See why you shouldn't manage your retail shop in the style of Jose Mourinho

There are real lessons to be learnt from the tenure and sacking of Jose Mourinho at Chelsea. His second stint in charge of the club finally came to an end yesterday, after weeks of speculation. It's always difficult to totally understand why someone loses their job when you view it from the outside. Like most businesses, football is a results-driven business so it's on the field that makes the difference. But there has been a continual message from Mourinho this season. It has undermined his own position. There's a common phrase bandied around in situations like this -"he lost the changing room." It means that the players (or at least some of them) stopped playing at 100% for him. When this is one or two from a squad of around thirty players then it's easy to not pick them. If this spreads and significant players stop pulling their weight then it's a major problem.

Mourinho very publicly chastised the medical team early in the season as this caused immediate disharmony. He has since hung his players out to dry on more than one occasion. Whether this caused the rift with the dressing room or exacerbated it isn't clear but there was most definitely a rift.

What does this mean for me?

Well, as a retail manager and leader of people, you need to be vary of the Mourinho effect. It's by having your team on board with your message and your vision that gets the team working for you. This doesn't mean that you never discipline them, just that you never hang them out to dry.

And it's by having this vision and explaining it, reinforcing it, singing it's praises and celebrating it's successes that your team know where you are all going.

Did Jose Mourinho have a lack of vision? Maybe not but I think his communication of the vision became garbled and this can lose the team just as easily. He went from proclaiming his team to chastising them, from stating he was building a dynasty to talk or only staying for a few years. It's this lack of consistency that also undermined his authority. I use the word authority to mean something different to just power or bring in charge. Authority as a leader includes having people listen to you, understand what you  say and respond with their actions.

If your team don't know how to respond because what you are saying contradicts your overall vision (or what you said last week) then you lose credibility.

So overall you need to remember to-

• Have a vision
• Communicate your vision
• Keep communication levels up
• Be consistent

It will help you all to achieve your goals. Start by thinking about what your vision is for your team and take it from there.

This week is the MUST DO week when it comes to assessing how your Christmas sales are going

It's a hugely important time of the year for most retailers. I know of some retailers that trundle along through the rest of the year happy to break even or make a small profit on the basis that their Christmas trade will make up for it all. Many retailers I've worked with report that over 50% of their annual trade will happen during this quarter of the year. And there's the sales after Christmas to take into account as well!

With this time of year being so important, so busy, you can often forget to take a small step back and assess things. So ask yourself this question today-

How is it going?

Really. Find some time this week to answer that question. It's vital to the success of the rest of the year.

The big retailers have cottoned on to one truth that I'm going to share with you today-

Customers only have a finite amount of money to spend at Christmas.

It sounds pretty straightforward doesn't it? But it changes the way they operate. Their whole ethos is based around getting you (and your customers) to spend it with them and to spend it early. Look at the incentives-

• Extra loyalty card points
• Tesco Clubcard exchange
• Sainsburys Nectar point exchange
• Boots points events nights
• Boots Star Gifts and weekly offers
• Black Friday
• Cyber Monday

And the list continues. The idea is that you incentivise your customers to shop with you early. A typical Christmas list might read-

• Wife
• Eldest
• Youngest
• Mum
• Dad
• Mother-in-law
• Sister
• Brother
• Niece
• Nephew

And once there's a tick next to every name on the list, then Christmas gift shopping is pretty much done. So if it's done at a Boots points event, for instance, then the spend at Boots will minimise the likelihood that there will be any spend in other retailers nearer Christmas.

As for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, these are not American imports, as the press likes to label them. These events mean more to the British market than the American one. In the USA, it's our equivalent of the January sales - they are selling off post-Thanksgiving stock that didn't sell. They don't do Christmas in the same way we do. Over here it a great tool for retailers to get those sales in early.

So have a look at what you have done and what you have planned and see how you can secure those early sales. It will make a big difference to your performance for the rest of the year.

A purely retail task on The Apprentice, a Welsh village taking a stand and a message to the multinationals

At last there's been a purely retail task on the current series of The Apprentice. It will strike a chord with my readers that are independent retailers themselves.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06q7jtl/the-apprentice-series-11-7-discount-store

The task was to operate as a discount retailer by selling and reinvesting the proceeds in the items that have actually sold well. Which is independent retail in a nutshell.

