I attended a webinar on Friday presented by BIGresearch, an Ohio-based company that does a lot of surveying and research in the retail industry among many other sectors. I learned two interesting things that could pertain to any retail establishment.
•    One: Layaway. It’s been with us forever… at least I remember learning about it as a kid. Given the current economy, it makes sense that layaway is again becoming very popular—especially at home electronics retailers, but also for any retailer offering bigger-ticket items. According to the research, 20 percent of survey respondents 18 years of age and older are “likely/likel...more

With many business owners reporting improving sales in June, it is time to plan a better fall season.   How to take control so YOU are in command?   Try benchmarking to begin.  Take your last 3 months.   Count your appointments, then how many customers you sold.  That will give you the stats to establish your closing ratio (divide customers sold by number of appointments).   Next total all your sales.  Now divide that by the number of customers you sold.  That will give you your average size of sale. Now it is easy to plan your fall season.  Just decide the sales you want each month and work backward to determine number of customers (divid...more

Honesty -- This economy has our industry in a tailspin that has probably not been seen before. We are all struggling. Openness --- It is in times like these that new products develop as a by product of the bad times. These my friends are very bad times. We have decided to hold an online conference event. It is our hope that this will save our company money, your company money and the client money and time. It is not just in our industry but it is in every industry... people just are no longer going to trade shows.  So my friends in the industry, are you open to new ideas such as the one we are presenting? Finally there has to be ...more