Salt Lake Tribune - Business

Salt Lake Tribune - Business

Another interesting article can provide usefull information to business owners.

One question I have is McDonalds using call centers for the drive through windows. Using a call center to take drive through orders does not seem to be very customer friendly and could be an outstanding opportunity for competitors.

Salt Lake Tribune - Business

Salt Lake Tribune - Business

Interesting article discussing the issues facing Supervalu as it takes over many Albertston's stores.

The article also gives important insight on some of the problems at Albertsons that will be important lessons for all business owners plus talks about the actions of today's consumers.

deseretnews.com | Zions opens business resource center

deseretnews.com | Zions opens business resource center: "Zions opens business resource center
By Jenifer K. Nii
Deseret Morning News
Zions Bank this week will launch its Business Resource Center, a free service for business owners and prospective entrepreneurs who are working on a business plan, trying to get an idea off the ground or growing to the next level."

Here is a great new resource for those in northern Utah. Zions has been active in trying to help small businesses succeed and this consolidates multiple resources in one spot. Take a look at it if your in that area.

Amazon Customer Service

We talked about return policies in a previous post. Here is a customer's opinion of Amazon's return policy. Would your customer blog about you???

Forma Line: "I love Amazon.com
When I arrived home from work last Monday, I couldn't connect to my wireless network. I assumed it was Comcast crapping out again, but a call to their customer service (which has generally been good) identified the problem as being my wireless router.

I spent the next two nights performing all sorts of resets, hard resets, and firmware uploads, but I couldn't get the router to respond. I spoke with a nice guy in India and we determined that the router was defective. This was Thursday night.

I bought the router from Amazon.com back in late November, so I knew I could reprint a copy of the invoice. When I looked up the order in my purchase history, I saw a link next to the record which said 'return this item.' That's what I wanted to do. It took less than 2 minutes to fill out the form.

The next morning, I received an email message from Amazon. They told me they were shipping a new router to me via 2-day UPS and that I needed to send the faulty router back to them within 30 days. They included a prepaid label for the box.

The router arrived at my office this morning. My old router is on the way back. My wireless network is up and running again. It didn't cost me anything and it couldn't have been much more convenient.

A few weeks ago, I bought a moderately expensive coffee maker from them. When it arrived, it was too tall to fit under my kitchen cupboards. I should have measured it, but I didn't. It was my own stupid fault. But they refunded me the entire purchase price and reimbursed me for the shipping costs I paid to send it back.

That's why I love Amazon. I probably would have put up with a bit of hassle on both of these transactions and continued to do business with them. But, they made it ridiculously easy.

So, I'll continue to spend more money with them than I can possibly justify.

posted by Simon J. at 6:20 PM 0 comments links to this post"

Employee Performance

You hire employees to perform the functions necessary of the position. It takes both the employee and the employer to put together the program that will allow that employee to succeed.

When you first hire an employee you should have a basic job description for that person and the expectations of the position. You also should have a basic training program set up to get the employee up and running.

For example with a new employee you give them a period to learn the position. At this point it is your responsibility to give them the training they need to perform in the duties assigned. One of the best ways to ensure that employee is learning what they need what they need to know is to have a check off list of training needed for the position. Also remember that most people learn best by actually doing what is being trained so make sure the employee is getting the hands on experience they will need.

As the employee becomes more experienced, the expectations of that employee should grow as their experience and talents in the position grows. Remember in the previous post I talked about finding out what motivates the person, this is where this becomes important. You must find out what will motivate the employee to increase their performance and give them new challenges.

Once the employee has learned the basic skills necessary to handle the position, is to gradually increase the expectations and performance requirements.

One of the things that you have to watch out for is giving the person so many performance requirements that they decide the job is not worth it anymore.

However there are some employees who just will not meet the performance standards set up. At this point you need to evaluate whether the employee has received all the necessary training for the position. Then you will need to talk to the employee and see what can be done in order to increase performance. However, there are just some employees who are just meant to be someplace else. If you have done everything possible to give the employee tools to succeed and they will not it is time for them to find another job.

