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Small Businesses Can Sell the Black Friday Way

Written on November 27, 2009 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Business

black_friday Here we are … it’s Black Friday – the day when, historically, retailers get into the black. So they’re hoping that people shop, shop, shop.

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Hear George & Mary-Lynn share tips over the store's intercom on The Bigg Success Show! Click the player to listen while you read: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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marylynn Black Friday has almost become a sporting event. I just don’t enjoy shopping that much so it’s not for me. But plenty of people sure do enjoy trying to find that irresistible bargain.

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george I don’t like standing in line for anything but I especially don’t like doing it to spend money! Crowds are great – at a concert or a ball game!

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In honor of Black Friday, we want to talk about merchandising in your business. We’ll discuss four lessons you can learn from retailers about selling your wares.

Price check in Lane 123
If you’re a true retailer – you buy goods at wholesale and resell them – it’s easy to determine your cost.

If you’re a service business, it’s more difficult. But you have to know how much anything you sell costs or you risk charging too little. A lot of small business owners fail for this very reason.

Attention K-Mart Shoppers. There’s a blue light special on …
K-Mart had scrapped this program. They brought it back earlier this year.

Surprise your good customers with a special deal now and then. We heard about a car dealer who would occasionally pick a customer whose car was getting serviced and give them their service that day for free. It created tremendous goodwill.

It would be a customer who had bought the car from him and did all their service with him. In other words, a customer on whom he made a lot of money. Occasionally giving them free service was just a small rebate.

But it paid dividends to the car dealer as well – he got a lot of word of mouth advertising.

Manager on duty to the front of the store please
The front of the store makes us think about the psychology of buyers. Have you ever noticed how most grocery stores have a fairly similar layout?

Research shows that most people walk into a store and turn to the right. So what do you want to put in the front of the store on the right side?

High margin items, of course!

In a grocery store, you notice the milk and eggs are usually in the back – nowhere near the bread. They want you to walk through the whole store so you see more things you might buy on impulse.

Every business has customers who behave in similar ways. Get to understand how you can naturally show your customers more of your products and services.

Clean up in aisle 5
Just about every business that handles inventory ends up with some slow moving items. You need to clean them out so you can get new inventory in that will turn faster so you make more money.

The mistake some small business owners make is being afraid to discount an item – especially for lower than cost. But the sooner you get an item that isn’t selling off your shelf, the better.

Another version of this is displaying a discounted item with a full-priced item. Think about it …

How many times do you see a skirt that’s on sale displayed with a full-priced top?

You like the combination so you buy it. You may be able to do the same type of thing in your business.

Retailers have become pretty sophisticated at discounting items to draw people to their store. They know the law of averages means these people will buy a lot more than just the sale items. Find the lures to bring in your customers and you’ll be a bigg success!

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Thanks so much for reading our post today. Please join us next time when we’ll look at the only three ways to get more done. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

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The Trick to Keeping Customers

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Shape Shifting Leads to Bigg Success

Written on June 16, 2009 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Business

Last time, we discussed the two ways to create wealth: other people’s money and other people’s labor (i.e. their time and talent). Historically, there’s been more focus on other people’s money as the lever to riches. Now, other people’s labor holds more promise.

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Hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss shape shifting on The Bigg Success Show! Click the purple player to listen while you read: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Today’s show extends that concept and is inspired by one of the characters from the HBO hit series, True Blood. Sam Merlotte, who owns the bar, is a shape-shifter. He can change forms – from human to dog and back.

So here’s a little behind the scenes here at Bigg Success: we often get asked how we get ideas for our shows. We’ve been thinking about this shape-shifting thing for some time as a possible fun topic. Then we saw a Harvard article about a new business strategy.

The words “a shape-shifting enterprise” leapt off the page. Voila … a show was born!

Back to the article – it discusses how many large companies are starting to outsource core activities in order to focus resources on solving customer problems.

The author postulates that the future value of companies will be the sum total of all their arrangements. Let’s emphasis that – using words we use more often here at Bigg Success – the future value of businesses, both large and small, will be in the total value of its relationships.

But a key thing to keep in mind is that businesses don’t have relationships; it’s the people in those businesses who have relationships.

You may have a relationship with a customer who has a problem. How many other customers like this customer have the same problem? With how many do you have relationships?

Once you’ve identified that, who in your network can best solve that problem? By becoming the customer’s go-to person (or company) – by delivering the right product or service at the right time for the right price, you’ll create value for your business.

The Harvard article we talked about references a Fortune article about how Chinese and Indian companies are structuring themselves. The answer: they’re positioning themselves to be shape-shifters!

Shape-shifting is a key for us, as entrepreneurs, to survive and thrive in all economic conditions. It extends well beyond outsourcing. It’s an even deeper relationship, which will create more opportunities for small businesses to work with large companies.

To become a shape-shifter:

Watch your operating leverage. The more fixed costs your business has relative to its total costs, the greater your degree of operating leverage. Just like with financial leverage, higher operating leverage can work against us if things take a downturn.

That’s one of the secrets to being able to be a shape-shifter. If you keep your fixed costs low, you can quickly maneuver your organization to take advantage of opportunities that may present themselves.

Seek out strategic alliances. Explore opportunities to collaborate or joint venture with other people and organizations. The do-it-all-yourself mindset is so yesterday. Focus on what you do best and work with people doing what they do best. This is another key to shape-shifting.

Work with anyone and everyone where it’s mutually beneficial, including your competitors. You may find ways to do more together than either of you can do on your own.

Sometimes you may take the lead; sometimes they may take it. You don’t care. You’re shape-shifting yourself to bigg success!

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