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• Blog Post: So You Want To Be A Good Leader – President of Home Depot, Annette Verschuren embodies the characteristi… http://ow.ly/16PoL8 #
• #Retail News: Atlantic Realty Announces that Family Dollar Opens Store in Meadows Shopping … – Stockhouse http://ow.ly/16PfCE #
• #Retail News: Retail Therapy’s Test Drive – National Post – Retail Therapy’s Test DriveNational PostHandout Lik… http://ow.ly/16PfCF #
• #Retail News: National Retail Federation trade group names new CEO Matt Shay, effective May 10 – CanadianBusiness.c… http://ow.ly/16PfCG #
• 4 tips for taking control of your Yelp page – good read for small business owners – http://bit.ly/aZh2aM (via @MarkRaganCEO) #
• Blog Post: Writing Love Letters at Work – How writing “love letters” inspires employee recognition Everyone needs a… http://ow.ly/16ODUM #
• #Retail News: Ont. backs orchard for retail, educational offerings – Manitoba Co-operator http://ow.ly/16OyTD #
• #Retail News: Borderlands: Dr. Ned & Mad Moxxi DLC Hits Retail – GameFocus http://ow.ly/16OyTE # (more…)

How can you leverage ‘FREE’ to gain customers and grow business?

I recently read Free – The Future of a Radical Price, a fascinating book by Chris Anderson that really got me thinking. In his book, Anderson goes into great detail about how certain businesses, especially in today’s digital age, have built entire businesses models based on a single price – $0. Think of companies like Google and Facebook, or even free iPhone apps and free ebooks, what do they all have in common? They give away their core product for free.

If you consider an author or consultant, they may give away free partial or full ebooks on their site (as I do on Retailer’s Roadmap to Success), in efforts to gain more readers who will become familiar with their work, in hopes that they will turn into paying customers by purchasing an upgrade, the full book, or perhaps a speaking engagement at some point in the future. (more…)

Truly great leaders all have two things in common. First they have great empathy and regularly ‘walk the floor’, communicate and connect with their employees. The second character trait is that they the boldness and tenacity to make the tough decisions needed to lead the company.

One of Canada’s most effective business leaders is Annette Verschuren, President of Home Depot Canada and Asia. Verschuren possesses that rare balance between great empathy and incredible tenacity for getting the job done.

I can recall a comment made by one of her office staff,  “28,000 associates in Canada don’t work for Home Depot, they work for Annette”. Now that’s quite a statement if I ever heard one. After you meet Annette for the first time, you can easily see why they think that way. She really does care about her staff (all of them), and she leads the company to great performance with resolve each and every day. (more…)

How writing “love letters” inspires employee recognition

Everyone needs a pat on the back and recognition for a job well done – even you!

A letter I wrote

Every week, I solicit from our managers the names of a couple of individuals who deserve a letter of recognition. I take the names and the details about why they deserve recognition  and write them a hand written note thanking them in detail for what they did and why they are being recognized.

Over the years, these hand-written notes to staff have become known as Andy’s Love Letters. I do this every week, writing notes to anywhere from two to six staff members each week.

Just last week, I had quite a surprise after our managers meeting when I had three envelopes sitting on my desk. Inside each envelope was a motivational card with a hand-written thank you message from each one of my three managers in our Fredericton store. For the past three weeks, I’ve been extremely busy behind the scenes working on a major initiative for the company, and that week, when asked who deserved recognition, they all agreed that it would be me. So upon returning to the office after a meeting, I found three Love Letters addressed to me for a change.

It was a great surprise for me and an action that I truly appreciated. What I found incredible was that they realize that I too would truly appreciate some recognition from time to time. I have to say that I have an amazing team!

Recognition by way of a hand-written note is an extremely powerful tool. I was reminded of just how powerful it is, when I received my hand written thank you notes just last week. Check out the one I attached to this blog post. Its got an amazing feeling of personalization – something email can’t convey.

What do you do to recognize your team when they do something right?

Small Businesses Issue HST Checklist

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is issuing a checklist on Thursday to some 42,000 members in Ontario, ahead of the tax harmonization that takes place July 1. The HST will join together the 5% federal Goods and Services Tax with the provincial sales tax (7% in British Columbia and 8% in Ontario), bringing the combined tax on goods and services to 12% in B.C. and 13% in Ontario.

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Small Business Merchants Rushed to Banks While Canadian Athletes Went On Bagging Golds

The recently published Moneris Solutions’ Vancouver 2010 spending data revealed that while Canada as a nation was taken by the Olympic fever, consumers were bitten by the shopping bug. Sales increased by 48 percent during the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

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Ontario Minimum wage set to rise on March 31 to $10.25

The Ontario government announced this week that the province’s minimum wage is set to rise from $9.50 to $10.25 on March 31, 2010.

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B.C. surf town bans all franchises

Tofino, the small B.C. surf town known for its natural beauty, has boosted its anti-establishment reputation by banning all franchises within its borders.

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Shopify retailers roar past $100M in online sales

Local e-commerce firm Shopify announced Tuesday that retailers using its platform recently topped $100 million in total sales.

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Wind Mobile: Rushed launch takes wind out of newest cellphone carrier

Conventional wisdom for Canada’s newest cellphone carriers has been to be first into the market. With fierce competition overhead from established incumbents such as Rogers Communications Inc., the thinking was that the earliest in would hold a key leg up against other newcomers and reap the rewards of consumers’ pent up demand for choice.

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