While no one likes to be fired there are also few managers who like to fire someone. However, there are times when being fired is the best thing for the person. The position they are in may not be the right one for them and letting them go will give an opportunity for the person to find their passion. Your ultimate responsibility is to the business, you cannot have someone who will bring the company and their fellow workers down. While it is the action of last resort, when the time comes it must be done.

Remember the most important aspects of putting together performance requirements:
1. Make sure the employees are properly trained.
2. The performance requirements are reasonable and achievable.
3. You have adequate one on ones with employees to ensure the employee can get a feel for how they are performing and look at areas of improvement.

While the thought of having performance requirements may make some people uncomfortable, they are designed to help your business and insure that your employees are giving the best possible service to your customers.

The more successful you help your employee to be, the more successful you business will be.

Motivating Employees

One of the biggest problem many retailers and especially small business retailers have is the hiring, training, and keeping good employees.

Your employees are one of your most valuable assets along with your customers. How they treat your customers will greatly depend on your success.

You must keep your employees motivated and wanting to come to work.

The first part of the equation is actually pretty easy. Threat your employees with respect and they will respect you and the company. If you treat them like dirt or a slave, then they will have no respect for you, your company, or your customers.

To motivate your employee you must first find out what is their motivation. We cannot motivate employees on what motivates us, but we must find their motivation. To make matters more complicated, all employees are going to have different motivators, so you will have to find out the motivator of each employee.

The best way to find out what motivates them is to get to know them. Find out where they have been and where they want to go. You can either find this out through talking to them or what I have done is give each employee a survey that asks what their goals, dreams and aspirations are. I also tried to find out any other hidden talents they have that will benefit the company and make their work more enjoyable.

Once you find out their motivators you have to come up with ways to get them motivated using their motivators. How you do this us up to you but one of the best way is to get the employee involved with their development and give them opportunities to showcase their talents. Also, once you find out their goals you to work out ways for them to reach their goals. There is a good chance that their goals will eventually lead them away from your business, but if you help them along the way, not only will they be a better employee, they will have loyalty toward you and your company plus may actually be able to find people to take their place when their time to leave comes.

A motivated employee will build your business, an unmotivated employee will kill your business.

In a future entry I will discuss performance standards and employees

Failure of Media Play Lesson #1

It was recently announced that Musicland group is closing all 61 Media Play locations across the country. For those of you who are not familiar with Media Play, they are a large big box store focusing on Music, Books, Movies and Software.

I first encountered Media Play when I moved to a new city in 1997. Where I lived before we had Hastings which was similar to Media Play so I started going into Media Play. Until a few years ago they had a large magazine selection, music selection, and book area. In the last five years they have added more software, added games, and made the other departments smaller.

A few weeks ago I went into Media Play and was not impressed by what I saw. The store had several failings and you could clearly see why the store was faltering and why ultimately they are being closed.

While many of its failings ultimately come from not finding its niche, I will also discuss other reasons for its demise that lead up to the lack of a niche and how you can avoid the problems.

Lesson #1 on Media Play's failing was that it tried to be all things to all people. When I first went in there they had a fantastic selection of books and magazines. But, as the market changed their answer was to add items and cut down on their other departments and instead of having some very good departments with good selection, they had many departments with small selections. The last time I went into Media Play a couple of weeks ago I found nothing I was looking for so I went elsewhere.

So lesson number 1: Do not try to be all things to all people.

Small Booksellers Missing the Boat?

In my local newspaper this past week there was another article about a book store that is closing its doors. Like many small retailers there has been hard times for small book sellers with the onslaught of Borders, Barnes and Noble, Wal-Mart, Amazon and others.

You would think that writers would be concerned about the small stores going out of business because the market is being taken over by discounter who sell books for less. However, what I hear most from these writers is that the small book stores have done little for writers so there is a lack of caring.