There's the obvious and repeated issue with The Apprentice of many pieces of expenditure being totally ignored when it comes to calculations of profit and loss at the end of the task. I looked at it in a previous blog here - http://mytimeinretail.blogspot.com/2015/10/see-lessons-to-be-learnt-from-this.html

This week the ignored items included-

• Rent
• Staffing costs
• Tax
• Licence on the stall

I know it's the land of television and normal rules don't apply, but it's just not a level playing field.

Which brings me to my second story this week. It's about a village in Wales that is trying to level the playing field when it comes to competing with Starbucks and Amazon.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crickhowell-welsh-town-moves-offshore-to-avoid-tax-on-local-business-a6728971.html

The tax structures of local business and multinational business are so different that it allows the biggest companies to move their money across divisions and borders to minimise their tax burden.

I personally think it's time for the government of the day (whichever party they may be) to stand up. The message needs to be-

If you want to do business in this country then you'll have to accept lower profits.

The message is stark but necessary. Reduced profits for these companies mean several things-

• Higher wages for the lower paid in society
• Smaller tax credit burden on the government and tax payers
• Large multinational corporations paying their fair share in tax

I'm sure that everyone would agree that these are positive things that we can all get behind.

Read how one garden centre bucks the trend and gives lesson for us all

I'm currently out shopping at one of my least favourite retail destinations - the garden centre. I find that they so often get so much wrong and it frustrates me. They are a retailer that doesn't have the traditional problem of lack of space. They have the problem of too much space snd tend to try to solve the problem by filling the space with anything and everything. I wrote about this in this is a previous blog-

http://mytimeinretail.blogspot.com/2015/11/see-why-entrance-to-your-retail-store.html

The garden centre I'm visiting today is a little different, if only at this time of the year. The front half of the garden centre has been transformed into a Christmas shop. It's full of colourful tinsel, glowing decorations and happy people. If if the customers aren't there to buy Christmas decorations they are there to look around. They car park is full, the café is full and the customers are mingling, talking and generally enjoying themselves.

As with all my blogs, I look at the success and failure of others to see how it can transform things for all of us. I think that a large part of retail is looking at how others operate and applying that to our own business. In this case, it may not just be Christmas that is the winning formula but how it is approached. I spoke in the last blog about garden centres on the need for making the front of the shop something to shout about. And this garden centre has done just that.

The message here us to carry out anything that you do as though you really mean it. Having this Christmas shop has made the garden centre a destination. Like Fenwick's Christmas window in Newcastle, it has become part of some people's Christmas tradition. This makes you a winner straight away because customers will walk through the door as a matter of course.

Think about your own shopping trips. There will be stores in certain towns or cities that you will walk into and look around out of habit. You may not be looking for anything in that category but go in there anyway. It may be their coffee shop, the fact that they have different things every time you go in or their displays. You need to find your reason for shoppers to visit and make the most of it.

Think long and hard about what you do, what you want to be known for and then work hard with your team and your marketing to make this happen.

Why this week's The Apprentice (and a shopping trip) leaves me fuming

I hate homemade signs. I hate handwritten signs even more. I REALLY hate badly-made handwritten signs. After watching The Apprentice last night I despair even more!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06phn4w/the-apprentice-series-11-6-handy-man

Mergim felt the need to make a signs for their handyman business. I understand his motives but the execution was never going to win any design awards.

I've been out in a local town centre today conducting some mystery shopping (I talk about my mystery shopping in this blog) and I spotted loads of homemade and handwritten signs, complete with poor formatting, bad handwriting and spelling mistakes. I don't know what goes through retailers heads! The effect is unprofessional and does absolutely nothing positive for your brand, store or products.

The retailers I saw these signs in today included-

• A gift shop
• A nail bar
• Boots
• Holland & Barrett
• A sweet shop
• Several cafés and restaurants

So it's not an independents disease, nor that of a certain type of retailer. I really can't see any excuse if you're working for a major retailer. Every piece of marketing material is approved and provided centrally, it's even something that I've been asked to check up on during the mystery shops I carry out. If you want to know more about my mystery shopping and how you can become a mystery shopper then check out my blog- http://mysteryshopperblog.blogspot.co.uk/

Even independents can move quickly enough in their feet to avoid this. Having a good marketing, design and/or printing company to hand is a simple solution. Even getting training on design or using a friend with design skills will be better than handmade. By planning ahead and putting as much time as possible between thinking of the sign and using the sign gives you time to get the materials produced.

