At lunchtime on Saturday I moved copies of the My Kitchen Rules Cookbook 2 from our food section and placed them to between our two top selling newspapers. By lunchtime on Sunday we had achieved five sales.
What makes this five copies in twenty four hours amazing is that we had not sold a copy of the title in the previous two weeks. We felt that My Kitchen Rules Cookbook 2 was at the end of its sales run for us and were contemplating returning the remaining stock. Our one simple move on Saturday got us five easy sales.
Talk about feeling stupid. What if we had made the move two weeks ago? What sales would we have achieved in that time? How had we missed the opportunity?
I want to achieve well above average sales for magazines. Not only for the financial return but, more importantly, the thrill of above average achievement.
Okay, I get that we cannot give every title time between our two top selling newspapers. However, I was frustrated to discover that we had such a terrific opportunity waiting on the shelves for us to make our move. We did and, as I have written, the sales result was wonderful.
We newsagents need to do this regularly, act outside the average and chase every sales opportunity possible. While convenience stores, petrol outlets, supermarkets and other magazine retailers do just the average – anything extra has a cost – we don’t have the same rules, we are free to be entrepreneurial when it comes to magazines.
This is what we need to do, it’s what we can be: entrepreneurial with magazines. Get it right and incremental sales are yours. Ignore the opportunity and you achieve average.
We each of us have to decide where we stand with magazines – frustrations with distribution notwithstanding – act on this.
As I have shown with My Kitchen Rules Cookbook 2, even the simplest move can get files which might otherwise have passed you by.