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

A stitch in time saves nine applies to business as well

There is such a thing as work that stops more work. For instance, at home yesterday my wife didn't want to take the extra 30 seconds in checking that she had the right log-in details for online banking. She put in the wrong code 3 times, and locked herself out of accessing the account. This prompted a 5 minute telephone call to the bank, passwords being reset and having to effectively re-register through the system to select new passwords and then having to reset access through the apps on both the iPhone and the ipad. In total, approximately 15 minutes of extra work.

And it's like that in retail. Being able to see events before they happen comes from forward-thinking and experience. Having witnessed events unfold before is a good market that they may happen again if left unchecked. Seeing an employee is unhappy or down is the point in time to deal with it - not waiting until they've handed in their notice. The extra work in ensuring that they are happy is a lot less work than dealing with the fallout and the recruitment and training process.  Having that sit down talk and being able to listen and hopefully help one of your team is easier than processing the resignation, doing exit interviews, advertising the role, assessing the applications, conducting the interviews, selecting the applicant, offering the role, completing the paperwork, starting the induction and training the new recruit.

It's just a short blog today, but I must emphasise the point before I go. Every part of your role is determined by decision-making. Even inaction is a decision not to act on a particular issue. The people who work around you will form their opinion of you based on what you do, how you act. It is therefore important that you seek to address issues at the earliest convenient juncture and try to avert situations from becoming things that absorb vast amounts of your time.

And this applies to situations with customers as well. Dealing with potential complaints in a decisive and definite manner will stop them turning into complaints that turn ugly and take up your time. And your customers will appreciate it. For example, if a customer believes that they have been wrongly charged for an item, taking them to the relevant part of the store and going through the pricing with them usually resolved the situation at source, rather than it escalating at the till point into some kind of argument. If this doesn't help, then a course of action to satisfy them is much better than allowing them to walk away unhappy.