If you don't have the skills yourself or know anyone who can help you out the fiverr.com could provide you with an answer. It's an online community of freelancers that can produce one-off items for the low, low price of $5. Provide an outline of what you want and a timeline of when you need it and you'll find a willing designer to produce a file for you to print or have printed. Give it a look and you may find your answers.

You can find my profile at  https://uk.fiverr.com/homeestates

The Apprentice, Mannys Sauces and your business - see how they all connect

As a retailer, sometimes a part of your job is to launch a new product or bring a great product to people's attention. It's not always an easy task, as the competitors on this year’s The Apprentice have found out on two tasks so far this year-

There was an early episode where the two teams had a go at launching a new shampoo made with the cactus flower-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06jlg57/the-apprentice-series-11-2-advertising-cactus-shampoo

And a more recent episode featured the two teams (and those within the teams) going head to head against each other in designing and selling their own children's book-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06nw576/the-apprentice-series-11-5-childrens-book

It is not easy to launch your own brand or product but one man that has launched his own brand is Manny. Here's his story-

“As any other person in the world, I had a huge dream - to open the first Piri-Piri Chicken Restaurant in the world, and then spread this dream to every corner of the planet. It wouldn’t be easy to achieve, but neither was it impossible. I had the will, the courage, the faith and family support to make it come true. Early in 1985, I sold my home to open the first piri-piri chicken restaurant outside of Mozambique. CHICKENLAND was the chosen name and Johannesburg, South Africa was the birth place of my dream! After a short while, I was making, bottling and selling a range of 5 different Piri-Piri Sauces and Marinades. After a slow start, the business was a stunning success! The name quickly spread across the city and everyone was talking about this new food place that was taking the food industry by storm.

The business success was proven! The next step was expansion to other parts of the city, country and abroad, and many people tried to get financially involved. Expansion included a need for capital and people, and so in 1987, I sold some of my business shares to two young men: one of Portuguese origin and the other, a South African of Jewish origin. Shortly after they joined, the business name was changed to NANDOS. Chickenland was a nice name, but according to marketing experts at the time, it was felt that the business should be backed by a personal name before the expansion took place. Between MANNYS and NANDOS, I was out-voted two to one, and the latter name was chosen. Despite a few initial problems, the expansion started taking off and now more than ever, the success was tremendous!

A few years later, the rug was pulled out from under my feet and I was forced to leave my business. I lost my dream; one of the best things in my life after my family. After this happened, I opened a few other restaurants including Chickenland in Portugal, but these weren’t my dream. It was a way to make a living, but it wasn’t my passion. It took me a long time to recover from what happened, but I was determined and pushed through until another dream emerged; to make the best sauces and speciality food products in the world! MANNYS SAUCES is now my new dream! Once again I can see this new dream taking shape and growing strong all the way to the TOP! The passion is back and I again have the will, the faith, the support of my family, and the support of so many loyal customers that know and appreciate the high quality products that we make. I am forever grateful to my family and my customers for their support and the divine forces for showing me the way.

Manny x”

And one of retail’s challenges is to get in touch with your customers in different ways. It’s by being what large companies and analysts call multi-channel that gives you the best access to customers. Follow Manny’s lead, where you can-

Try the online store at http://www.mcssl.com/store/mannyssauces for the Chickita - Mann’s famous cured and smoked chicken sausage and the rest of the range of cured meats.

Follow on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Mannyssauces where you can read about the wonderful MannyNaise. With this, you can substitute your boring, regular mayonnaise for the spectacular taste of MannyNaise and transform dishes from the ordinary to the wonderful.

Catch up with them on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/Mannyssauces to hear about the Tomato Fusion – a sauce that’s destined to become the ketchup of choice for the 21^st Century. It’s the next level in tomato ketchup.

Their YouTube site at www.youtube.com/channel/UCPvHPFfaz5yJRTtlv_ViDPQ gives you great recipe ideas and shows you how to use the sauces, such as the original, classic Piri-Piri sauce. This is the genuine, original and unique Southern African Piri-Piri sauce. This is the perfect mix of the heat of chilli and the depth of flaviour that perfectly captures what Mannys Sauces is all about.

