This Old Business...Written by Michael S. Winicki
Not long ago I was asked to come out and take a look at a business that had been around for about 10 years... but owner was frustrated with amount of money he was making. Here is story of a natural food retail store located in New York State. The business itself is located in western New York State, within a small village. It sits upon one of “main drags” going through village and probably sees as much car & foot traffic as any other business in limited “downtown” area. I’m going to approach this as an “outside-inside” project. In other words, I’m going to look at outside of business first… and see how we can improve/market that better and then we’ll go inside for a review of that part of business. Outside: Quite frankly village this business is located in is in tough shape. It consists of quite a few buildings that need some exterior help such as painting and what not. The facade for this business is for most part is good, except for a couple areas that I’ll touch upon shortly. The big problem I have with front of building is color white. While color white is good for a great many applications, I think for a retail storefront that is trying to attract attention it’s just plain boring. And since many of buildings in village are also white this causes business to lose some of its identity. What would I do? Probably paint it a variety of bright colors… yellows, reds, oranges. Colors that are bright and livid, colors that stand out. Colors that make building jump to attention and make it noticeable to anyone traveling down street. The building needs to be bold and color white doesn’t cut it. Right now it looks just like any tired, boring storefront in “any village” USA. The whole building does not have to be repainted, just front portion that is going to catch eye. This will save on costs. Secondly concrete steps need to be patched up. This isn’t an expensive or time consuming project either but it can improve appearance AND PERCEPTION of business 100%. And remember perception is everything. The front sign could be done in brighter colors also but I’m more concerned with facade and concrete work at this point. The last thing that needs be done from an “outside-in” perspective is to change, redo or eliminate all signage hanging or taped on front doors and windows. Many of present signs are “dog-eared”, “yellowed” or “sun-bleached”. These signs don’t present a good image as customer enters building. Paper signs need to be replaced on a regular basis in order to keep entryway from looking anything other than “clean”, “organized” and while I hate word, it fits in this circumstance “professional”. Let me put this important point across to you right now. The profits generated by business are tied to prices you charge. Duh--right! But you see in order to charge higher prices a business has to have a certain look or meet certain expectations in customer’s mind. Remember a business that is well maintained, well run and well organized can still discount products and have sales. But a business that is not well maintained, well run and well organized can not ever hope to get higher pricesyou see perception of business just doesn’t allow it to charge more. Inside: The thing I noticed after I first stepped into building was “inconsistency”. What I mean by this is that we have old building with old style walls with a drop ceiling and a tile floor. While I’m not recommending major construction I think there are a couple things that can be done to make business look more “uniform” and “consistent”. Let’s talk about walls first. Since we’re not in a position to redo floor and remove drop ceiling let’s cover up walls. With what you may ask? What about putting up pictures of East Otto and surrounding areas? Put up photos of old buildings and of people that have lived in area. This will help give business a “theme”, which it really doesn’t have at this point and it’s a theme that ties itself to community. Now ceiling, ceiling tiles need to be desperately replaced and/or painted. These tiles aren’t expensive and sections of ceiling could be replaced over time. The floor… what floor needs is to be stripped and waxed. And it should be waxed on a regular basis. I know of no other thing that can improve overall look of a business more so than keeping floor looking great. This isn’t expensive to do results would be incredible. Like I said previously if overall perception of store is one of being well maintained, well organized and well run then store will not only see more business but profits will increase because it (the store) can charge more to fit it’s new image. Inventory needs to be increased… not by thousands of dollars but in a couple important areas. First whole “low-carb” thing that is sweeping nation is a golden nugget of profit that “Naturally Your” is virtually ignoring. I would invest a few hundred dollars into this category as soon as possible. And then I would advertise stink out of it.
| | Multiple Channels, Multiple TimesWritten by Robert F. Abbott
I've just been reading about frustrations of a Human Resources manager. He's tired of having to answer same questions about benefits over and over again.I understand that, having been on both sides of issue, both as a consumer of benefits and in communicating about them on behalf of corporate clients. Benefits can be slippery eels of internal communication. But, to put issue into context, this is another case of complex communication. In this case, a large volume of information that's not easy to understand. Descriptions of benefits typically involve a high level of density: in other words, they contain a lot of information in a small amount of 'space'. Many of them resemble insurance policies -- long on legal language and short on examples and anecdotes. As a result, information is accessible to only a small proportion of whole group. How do you deal with this kind of communication challenge? Multiple channels, multiple times. That means repeating message many times, and sending it through as many different channels as possible. For example, when one of my clients changed its benefits package to offer more choices, it used this strategy. Collectively, overall value of benefits would work out same for company. But, individual employees would have to make choices, and in many cases value of individual benefits they received would depend on how wisely they made their decisions. In turn, that could lead to equivalent of 'buyer's remorse' and complaints. The company took a proactive approach to changeover. It began planning well in advance of switch, and its preparations included equivalent of focus groups to identify concerns, questions, and problems.
|