The Retail Doctor's Guide to Growing Your Business : A Step-by-Step Approach to Quickly Diagnose, Treat, and Cure

It's one of the toughest economies in years, but don't fear-the doctor is in Are you among the thousands of retailers frustrated by market challenges and looking for ways to take control of your business? Are you looking for the advice of an expert consultant, but unable to spend the money? Then The Retail Doctor's Guide to Growing Your Business is for you. By providing a step-by-step approach to evaluate your current business practices, The Retail Doctor offers professional guidance Redesign your organizational structure Reap the maximum returns on your investment Keep your business financially healthy Following the advice in these pages will help you devise a sound strategy to accomplish your goals and outperform your competitors. You'll also gain clear insight into all areas of human resource management, sales training, merchandising methods, and marketing. While your competitors are looking for a magic bullet to solve their problems, with The Retail Doctor's Guide to Growing Your Business , you can be making changes that will guarentee enormous returns and financial success. The Retail Doctor's Guide to Growing Your Business: A Step-By-Step Approach to Quickly Diagnose, Treat, and Cure 7 Contents 11 Acknowledgments 13 Introduction: What’s Ailing You? 15 Store Performance Down? Well, What Are You Doing about It? 16 Meet the Ruler of Your Business: The Brain or the Heart 17 How Your Personality Type Affects Your Business 20 Chapter 1: Financials Are the Vital Signs to Measuring Your Success 25 Leverage 26 Profit and Loss Statement 27 The Lazy Owner’s Way to Deal with POS Reports 30 Pricing 32 Sales by Category 34 Your Open-to-Buy 34 Don’t Hold on to Past Failures 35 Merchandise Turn 35 Average Sale 37 Average Number of Items 38 Average Number of Customers 40 Year-over-Year 40 The Will to Change 40 Chapter 2: The Anatomy of a Successful Retail Store 45 The Grid 47 Traffic Flow 49 Use the Arrow Floor Design to Avoid Church Aisle Layouts 50 Merchandising Overview 51 Segmenting Merchandise Lowers Sales 53 Selecting the Merch for a Display 53 Avoid Unwelcoming Signs 67 How to Get Rid of the Old Stuff 72 Chapter 3: The Right Employees Are Your Most Important Asset—How to Hire Right 75 Why You Need Job Descriptions 76 How to Create Your Job Descriptions 77 Know Who You Want as an Employee 78 How to Create Your Interview Questions 81 Preparing for Their Answers: Best, Average, Failing 85 Recruiting 86 How to Review Your Applications 89 Setting the Stage for the Interview 91 Deal Killers 93 Deciding Who to Hire 100 Chapter 4: Sell It or You’re Dead 101 Touch Every Personality to Get the Sale 103 Clerking versus Selling 105 Part One: The Greeting 108 Defeat the Hell Zone 112 Part Two: Windows of Contact 116 Part Three: Your Question 123 Part Four: Features and Benefits 125 The Close 126 Part Five: Closing with an Add-On 129 Sales Autopsy: What if They Didn’t Buy? 132 Existing Employees Require More Explanations 133 The Worst Questions and Response 137 Chapter 5: Clone Yourself to Train Effectively 141 Where to Start? 142 Pet Peeves 143 Stand Out with Scripts 144 Back to Your Training List 146 Training Badges 147 The Six Stages of Training 147 Training Stage One 148 Stage Two Training 150 Stage Three Training 151 Stage Four Training 153 Stage Five Training 155 Stage Six Training 156 Trial Run 157 Training the Four Personalities 158 Train the Trainer 161 Six Stages of Training Overview for Trainers 165 Chapter 6: Building and Coaching Your Team 167 Set the Bar and the Guardrails 168 Be a Chameleon 168 Helping Drivers Get Results 169 Showing Analyticals a Process 169 Helping Expressives Focus 170 Making Amiables Your Friend 171 Motivating Employees 172 Regular Store Meetings Are Key 173 Employee Reviews 176 Creating a Goal Sheet 177 Shark Charts 180 Mystery Shoppers 181 Employee Recognition 185 The Sales Equation 187 Raises and Promotions 189 How to Deal with Employees’ ‘‘Survivor Guilt’’ 190 Getting Rid of Dead Weight 193 Spot Culture Issues before They Intensify 193 Written Warnings 196 Firing Bitter Betty 197 Make It Work 199 Chapter 7: What You Don’t Know about the Web Could Kill You 201 Tier One Marketing—Your Web Site 202 Tier Two Marketing—Social Media: Breadcrumbs that Attract Potential Customers to Your Web Site 215 Updating Your Old School Santa Claus Marketing Tactics 228 Chapter 8: It’s Up to You Now 233 How Your Personality Type Can Grow Your Business 245 The 13 Steps to Being a Top Salesperson 249 About the Author 253 Index 255 0470587172,9780470587171 Financials are the vital signs to measuring your success The anatomy of successful retail store Your employees are your most important asset : how to hire right Your employees have to sell or you're dead Clone yourself to train effectively Building and coaching your team What you don't know about the web could kill you It's up to you now. Provides definite ideas for what business owners should and should not do to create a strong, sustainable, and profitable business. * A must read for any business owner.