Don’t forget the selection of cured meats. Paio is a great selection and is made of pork fillet with a maximum of 5% fat.

And you can just go straight ahead and check out their website at www.mannyssauces.com to see details of what they are all about, more details on Manny’s story, find stockists and much more.

Think about your retail business and how you can make your offering truly multi-channel – it will bring out the best in your products!

Stop team members becoming invisible and motivate to success

I've been working with a management team this week and been looking at employee engagement. One of the things that has really struck me was the feeling from some of team that they are invisible, particularly to their management structure above them. This isn't a feeling from the newer team members, who seem to get a lot of time and attention as they learn the ropes and settle in. It is a feeling that is harboured by team members who have been there for quite some time, know their job inside out and just come in and get on with it. At first I found this to be a bit of a surprise, that the reliable team members were feeling invisible. But on further thought it felt true. If someone just comes on and does there bit then it is often only noticed when they are in holiday, off sick or leave. There's this gaping hole where the employee used to be. The problem is twofold - management teams not leaving colleagues feeling invisible, and colleagues being motivated to keep coming back for more. Now this is an issue for management teams all over the world-

How do you motivate team members who have been doing the same job for years.

And I must admit it's been a problem for me in my work career. I often get bored if doing the same thing over and over. I've changed jobs, changed companies, changed locations and changed industries when I feel like it's time to do something different.

Managers

The fact that team members don't feel recognised is down to management complacency. And as a team manager, it's about being present on the coal face every day. As a manager, you should have a conversation with every team member every day. They should feel that you understand what is happening to them today and if there's anything you can help with. To appreciate someone's contribution can often just be about saying "thank you." Along with a genuine, meaningful reason of why you are thanking them, this can have a massive effect - no more invisible employees!

Colleagues

If you're not in the management team and perhaps feel invisible or demotivated then works to your line manager. A conversation can be started by you, as much as by your line manager. Tell them your concerns and see what can be done about them. By being frank and discussing the situation, you can establish what to do next.

See why the entrance to your retail store should shout about your claim to fame

I'm in a local garden centre today and as I walk through the first aisle from the entrance to the café I am a little dumbstruck. I walk no more than 40 yards and I am confronted by-

• Christmas decorations
• Alcoholic drinks
• Books
• DVD's
• CD's
• Jigsaws
• Toys
• Food items
• Non-alcoholic drinks

And then the café itself

I'm struck by a retailer that doesn't really know what it wants to be and what it stands for. I've used this phrase in my blogs before and it means so much-

Decide what you want to become famous for.

Now I'm not talking about the celebrity type of fame that seems to float the boat of so many people today. I'm talking about the famous part of your retail business that customers will talk about and return for. It's been referred to as your USP or your diffetentiator and it's what makes you a success. Woolworths was the prime example to me of a retailer that didn't know what it wanted to be. It tried to be all things to all people and became unimportant to many. I've also blogged about Tesco trying to do everything but ending up doing everything worse than their rivals-

http://mytimeinretail.blogspot.com/2014/06/tesco-sales-drop-is-about-more-than.html

I don't necessarily think that a retailer shouldn't sell more than one type of product, but the initial message should scream from the rooftops about what you stand for. This retailer I'm in today states that "we do all sorts of stuff." It's not a sparkling message.

Looking around the garden centre, there are places of interest, areas where they do stand out from the competition. The café is very busy and the food looks great quality. The Christmas decorations are vibrant and have a great mark-up. The indoor plants are well-priced and different varieties to other garden centres I've been in. One of these areas should be the absolute focus of the attention as the part of the business that leads customers to walk through the door and return.

For your own business you need to look at what you are doing and make a decision. The decision needs to be around what you think you should be famous for. Once you (and your team) know what this is then position your store so it talks to your customers in those terms-

"Mr and Mrs customer, this is what we do."

See how to turn the plastic bag charge to your benefit

We are now a month on from the start if the charge for plastic bags in shops in England.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34346309

As people start to settle into the routine of bringing their own bag or paying, it's worth taking a look at the charge and seeing how it works and how it can work for you. There are quite a few exclusions to the plastic bag levy and some may apply to your business-

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/carrier-bag-charges-retailers-responsibilities#bags-you-dont-have-to-charge-for

A main area that you don't have to charge is if you employ less than 250 full-time employees.

