Wi11: Martin Lindstrom on Curating the Customer Experience Using Indie Booksellers’ Assets

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Kicking off the first full day of educational programming at Winter Institute 11, author and brand-building expert Martin Lindstrom delivered a breakfast keynote on Sunday, January 24, based on his upcoming book, Small Data: The Tiny Clues That Uncover Huge Trends (St. Martin’s Press, February 2016).


Martin Lindstrom delivers the opening keynote address at Wi11.

Throughout his talk, Lindstrom shared examples of how businesses, from big brands to small retailers, can be transformed by looking at small data with a critical eye to uncover seemingly unrelated clues that together provide insight into an unmet customer need.

Lindstrom urged booksellers to look at their own stores and customer behaviors with a critical eye to generate more sales and ensure they are perceived as a place of discovery as well as a “third place” for all members of the community. “I love you guys because you are the foundation of a society. People have just forgotten that for a moment or two,” he said.

Using video clips featuring booksellers from ABA member stores, Lindstrom highlighted various assets that booksellers can use to their advantage — in particular, strengths that online retailers can’t compete with.

As booksellers think about their stores, they need to remember the keyword “transition,” Lindstrom stressed. When people wake up in the morning, the first thing they touch is their smartphone; they sit with it at breakfast, and they carry it throughout their work or school day. “There’s no transition in our lives anymore…. You have an opportunity here.”

Lindstrom suggested that booksellers can help customers transition by making people feel like they are entering another universe when they come to an independent bookstore. Offer them a transition from their busy lives to a place that’s accessible and makes them feel empowered, he said. “That is what you’re selling. If you try to compete with those dot-com people on their terms, you’ll fail, because that’s not your strength.”

As traditional neighborhood communities disappear, people are seeking physical human interaction and that is a role bookstores can fill as community gathering places, Lindstrom said. “The reason why we are sitting here face to face … is because we like the interaction…. We want a physical interaction, and that is your asset.”

Quail Ridge Books, which recently changed its tagline to “Raleigh’s community bookstore,” has become just that, said owner Sarah Goddin via video clip. “People shop here because of the events, the town halls, the meetings, the story times that we have here because they see it as a gathering place. Because this is such a digital time, people are more appreciative of having a place where they can physically connect to other people.”

Outside of the bookstore, booksellers need to leverage social media to keep customers engaged, said Lindstrom. “This is our world. We can hate it. We can embrace it. Or perhaps we can turn it around to our advantage.”

Instant gratification is another basic customer need that independent booksellers can easily fill, one that online retailers cannot. “The instant gratification generation is your biggest opportunity,” said Lindstrom.


Blue Willow’s Valerie Koehler in a video clip at the opening plenary.

In another video, Jamie Fiocco, owner of Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, noted how often shoppers come into the store on Saturdays to pick up last-minute gifts for children’s birthday parties and ask to have those gifts wrapped. “We’re faster than any online solution when it comes to Saturday morning on your way to the party,” she said.

Adjacencies are another powerful tool that can help boost sales, Lindstrom said. A video of Valerie Koehler of Houston’s Blue Willow Bookshop showed how the store shelves books with plush toys to capture add-on sales, and Fiocco explained how Flyleaf benefits from a neighboring restaurant whose customers often come in and browse as they wait for a table.

Tapping into all five senses can also inspire customers to keep coming to independent bookstores, Lindstrom said. “The reality is we are not present anymore. We live in a different world somehow,” and that world is in our smartphones, computers, and other technologies, he said. “We don’t touch people anymore. The first thing we touch in the morning is our iPhone…. Your biggest asset is touch.”

The emotional experience of shopping at an independent bookstore will keep customers coming back, he added. As an example, Lindstrom noted that Alfred Hitchcock wrote his films using two scripts: a blue script serving as an outline for a film, and a green script mapping out, down to the second, how viewers would feel while watching the movie. Booksellers also need to have two scripts, he said, and the green script should be a plan to evoke emotions among customers browsing in their stores.

To really understand their customers, booksellers should get out of the bookstore and visit them at home, looking at their bookshelves, talking about their relationships to books, and learning about how and why they shop online. “It costs nothing” to have that conversation, said Lindstrom. “This is the advice I give to the big players of the world.”

Lindstrom summed up his presentation by offering booksellers the following takeaways for transforming their stores:

  • You are the masters of transition
  • You are the community
  • Turn your weaknesses into your strengths
  • Your power tool is adjacencies
  • Your store is all about the green script
  • Your point of differentiation is the senses
  • Use the Small Data to understand your future opportunities

In connection with his appearance at Wi11, before the holidays Lindstrom issued the Book Store Challenge, which gave ABA members the chance to win a consultation with him. The two winners, announced by Lindstrom at his Wi11 session, are Page 158 Books in Wake Forest, North Carolina, which won the grand prize of an in-store visit with him, and City Stacks Books & Coffee in Denver, which will receive a Skype consultation.

A second challenge issued by Lindstrom last week encouraged booksellers to share the excitement of being at Wi11 by posting photos of themselves enjoying the event on Twitter and Instagram, using the hashtags #LindstromatABA and #Wi11 in the description. Athens, Georgia’s Avid Bookshop, having garnered nearly 400 likes for social media posts using the hashtag, won a consultation from Lindstrom via Skype.