February 2017

Meeting with IMPACT EXHIBITION MANAGEMENT CO., LTD

 In a new series, Antony Welfare, ‘The Retail Inspector’, provides advice on how smaller retailers can compete with larger businesses. In this second part, Antony lists 14 tips for top retailing.

1. Focus on the customer and provide world-class customer service – Understand their wants, needs and desires – build your business to deliver these.

2. Establish your brand and values – Build a brand that has the basic values to achieve what the customer requires and clearly defines your business and its way of operating.

3. Establish a customer-focused culture – Build a team that lives and breathes your values, making world-class customer service the heart of every team and successfully growing your business.

4. Make sure quality is in everything you do – Make sure that everything you do is done to the best ability of you and your teams – always strive to give the best service every day with every person you interact with.

5. Reward and incentivise to develop a motivated and happy team – A motivated and happy team will lead to happy customers, which leads to success – listen to and look after your team.

6. Manage your cash – Cash is sanity and profit is vanity, a business will go bankrupt due to lack of cash, not lack of profit. Understand where your money comes from and where it goes.

7. Develop and communicate a clear vision, strategies and plans – Know what you are trying to achieve and have a plan to get there.  Share the vision, strategies and plans with all your teams and partners.

8. Make your customers the heart of every team and make them feel special – Happy and satisfied customers are loyal and keep you successfully retailing.

9. Retail is detail – Get the details right for the customer and look after the detail - understand what is happening and make sure you ‘dot the i’s and cross the t’s’.

10. It’s not rocket science – Retail is one of the oldest forms of business – we buy a product and sell it on to the end consumer with a margin; make sure that that your margin delivers a profit.

11. Make decisions – Just do it.  Do not procrastinate; analyse the information, make decisions and give it a go – if it doesn’t work, try another way.

12. Manage with facts and information – Use the data and information you have in your business. Keep your emotions in check and make decisions based on solid information, analysis and research.

13. Don’t forget to sell your products and your business – After all we are in the retail business to sell products to customers – that is the reason they visit your stores and what they require from your business.

14. Be yourself and enjoy – this is your journey to achieving your potential in retail – make sure you take pleasure in it.