Many of my readers are small independent retailers but the exclusion doesn't mean that you can't charge for bags - it means that you don't have to. I think that a large part of the charge is to educate customers to the dangers of disposable carrier bags so a small retailer can be as much a part of this education as a large one. Customers won't necessarily know which shops have to charge and which shops are exempt. So this is your opportunity to help a charity of your choice by charging for bags and donating the proceeds to them. If it's communicated in the right way then your customers will feel positive about the charge rather than negative.

Your alternative is to advertise that you are one of the retailers that don't (have to) charge for bags. It feels like a strange strategy but it could give you a small competitive advantage as bag charge fatigue sets in.

And it's by looking at your structure when changes like this happen that helps you assess your business plans. Having plans set out for your business and regularly assessing them keeps you on track. I suggest that you set out business plans annually, reassess quarterly and monitor progress monthly. Changes to legislation, the trading landscape or your competition will prompt a further review and assessment. As a business, you will need to know where you are and where you are going. Getting to grips with it all can transform what you do.

In my next blog I'll take a more detailed look at business planning.

Read about different ways of creating brand advocacy

This is a follow up to my last blog entry (see http://mytimeinretail.blogspot.com/2015/10/see-how-converting-loyal-customers-into.html) where I looked at converting customers into loyal customers and then into brand advocates. Today's blog is concerned with different strategies for enacting this conversion. There are many different ways of doing this, and as a retailer you will have to find your own way but I'll look at some examples. It's all about creating that relationship with your customers that transform the way they feel about you and how they shop with you.

Loyalty schemes

These have become more abundant in all forms of retail after the success of the Tesco Clubcard. Every coffee shop, large and small, will give you a free coffee after you buy 6 or 8 or 10 with them. But for me, a loyalty scheme should be about more than just trying to twist someone's arm to come back. Loyalty is one thing, but were looking at brand advocacy as the target here. The next step is to offer your loyal customers something that other customers can get. This can be one-off products that the rest of your customers can't buy, invites to exclusive events, the first chance to see new products or another exclusive that only your very best customers can get hold of. These customers will talk positively about you and some will become advocates.

Events

As I've mentioned above, having an event that gives exclusive content to your best customers creates brand advocacy. A new product launch, products that you just can't get anywhere else or additional benefits to chosen customers promotes advocacy. If you have a guest list of certain customers that gain access to these feature then you're creating the next level of customer. If your best customers get a free cup of tea, a personal shopper, somewhere to store their shopping whilst they browse or extended guarantees as a set of examples then they are more likely to return and to tell their friends,

Exclusives

As unintelligent retailers compete more on price and race to the bottom, the intelligent ones are looking onwards and upwards. Exclusives is a huge area to build your advantage over the competition. If you can sell something that no one else sells then the customers of that product will come to you. Of course this means that your sourcing of the product needs to become a focus. Either it's products you make yourself or you need to have an exclusivity conversation with your supplier. Having an exclusive could mean

• a short-term exclusive (for the first month)
• a different design or packaging of an existing product
• a different size to what is available elsewhere

If you then add a high level of customer service, an event or a loyalty scheme to add to your exclusive then you're heading down the road towards brand advocacy.

See how converting loyal customers into into brand advocates increases your income

I've worked with retailers over the years and a recurrent theme is the question of how to reward customers. I've looked in this blog at different ways of rewarding your team but having ways of rewarding your customers can help to transform a retailer. This is a large subject so I've split it into two blog entries. The first one is today.

A constant theme of my blogs is turning customers into loyal customers into brand advocates, so it's probably best to start here and explain what I mean by these three categories-

Customers

This is simply people who buy something in your shop. They may be passing by and see something in the window, they may be a visitor to your town and come in to have a look around. They may shop with you once and never again. This doesn't mean that these customers are unimportant. You will need one-off customers and irregular visitors to help your sales. They can be attracted to your door by promotions, a great window display or word of mouth. However they arrive is unimportant. The fact that they got to you gives you a chance to impress them and get them coming back time and again. This turns them into the next level, the loyal customer.

