Spinners get a bum rap. I like them. They offer the ability to change your pitch easily. They also allow you to disrupt traffic flow and this can help drive sales.

I  two spinners together achieve more than they might achieve when alone.

In placing spinners we do so with thought. In terms of adjacencies, we ask ourselves: who is the customer. You get less value placing two spinners which appeal to different customers next to each other than if you place two spinners which appeal to the same customer next to each other.

Moving spinners is like a dance. You need to choose your partner wisely and move them around the floor gracefully, using all the space and ensuring you both have a good time while you are at it.

The only place we promote discount vouchers is on the customer display as a reinforcement and reminder. This is an ideal place to reinforce the pitch as it encourages those with a voucher to get it out to use with their purchase and to those without one to look forward to receiving one. It’s an unobtrusive pitch at the right time in the transaction cycle.

Customer displays work well in reinforce messages. My advice is to not overdo it – have two or three messages in rotation. Any more and it becomes a PowerPoint presentation and they can be boring. Repetition is key for the brief moment you have a customer within range to see the customer display.

I can’t say for sure that the customer display is a factor in success with discount vouchers but I am happy with our use of this customer touch-point in reinforcing the voucher message. It shows an integration of behavior and promotion – something sometimes missed in small business retail.

A gift supplier asked me yesterday why their sales to newsagents were falling yet gift sales in newsagencies were increasing. I explained the simple answer – newsagents want a point of difference as suppliers not offering this may get business early on but lose it as newsagents want to enhance their offer.

In a country town a couple of months ago I met with a newsagent who got into gifts a while back, they arranged for a supplier rep to call on them – it was their first visit to the town. Two years later the supplier rep had three accounts in the town and was disappointed when the newsagent said they would not order from them again.

While I understand suppliers want volume, there are other alternatives. As many newsagents themselves are showing, they can make more money out of fewer, more valuable, customers than out of higher volume lower value customers.

To gift wholesalers concerned about declining sales to newsagents I say look at how you sell. If you are opening accounts in locations competitive with the newsagent then either rely on those locations or place product with the newsagent who supports their desire for a point of difference.

Another factor is in the buying by the wholesalers themselves. It is frustrating to see the same range from three different wholesalers. Differentiation is vital today.

The longer a newsagent is in the gift space the more discerning their buying becomes. Wholesalers need to understand this.