Let me just say it outloud – if you sell anything to anyone – you are an IDIOT if you don’t run out and get an iPhone4 today, right now. And no, they didn’t pay me to say that. Don’t care if you already have a Verizon account. Don’t care if you use a Blackberry. Don’t care if you own stock in Microsoft.
Contrary to what many merchants believe, discounting is not the companion to pricing right. If you price too low to begin with, you often are selling the item for less than it cost to buy and ship to you when discounts are applied. It’s easy to say, “Oh sure, I’ll take off an extra 15 %,” or, “I’ll throw that in.” That is not sales; that is cutting profits!
If we hear one thing over and over from small business owners its, “I just need more customers.” Heard it before 9/11, heard it after, heard it during the housing bubble, now hearing it again. Here are my 10 Reasons Your Competitors Have More Business Than You:
The holidays are almost here so I’ve come up with my blunt reminders for both staff and owners of specialty retailers. They’re by no means all the “Don’ts” but especially at the holidays, these 50 can make the difference between hearing, “I’ll take it,” and “I’m outta here.
Of course kids don’t want to pick up a family business making $40,000 a year! Would you? They are looking for prosperity, for profits, for the good life – not a job pulling in less than a Starbucks manager.
Your employees gave you a gift by acknowledging they had “survivor’s guilt.” But the heart of the problem is how they feel like a sham selling at retail. Clerking is what they are comfortable with because their self-image doesnt’ allow them to put themselves out there to risk rejection.
Sales were dropping off and the Arrow CEO saw that the trend was changing to a complete shirt. He announced to his board of directors in 1930, “We will never get there doing what we’re doing now.” That’s when something truly remarkable happened.
Without mentors to help teach this concept and mirror it, we end up with my swimming buddies questioning why they have to do something. The assumptions they make translate into thinking the minimum is what customers want. It isn’t and employees like this can kill a business.
The election in Iran, the improving economy, the GM bankruptcy, even iconic 70′s model Farrah Fawcett all took a back seat to the passing of Michael Jackson today. And for good reason. To paraphrase that old movie line, “We felt better about ourselves watching him.” Forget the easy, over-hyped digs about his personal life. At [...]
Sometimes small business owners or managers get so personally vested in being wronged that they lose sight of their priorities like some wronged hero in an action movie. Many times that is because it is easier to get worked up about someone else than taking responsiblity to change.