Loyal customers

A loyal customer is one that chooses you over another. You may have one or more stores in your town that sell the same thing but your loyal customer will buy from you over your competitors. You can create loyalty with price, promotion or excellent customer service as well as other means. Supermarkets in particular fight for loyalty and this has sparked the loyalty card and the price matching over the years. A loyal customer will return to you over and over again unless something happens in their relationship with you to break the loyalty. It's a well-worn phrase that it costs so much more to win a new customer than to keep an existing one and that's the relationship that loyalty projects attempt to protect. Many businesses stop here. Having a band of loyal customers spending good money with you in a regular basis, plus the odd infrequent customer can be a lucrative proposition. But I propose looking to the next step.

Brand advocates

And I strongly believe that brand advocates are the next step for a retailer to increase success, and in a more interesting way. The ways in which you can achieve this will be the subject is the second part of this topic and my next blog entry. Today I'll describe what a brand advocate is and the effect they can have on your business. A brand advocate is someone who goes out of their way to tell other people about you. It may be one of several ways of doing this-

• Bringing their friends into your store
• Talking about you on their blog
• Positive social media comments about you
• Telling people face-to-face about how great you are

The brand advocate is a marketing tool that you can rely on to bring you more business and all it costs is a great relationship with them. Having several brand advocates starts the cycle off again for the next set of customers. They arrive at your doorstep because of a brand advocate, and you will hopefully turn them into loyal customers and the next brand advocates. How you start this relationship and maintain it can be interesting and fun, and we will take a look at that in the next blog.

See the lessons to be learnt from this week's The Apprentice

I've started watching this series of The Apprentice (against my better judgement) this week. The tasks are interesting, helped by the editing, and the characters are as comical as they have been for the past few series. I applied for the last series of the programme and got through to the audition process - the final few hundred from twenty-something thousand applicants I was told. The opportunity at the end of the process has far more value than the process itself.

The first task was a buying and selling task - go to the market and buy fish, turn it into products and then sell it in the city of London. One team made a profit of £1.87. And this is where the whole process falls down. If this were real business then there would be much more expense to take away from their paltry £1.87 profit-

Wages for eight team members

Production costs

They were given use of a facility to turn their raw fish into saleable products, and this also took energy for the machinery, cookers and lights.

A trading licence to sell food on the street

Purchase or hire if the stall

Hire or purchase of the cooking equipment

All in all, these tasks in isolation mean very little. I'd prefer to see a programme where the team develops a business over the course of the series. Given an amount of money st the start, they have to buy and sell cleverly to increase their money for the following week's task. Lord Sugar can still fire someone every week, but the team can work their way through.

So what's this got to do with me an independent retailer?

Well control of costs underpins every single business. And it's by looking at your costs and the effectiveness of every penny you spend that will allow you to succeed. And for every pound you save, you have three choices - pocket and extra pound of profit, reinvest another pound into area you know succeed or cut your customers prices by another pound.

Looking at all of your expenditure to ensure that it works as hard as you do is a fundamental part of running a business. I'd suggest three ways of ensuring you get this as right as you can.

Regular reviews of your costs

I'd suggest that you look at your expenditure and conduct a full review on a regular basis. Annually at least, every 6 months is better and in some instances quarterly. This ensures that things never get away from you. Having your finger on the cost pulse means that you never get to the point where you look back and think "where has all that money gone?" To be able to look at all the outgoings and see if savings can be made will work out for you in the long run. Going hand-in-hand with this is the expenditure on marketing.

Analysing the success of your marketing spend

If you take nothing else from reading this blog, then take this one piece of information with you. You need to account for what you spend. By this I mean that when you set out a marketing campaign, you need to have an idea of what business that campaign brings. To do this you have to speak to your customer at the first point of contact. It's from there that you will understand how they arrived with you.

For example, you spend £200 per month on advertising on a particular website and £100 per month on newspaper advertising. If the website brings you £2,000 in sales per month then it earns 10 times the spend. If the newspaper brings you £500 per month in sales then it earns 5 times the spend.

You will see that the website is twice as profitable in terms of marketing spend than the newspaper.

Speaking to people when the opportunity arises

I know that it's impossible to respond to every marketing call or email but there will be areas in which it's profitable to listen to people. The areas in which you want to talk to people will be dictated in part by the areas above. If you have identified an area in your cost review then this will prompt you talking to someone who contacts you. If you have an area of marketing success, then you'll want to be able to repeat this success. And in some areas you will just see an idea that you like and decide to investigate.

Avoid being an overspender like the contestants on The Apprentice and have control over your costs.

