myRetailer.ca

Grocers go urban

Major grocers are stepping out of suburbia and into Toronto’s downtown core, tweaking their big-box concepts to fit a high-density area born from the recent boom in condominium development

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Traditional retailers clicking on the Internet

“Canadians are online. They’re researching often, and what’s most interesting is they’re researching earlier,” Google Canada spokeswoman Wendy Rozeluk said. “Where we might have seen searches for patio furniture in the spring, this year we were seeing them in February. Because of the economic uncertainty, people are trying to be much more leery, figuring out where they can get the best deals.”

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Harness the Power of Surprise

The problem is that no one wants to be sold. As soon as their sales pitch detectors start to vibrate, they begin to turn off and put up the anti-sales shield. So what to do? Never appear to be selling anything. Refrain from bringing any classic sales crutches with you. No catalogues. No portfolios. No price lists. No memos

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The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur From the Kauffman Foundation

Company founders tend to be middle-aged and well educated and 95% of their survey respondents had completed college and 47% held advanced degrees.  Building wealth (75%), capitalizing on a business idea (64%) and owning a business (64%) were the top reasons given for starting a business.

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Curiosity, Imagination And Failure: The New Big Three

A company, a national economy, will sustain itself by creating a constant flow of innovations:  new products, new services, new solutions, new corporate structures. But that’s a process of constant failure. You have to create a constant flow of failures. Failure is the key to innovation. It’s the key to generating ideas, and you need a lot of ideas as most will fail.

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Wringing More Cash from Your Small Business

Renegotiate with advertisers, Call your vendors, Make it easier for customers to pay, Borrow rather than finance, Reduce overnight delivery services whenever possible, Renegotiate banking and credit card fees.

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Motivate Each Member of Your Team

For most small businesses, the owner is the key person in the leadership role. Some owners and managers of businesses are convinced that it is only the money that creates passionate performance, productivity, and connectedness in employees. I’ve heard it many times in one form or another: “They are well paid; I don’t understand why they won’t produce.”

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• I love hearing good news about our economy http://tinyurl.com/l4ubla #
• there’s no such thing as a free lunch http://tinyurl.com/n95lu9 #

Getting into Quarterly Meeting Rhythms and habits that will keep you on track

Follow through on strategy and goal setting with regular quarterly meetings.

As we now pass the 6 month mark, the second half of the year becomes increasingly important to ensure we meet our targets. Assuming you set out plans and objectives for your company this year (as we talked about in earlier postings), now is we the time to get together with your team, your managers, or just yourself to see how you are making out compared to your targets. (more…)

Image Courtesy of CBC.ca

Businesses have always used creative marketing tactics to increase sales and create a unique experience to attract customers. Take to strategize about what causes increase revenues in your business.

When you boil it all down, what is it causes sales in your business? What one thing that you do grows revenues more than anything else?

When Kraig Kramers works with a company, one of the first variables he tries to identify is what causes sales in the company? Is it sales people, is it the website, is it drive by appeal, is it trade shows? What is it? Then the second step he takes is to add to the horsepower to drive sales.

If you determine that drive by appeal and window displays are what causes sales in your business, then he suggests you drop everything else (print advertising, radio ads, etc.) and pour all that money and resources into your window displays. Have the best damn window displays on your street. Have them stand out so much, that people talk about them across town. This, Kramers would say, is a focused company, focused on growing sales.

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Data mining: how retailers are fighting thieves and fraudsters

Armed with this information, Walmart was able to position promotions to encourage more of this cross-selling, making more money and retaining more customers. Retailers across the world rushed out to invest in data mining.

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Learn to Lean on Your Advisors

Learn to recognize when you are facing a decision that you feel insufficiently informed to make, then find and contact advisors. There are experts in practically every field. Make your decision only after you feel confident in your grasp of the information.