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SALES – PROFIT – INVENTORY

May 5, 2016 | By: deaneparkes

Key areas of focus to thrive are sales, profit and inventory.

Sales is generally the first focus of a business for no sales no business.

Often mood is determined on a day’s sales. For some it is Wall Street for others it is their own independent business. Is our stock rising or falling?

Customer service, merchandising and promotion are the primary ways to grow and maintain continual sales growth.

Customer service is # 1! Far and away…and then some…

Many stores experience constant staff turnover, it is imperative to have ongoing customer service training programs. Especially for owners and managers…

On the line is a $50,000+ lifetime natural food shopper to keep satisfied.

The floor supervisor is primarily responsible for the emotional tone of customer service.

Happy staff happy customers…

Merchandising – mass market agonizes over merchandising as they know this is second best way to increase sales.

Walk mass market aisles – pick up tips, read Why We Buy, ask staff if any have creative talents beyond their day job.

I worked with a woman who made unbelievable window displays. My job was to stay out of her way.

Back mid 90s when Factors were driving Echinacea tincture sales Claire surprised me with her first window display.

She built a window display with her children of a ski hill with skiers made from Popsicle sticks, Echinacea cutout heads and pipe cleaners. The scene was of skiers falling down a winter landscape…with the banner ‘Official Sponsor of the Echinacea Ski Team’. It was incredible!

Another large window display she enlarged a picture of my face from an advertorial in the local paper, pasted it on the head of an obese couch potato guy in a rocking chair surrounded with all the health products on sales that month…and yes the sexual enhancement products…real chuckle Claire.

Promotion – Create new customers – DO NOT WAIT FOR OZ!!!

Create your own community OZ Effects!

You sell solutions for health and wellbeing – tell your community about them, I repeat do not wait for OZ!.

PROFIT:

More competition, shrinking margins, rising costs lead to a focus on bottom line as it must!

I expect you have a trusted financial advisor helping you. If not find one!

To increase MARGIN learn in detail the margins you make from all products you sell.

Create a margin plan. If currently you have a 33% margin focus on raising it to 35%.

If you are unsure of your margin make this a priority.

If you raise it 2% in 2016 CELEBRATE…

Sales and margin goals should be clearly defined, continually improved and maintained…

INVENTORY:

The basic rule of thumb is to ensure you discontinue any product that has not sold in 90 days.

A few years back after hearing this a friend with a few retail stores asked ‘how much inventory can I have over 90 days?’ I told her my understanding is none!

So she and a few other retail friends of hers did an experiment.

They did a complete review of the stores inventories to see what had not sold in 90 days.

The highest store had 60% inventory not sold in 90 days.

The average 30%.

So if you have $100,000 inventory up to $60,000 could be stale stock to use paying bills, expansion, or vacation….increased CASH FLOW and security.

Of late I have been hearing cash flow becoming more of a challenge. Inventory ‘control’ could be your answer to a restful sleep.

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