See why inflation figures heighten your need to compete on things other than price

The latest inflation figures were announced this week and it's not good reading for retailers-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34514135

The figures show a fall in the inflation rate to it actually showing a negative. This means that prices are falling.

Why is this bad news for retailers?

This is particularly bad news for retailers of high price items. The fact is, that if consumers see prices falling they will put off their large purchases in the expectation that prices will continue to fall and they can save money. This effect really starts to kick in when prices fall consistently over a longer period of time. It works more on high ticket products - televisions, cars, gadgets and computers. So if you're a retailer of these items what can you do? The first thought when looking for customers is often price but that seems like the wrong idea on this occasion. Further price cuts can only deepen the feeling that prices will continue to fall. And increasing prices at this point will put you at a disadvantage to your competition.

So the best thing to focus on is the quality of what you sell. Having a quality product can sell no matter what the market is doing. Look at Apple - their products sell in times of inflation or deflation. Now, we can't all come up with an ipod, iPhone or iPad idea to help our retail business but you can focus on the quality in your own business.

Finding what makes you different

As a retailer you will probably already have an idea what it is that makes you different. It's what sets you apart from other retailers and it could be one of many things-

• Your loyalty scheme
• Your products
• Your customer service
• Your special offers
• Your events

I've written many, many times in this blog about understanding what you do better than others. And this is what you need to concentrate on. I'll give you a few examples-

Waitrose have high prices but their customers love their absolute quality and great customer service.

Boots are very pricey but focus on their loyalty card and customers return.

Aldi mixes price with availability and customers have loved this balance.

So what is your USP? What can you do better than your competition? What are you capable of that nobody else in your town is? These are the things that will drive you forward.

Communicate this with your team, communicate it with your customers and look away from just dropping your price to compete - there are other, better ways to differentiate yourself.

See why missing prices labels lose you business

I went out shopping to an out of town retail park yesterday and repeatedly faced one of my pet retail peeves - the missing price ticket! I hate this in a shop and I found it in shop after shop - all major retailers.

Out of town retail parks can often encapsulate the best and the worst of retail in one place. The parking is usually horrendous and battles for parking spaces take place regularly. If you've ever worked in one of these "out-of-towners" and had to regularly leave your car there, you'll know the state that they can end up in with bumps and scrapes. Because of the tendency to operate late hours, there are usually operating on skeleton staffing. And there are sometimes the parking enforcement cowboys that want to take money from you if you stay there too long - isn't the point that you stay there and shop?

But yesterday was missing price ticket day. The first place I saw it was an outlet shop for a major international sorts wear brand. There were signs everywhere showing things like-

"50% off lowest marked price"

"Save 25% on ticket price"

"Further reductions"

And time and time again there were no tickets on the products. Whole racks of clothing with 100 items and I looked through half of them and found not a single price label. It wasn't just me that noticed it. I walked past four other shoppers they were complaining about missing prices.

Next stop was a national supermarket chain that had a big display of consumer electronics as soon as you walk through the doors. Around 20 items in total and 5 of them were missing prices. For a display of this nature, price is a major purchase factor. The price of this is sensitive and all the big players watch each other's price movements with great care. So to have a display missing approximately a quarter of it's prices will cause customers to just walk away.

And this is the point. Away from small shops where you are never more than a metre or two away from your customers, pricing is essential. The result of missing prices is either grumbling customers or customers that walk away. And neither is a reaction that a retailer wants to create in customers.

I'm sure that most of my readers will look at this and think "well this doesn't happen in my store." But if this can happen in major retailers in the examples I saw yesterday then it can slip through the net of others. Go out to your store today and check price labels - make sure that you are ready to trade in every way.

Don't cause your customers to grumble or walk away when the solution is so simple.

Not everything can be bought on the High Street-

See how tapping into café culture can reap rewards

There's no doubt that there's a café culture in the UK today. I'm at a large shopping centre today before 10am when the shops open and every café is almost full of people drinking and chatting before embarking on the days shopping. Costa, Starbucks and Nero are the main three chain coffee shops and there are a staggering 3 Starbucks, 2 Caffé Nero and 6 Costa Coffee (yes, six as the vidiprinter used to confirm on the football scores.) Andcthats before you start to add up the Greggs.

