New Year resolutions for newsagents and other retailers
While we all have to make our own New Year resolutions, here are some suggestions for newsagents looking for business-based New Year resolutions for 2012.
- Out with the old. Quit old stock, anything which has not sold in the last six months. Old stock turns customers off. Being a retailer of last resort is not a business plan.
- Stop relying on reps to do orders for you. Order stock based on what has sold. By stopping supplier reps doing orders for you will probably find that you cut your stock holding and increase your stock turn.
- Review your roster. Look at sales per hour and either work on building sales efficiency to justify the roster or trim the hours when sales per hour show you to be over staffed.
- Do a magazine relay. Rebuild your magazine offer from the ground up, based on your sales data and suggestions from team members. Take ownership of the performance of magazines in your business.
- Answer the questions: what do you stand for? Answer this in what you stock, how you merchandise it, the service you provide and how you promote your business. Just relying on a shingle – NEWSAGENCY – above your door to declare what you stand for are over. You need to own your unique selling proposition.
- Develop a marketing plan. Map out how you plan to market your business, outside your business, over the year. Include community engagement as well as more traditional catalogue and flyer based campaigns.
- Drive efficiency. What is it you are doing in your business today which does not add value to the business? Look for busy work which you can stop doing … and stop doing it.
- Cut debt. This is the most important of all. Debt is a high cost on any newsagency business. Every dollar of debt you eliminate is interest saved. Make 2012 about dramatically cutting your reliance on debt. If you plan to invest capital in 2012, spend on cost saving, business driving infrastructure.
If all newsagents did these things we would be a commercial force, a retail network, to be reckoned with.
I have put this starter list of New Year resolutions together considering the challenges of 2011, what we can reasonably expect economically from 2012 and the disruption to core newsagency lines which will continue as the year unfolds.
Please add more resolution suggestions through comments…