This model is working: We help merchants offer 80,000 gift registries, and this year will be our 12th consecutive year of retailer membership growth.
Homework
- Draw your sales funnel on a napkin.
- Compare your process vs. your competitor's visually.
Tags:
Austin Kleon
mud cafe
sales funnel
syncing
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