And, as usual, this gets me thinking about retail and how all of these things knit together. For instance, there's two stand-alone Costa and the others are situated within other shops-

• Debenhams
• Namco
• Odeon
• WH Smith

And this is where I think that the angle is - using a coffee shop offering to get customers into your store. Of course the big retail players can look at strategic partnerships with the likes of Costa to make this happen but what about independent retailers. Most of my readers are independent retailers and I think that for some businesses, a coffee shop offering could really help their business. By having a quality, well-respected destination for the coffee drinkers you can have a ready-made custom for your store. I visited Lincoln recently and the coffee shop that really caught my eye was upstairs in an art and craft shop. In a quiet early morning when any large numbers of customer traffic was up at the castle and cathedral, this set and craft shop had 20 people browsing and a further 20 in the café - all of whom had walked through the arts and crafts to get there and would walk back through the arts and crafts to leave. In addition, there were art classes advertised on the tables and the café itself was decorated subtlety with arty type things. It was a great way of getting people through the door and spending.

This isn't the solution to all retail woes, but for some retailers with the space and the vision to create this, there's definitely something in this.

Not everything can be bought on the High Street-

See how a diary of events can help you to plan for next year

I've been around and about shops over the last few weeks and there's a lot of shops trying to make the most of things in what's traditionally a bit of a lull between Back To School and Christmas.

There's a lot of retailers stocking rugby-related products with the World Cup being played presently. I shopped in Durham today and there's an ancillary Back To Uni trade here, as in many university towns and cities. And it's these events that I think can make the difference for independent retailers. I think that keeping a diary of events and how they affect your trade and your team can make a huge effect in how you react to these events in the future.

Planning a broad outline of the events and mini-events of the year will provide you with a framework of the year. You will need to ensure that you have prepared something to reflect these events - extra staff, stock that matches the event, dressing up the store, etc.

You'll need to take account of-

• Easter
• Christmas
• Hallowe'en
• Back to school
• Back to university
• New Year
• Mother's Day
• Father's Day
• Sports events (World Cups, Olympics, Wimbledon, etc)
• Valentines day
• Pay day weekends
• Local events

It's by having this set up and making notes of how it all affected you (including notes of what you did differently) that will give you a framework for these events next year.

You can try different things when approaching these events. There are many options, including-

• Changing opening hours
• Bringing more staff in
• Staging an in-store event
• Sending out email reminders to your mailing list
• Giving extra loyalty points or coinciding a sale with the event

It's by trying these different things and having notes to refer back to that you will start to build a picture of what works.

NOT EVERYTHING CAN BE BOUGHT ON THE HIGH STREET

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Read how retail is more positive than negative

I was looking for a little inspiration for today's blog and I decided to google "retail problems" to see if there was anything there to prompt me. I kind of wish I hadnt. There are hundreds of links such as this one-

http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/the-most-soul-crushing-things-about-working-retail#.xtRbJeez1L

And they are all about the bad things about working in retail, the bad things about customers and how bad things are. I'd like to think that my blog over the years gives the opposite view to this. I've looked at how retail can be looked at and found to be interesting for those working in it. The fascination of retail for me can be looked at in so many different ways but I'll have a look at some here-

Every day is different

There are do many industries that I've heard this said about but nowhere is it as true as I'm retail. Every single day brings in a new challenge, a new question, a new customer or a new idea. The dynamic nature of retail is what makes it engaging and keeps people interested and coming back for more. New ideas from those in charge make change management a massive part of retail and will ensure that it continues to be a dynamic work environment.

Interaction with people

Linked to the above, it's the constant flow of new customers that go some way to making each day different. This is amplified if you are a niche or speciality retailer as you will have to spend more time with each new customer as you explain your offering to them. And for me, this is where it can get really interesting. The opportunity to spend quality time with customers (new or old) transforms the day. It's what turns the mundane into the extraordinary as you get to build what you hope and expect to be long-term relationship with your customers.

The team aspect

It's being part of a team that are (usually) all pulling in the same direction that is another aspect of retail that I really enjoy. I know that it's not the only industry in which you work as part of a team but the team bond always feels stronger in retail than anywhere else I've worked. The fact that we're all in it together and the goals are shared means that we share a bond and every action that one of us takes affects all the others. This can have negative consequences but more often than not, means that everyone does what is in the best interests of the customers and their colleagues.