Retail Business & Sale Tips

Those two words are dreaded by shoppers everywhere. Every company’s policy should be to give shoppers a “WOW” experience instead of excuses why things cannot be done. It seems most company policies are to stop the few that take advantage of a store /company. It would be better to make more favorable policies to deal with most customers and deal with the few exceptions. Once again, this is a chance for a store to make themselves stand out from their retail competition.

If every retail business owner /specialty owner treated all their customers like their best customer what would happen? The sales and profits will increase and in some cases significantly. I have done promotional sales with many different retail / specialty owners and see this as a major opportunity.

Most of the small stores have strict return policies, but for their best customers allow them to return it with no questions or even take home without paying for it. It is a proven fact that allowing refunds especially with a longer return policy of 30-90 days will actually increase sales. Yes, the returns will be higher, but the sales will be much higher. I always hear about the customers who are going to take advantage of the store. So what if a few people take advantage of your policy. Every store goal should be to maximize the profits of the store in the long term, but many policies are about today’s sales and profits.

I see the extra time spent with the best customer and special arrangements / delivery or whatever to make them happy. It may not be feasible to do this with every customer, but how much more would your store sales grow, if you did this to every third or fourth customer? Or if you did this to the occasional shopper in your store, would they become a more loyal customer? If you WOW your customer, many will never shop the competition if you have what they want. Just knowing and taking steps to do this can make a failing retail / specialty store to a profitable one.

Running a retail / specialty business is difficult with so many things to do and so little time. However, a few things such as making all your customers instead of the best ones say “WOW” when they leave can have a huge impact. At least, increase the number of customers you treat like your best customer and see the results in a few months. If you just try it for a day, week or month, you may not see measurable results but give it a best effort for 90 days at least to start seeing the payoff for your retail store.

 I just finished reading “Marketing Outrageously” by Jon Spoelstra with the foreword by Mark Cuban. Jin is perhaps the top sports marketer in the world and shared some of his successful ideas. Like I have mentioned before, what will work in one industry might even be a bigger success in another. There are plenty of suggestions to increase revenue for any small business. Almost any retail business I visit is the same as the next.. Retail / Specialty Business owners do not want to take chances and want to cry in their beer about lack of revenues for their company. If you are a small retail business being a copycat unless you have fantastic execution will eventually lead to your store closing sometime in the near future.

 I have never understood why busineeses that do the poorest will not take a chance by going out of the box. The owners have plenty of excuses why something creative will not work in their town or industry. Their customers are totally different. I have dealt with small businesses in many industries across the United States and all customers are basically looking for the same thing.

Marketing Outrageously is a brilliant book that can open your mind and the revenues to your business. The successful in life made it by taking calculated risks instead of thinking of reasons why something will not work for their business.

I am an author and consultant. Every well known consultant that I have read talks about making your business unique. Yet, over 90% of all businesses just copy each other and do business as usual.

If you want to jumpstart your sales read “Marketing Outrageously” and take action on some or all of his ideas. It could mean a world of difference to your retail business / specialty store.

I have done promotional sales that last 8-9 weeks for clients and the sales were 2-3 times over the previous year. There are plenty of factors to consider. Holding special events is a great traffic draw, many are free and cheap and they can even generate free publicity. 

One last note, make sure you have a mailing list and captured the names of the new shoppers during the promotion. That is more important than the sales itself. Here are a few things that can be done to bring in extra sales and customers.

Have a radio remote and give away something cheap to every customer. It could be a Root Beer Float at a local place.Have people sign up for a drawing to win something and use the names to start a mailing list for your store.

Is your retail business sales and profits failing to meet expectations? What are you doing to reverse this trend? Hoping for the best and conducting business as usual will lead to Further decreases in sales and profits.Many retail business / specialty store owners like to blame the big box retailer for cutting into their sales and profits. There is some truth in that statement and things can be done to help regain some of the sales and profits. The biggest opportunity for most retail business owners is to do a better job of competing against other small retail businesses / specialty stores. It does not matter the industry or location, most retailers are basically the same. There are no big differences from one to another.For a limited time, you can get a detailed analysis of your store for a special price. Generally, retail consultants charge $100-$150 hourly which is not affordable for many Small retail businesses / specialty stores. I can send you some questions about your store and conduct a business analysis and within 48-72 hours email you  what is needed to improve your Retail store for a special price of $250. I would guess that many retail consultants would charge $1,000 -$2,000 for this information. What is the catch?

In the perfect world, every customer will get the “WOW” treatment. However, setting a goal that every employee gives at least one new customer daily the “WOW” treatment is an easy way to increase sales fast. This is easy for every employee to do. We are not talking about good service, but something make the customer want to tell others. This Word of Mouth advertising can not be beat.

As time goes along, you can set the standard at two customers per day. You could have employees discuss or make a newsletter for the employees to share their ideas with fellow employees. Also, you could give the employee who created the best ”WOW” experience a special incentive such as a gift certificate as a small token of your appreciation.

It is much easier to improve your store one step at a time instead of a major change all at once.

Every retail business should have a retail inventory management plan. However, in visiting retail stores and managing promotional sales, seldom do I see an effective retail inventory management plan.

Many smaller retail businesses are limited in the amount of the top sellers they can buy. With some planning and taking action on older or slow moving inventory, this can change for the better. I have actually seen stores that had to pay cash to UPS and juggle shipments, while the shelves were full of old merchandise and items were not priced to sell.

Effective Retail Inventory Management plans will not consider the cost of an old item to move it and use the cash to buy new merchandise. In addition, the bottom 10-20% of items should be liquidated and replaced with new merchandise. You must have enough merchandise to sell to be profitable, but having too much inventory can be even more harmful to a retail business.

Bottom line, every retail business needs to keep looking for new exciting merchandise, liquidate poor selling items, never run out of best sellers while not having too much inventory on hand. If this is done, your store has an effective retail inventory management plan and one step closer to a highly successful retail business.

Many thousands of retail stores go out of business every year. Many of these retail businesses conduct their own going out of business sale. Professional liquidation company is able to get a better return for the business even accounting for fees if the store has at least 100,000 in inventory at cost.

The liquidation company has conducted hundreds if not thousands of sales and know the tricks to get the highest return. The ironic part is that the owner whose business failed due to poor sales is more likely to conduct their own going out of business sale than a successful owner is retiring. Of course, business decisions like this is why the retail business is forced to close their doors.

 Liquidation company will take away the emotional stress of the going out of business sale and get the sale over in the shortest time possible. If a retail owner starts a going out of business sale and it flounders, the bad new is that no reputable liquidation company will take over. This is because the liquidation company can not help you at this point and the final decision by the retail owner has cost himself thousands of dollars by being cheap.

Starting a Retail Business is not easy. Many thousands of retailers fail each year. However, many others take their place by starting a retail business.

There are many reasons for failure, but among the top reasons are failure to make retail business unique, lack of service and not having the right inventory mix.

No matter your experience, starting a retail business will take plenty of trial and error to get the desired results. Getting advice from successful retail owners, retail consultants and reading and researching on a variety of topics related to the store will increase the odds of success.

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