myRetailer.ca

A Booming Business? A Challenging Business? Revelling in Both Seems to be the Answer

Enjoy the business challenges and use your strengths every day.

Owning and operating a small business is not a ‘job’, it truly is a lifestyle. Ask anyone who operates their own company what drives them and you’ll receive a vast array of answers. A common thread in all of them, or at least I would hope, is that every entrepreneur that I know, revels in the challenges of today.

I recently heard an interview with a gentleman, who at 84 years of age, is still working everyday in his car dealership.

When asked why he didn’t just retire and sail into the sunset, he said, “When the car business is good, it’s the greatest thing in the world, and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. When business is bad, I absolutely love the challenge of making it good again.”

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360-Degree Feedback

Knowing what kind of boss you are and how employees rate you can be a touchy subject. A great tool for improving your management style and skills is to ask your team to perform a 360-degree review on you.

Twice a year, our company does performance evaluations on every employee, once in February and once in August.

During our winter reviews, we also have all of our senior managers reviewed by their direct reports, using 360-degree reviews.
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With today’s economic environment, retailers should be careful when it comes to retail fraud and theft.

As a retailer, you can’t afford to have people defrauding your business in good times. During these tough economic times, it’s just as important to be diligent when it comes to protecting your property and business. Last November, the National Retail Federation reported that sales returns were up by 19% over the previous year. Of those returns, they estimated that approximately $11.8 billion of those returns were fraudulent, up 8% over the prior year. Read Multi-Channel Merchant’s recent article on this subject.

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Sweat the Small Stuff

They say the devil is in the details, but how many of us actually take the time to analyse the details inside our own companies?

They say, don’t sweat the small stuff. But in business, I say you have to sweat the small stuff. Without sweating the small stuff, you can miss opportunities, lose ground quickly and costs can run out of control

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Help Ensure Your Customer’s Satisfaction

Does your company have a ‘No Customer Left Behind Policy‘ that helps ensure customer satisfaction?

With the current economic environment, we need every competitive advantage we can get. One way to do that is to ensure that your customers have a great experience with your company every time.

Do you have a policy that communicates to your staff that you hold customers at the highest level? That you will not tolerate a customer leaving your store with a dissatisfied experience? If not, why not?

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