How To Squeeze Everything You Can
Out of Everything You've Got
Many
years ago as a kid I went on a road trip with my father who was a long haul
truck driver. While traveling up
Interstate 40 at a pretty good clip of speed, I noticed an older, compact
foreign car pull out in the lane to pass us.
This seemed quite remarkable to my young mind at the time because my
father in his big rig was already doing well over 80 miles per hour! Undaunted the little foreign car with smoke
coming out his exhaust and an engine that sounded like it could explode at any
minute did pass us and pulled on off into the distance. My father remarked, "It appears
he's squeezing everything he can out of everything he's got!"
Perhaps you and I could take a lesson from this little
foreign compact car and apply the same philosphy to our jewelry stores. Many times while in prayer we often ask for
more strength, more grace, more of this and more of that when in reality we've
not done the most with what we've already been given. Can you see how this might apply to you?
Lets take marketing for a minute. One of things
I'm often asked is "How in the world do you find time to do all of the
nifty marketing things you do?" Pretty
simple..I take the time to get to my store one day a week when its early and no
one else is there. I then plan out my
marketing calendar that week, execute it and then let it go on autopilot. One example of this is my weekly store emails
to my customer database. Its easy to
plan a month's worth of emails using a simple online program like Constant
Contact. Just pick one of their
templates, copy and paste a picture in and add the text you want and there you
have it! It only takes 10-15 minutes to
do a month's worth and then you're on autopilot..free to get out on the sale
floor or do whatever it is you do best!
How about buying inventory? Another simple
thing...pull a report from your store's POS system of what you sold in the last
week or month (whichever works best for you).
Then analyze what has sold best for you and replinish it then and there.
When it stops selling well...stop ordering it!
Rather than always loading up on inventory at shows, how about
replinishing your store's best sellers a little at a time? I'll bet it'd help your cashflow and if it
sold quickly once, it'll probably do it again!
Do you take the time to make sure you've got your
"Never Outs" covered? This can
be anything from popular watch batteries to repair stock/findings, etc. In other words, don't be out of anything
crucial in your inventory or your repair shop!
How about add-on sales?
Do you have a counter special set up near your cash register so as to
enduce impluse sales? Of course, this
should come after you've already maximized the main sale by offering additional
add-on's to it...
Are you leveraging trade associations and vendor
relationships to their fullest?
Remarkably, I wasn't taking advantage of my Polygon membership like I
should be. Now I check it out daily for
great last minute vendor specials, bargains and closeouts that allow me to make
that little bit of extra gross profit that benefits the bottom line.
The real "Bottom Line" is...are you
really doing your best to "Squeeze Everything You Can Out of
Everything You've Got?" What
would it hurt to get to your store an hour or so early one day a week and to
take time to think about the systems that run your business? I'll bet if you do and you really implement
positive changes...you'll be like that foreign compact car and you'll leave
your competitors in the distance!
'Til Next Time,
Bill Warren, DDJM (Doctor of Dynamic Jewelry Marketing)
www.warrenmarketing.blogspot.com
goldman86@bellsouth.net
828-729-1020
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