myRetailer.ca

Plant the stake and create objectives and a plan for success in 2010

A leader’s role in any organization is to plant the stake and set the ultimate objectives for success. Then it comes down to rallying the troops to follow you there.

As Jack Daly, professional sales coach, puts it, only the leader can set the ultimate objective. Want to: (more…)

Moneris Tallies Holiday Receipts

How willing were Canadians to open their wallets over the Christmas period? Jim Baumgartner, president and CEO, Moneris, unveils some holiday shopping numbers.

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Do you need a business coach?

Provides simple tools to overcome shortcomings. Everyone knows the trend in self-development is to hire a coach: Someone who will help you overcome your management shortcomings, hone your strengths, and get stuff done.

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Moneris released a report today on 2009 holiday spending. Here are some highlights:

• The busiest shopping day of the year was December 22, 2009
• Spending increased 7.9% from December 24-29, 2009 when compared with the same dates in 2008
• Canadians demonstrated no preference between debit and credit cards with both types of cards showing virtually an equal division of transactions
• Department stores recorded the biggest year-over-year change with purchases up more than 7%
• Provincially, PEI showed the biggest gains with spending up 9.8%
• Discount stores were big winners with an increase of 10.6%
• Household appliance retailers also fared well with increases of 13.6%

Click here for a complete report

According to the Enterprise Council on Small Business, small business owners are busier than the average employee.

“Almost half of business owners report that they work at least 44 hours per week, compared to only 39% of employees who work the same number of hours. Being time starved is something that is reported by small business owners regardless of their firmographic or demographic differences. This is most likely due to the fact that a business owner’s personal and work life are often closely tied as they are accountable for most, if not all, aspects of the business.”

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Meet your performance sales targets by planning and reviewing your financial budgets

I always fill out two sets of projections: budgets and targets. Budgets go to the bank. They are the bare minimum level of performance that we commit to each year, and what our profit sharing program is based on. If budgets are met, profit sharing is paid out at the bottom tiers. Targets are what we shoot for and what our sales bonus program is based on. Targets often have more aggressive sales projections, higher gross margins on products sold, and slightly lower wage costs. When we review financials monthly and quarterly, we compare ourselves to targets.

For me, budgeting is an involved process, but it  follows five basic steps.

1. Start with a blank profit & loss. First thing I recommend is start at the bottom. Given your financial performance history and the needs of your business commitments, start with where you need your profits to be. Fill in your bottom line.
2. Next, plug in all your fixed expenses (power, rent, property taxes, bank charges, insurance, telephone, etc.), adjusting to reflect changes to rates, negotiated costs, etc.
3. Next, fill in your semi-controllable expenses (wages, marketing, etc.). For this, I normally get my managing partners involved as they are accountable for maintaining their budgets and hitting their numbers.
4. We then look at top line sales and cost of good. Again, this is a group effort between our buyers, our accountant, our managing partners and myself.
5. As a group, we’ll then have everything outlined on spreadsheets and we review it line by line in minute detail, over and over again, questioning everything and massaging it as needed until we come up with a final budget and target.

So what do we do with them afterwards? Budgets are what go to the bank. Our budgets are the bare minimum level of performance that we are committing to each year. Our budgets are what our profit sharing program is based on. If budgets are met, then profit sharing is paid out at the bottom tiers.

Targets on the other hand are what our sales bonus program is based on. Also, if targets are met, then our profit sharing program will pay out at the top tier levels. Our targets are what we enter into our accounting systems. This way when we review financials each month and quarter, we always compare ourselves to targets, not budgets. This encourages us to always shoot for better performance.

Plan for the new year and plan to hit the bulls-eye.