What do the writers mean when they say small book sellers have done little for them? In most cases when writers are first getting started, they have a difficult time getting the word out about their books. The small book sellers have done little to promote these up and coming authors. Some of these small operations only focus on the bigger writers and some see working with writers as just too difficult.

Meanwhile the writers tell me that companies such as Amazon have done to promote them and get publicity for them than any of the small booksellers.

So in other words the small booksellers are missing the boat. I know of several small independent booksellers that are doing great business and having no trouble competing against the big boys. How are they doing it? They are working with these new and local writers promoting them, having book signing, and readings. While it may take more effort to promote these new authors, the payoffs can be huge as they will be loyal to that bookseller and help them out. In addition it gives great publicity for the book seller to show that they are working with local and new authors trying to get their careers off the ground.

Small booksellers need to work harder getting people in the doors and promoting new talent is the perfect way to get the walk in traffic. A person may come in to hear a writer talk or read but then some other title catches their eye on the way through the store and there is another sale.

Yes, its takes effort but in today's business world you must work smarter to stay in business. Build relationships that will benefit both parties. After all, that new author you help out may be the Rowling and will tell the world where they got their help starting out.

Be Seamless

Have you ever purchased a product online and tried to return the product in one of the brick and mortar stores? For many customers this can be a very frustrating thing which leads to negative feelings about the company.

The trouble with many companies is that they have not integrated their websites and stores into one system that allows seamless returns. One of the major office supply stores still uses a DOS based system for their internet/phone/special order sales which is totally incompatible with their in-store registers. So when a customer wishes to do a return, it becomes a long draw out process that not only taxes the patience of the customer but the employees as well.

An integrated system is needed that allows the employees to do a return from an internet sale as easily as they could do any other return.

Also, your website should carry more items that you do not carry in the store. An employee should be able to place an order for the customer in an easy fashion that not takes up tons of valuable time.

Here are some suggestions to improve your service:

1. Have an integrated system that makes orders easy to place in store for items that are not carried in the store.

2. Insure that the returns are seamless whether the customer purchased the items in the store, through a special order, or on the internet.

3. Insure that all employees are trained to use the all the system's functions.

4. Do not make the customers and employees feel that you are two separate companies competing against each other. Customer should feel comfortable doing business in the store or on the website including sales and returns. Policies should be in place to make it seamless for the customer. Employees should not have worry about how the products where purchased, only that they can quickly and easy take care of the customer.

In today's competitive marketplace, you have to make using your systems easy for the customers or the employees. Once the customer feels that your services are too difficult to use, they will find some else who will do things better and make things simple.

A Story of Two Stores

In today's marketplace you either have to adapt or you will not survive. Here is the story of two appliance stores from Spokane, Washington and how they reacted when big box electronic stores first moved into the city in 1996-1997.

Store Number One:

Both stores are located in the northwest area of Spokane. When Future Shop (a store similar to Best Buy but with commissioned salespeople) first opened thier two stores, the owner of store 1 was quoted in the paper as saying they didn't need to do anything different, that they where a great store and would survive.
None of the big box stores located in the same area as either of these retailers where located. However this retailers store was small and dingy. It actually reminded you of a used appliance store instead of a store selling all new appliances.
But like they said in the article they did nothing to adapt to the change with the arrival of the big box stores.

Store Number Two:

Contrast store number one with store number two. Store number two is located not too far south of store number 1.
When the big box stores arrived they saw that they could no longer do business the same way they had been doing business for many years.
What this store did was look at how the big box stores did business and did everything better than the big boxes. They had better customer service, they had free delivery and set up, and they cleaned up there store to make it look better and more inviting than the big box stores.
They also saw that the big box stores did not have the higher end appliances that are actually more profitable than the lower end ones. Also they created areas where customers could try out appliances which most big box stores don't have the ability to do.

Three months after the first big boxes opened their doors, store number 1 was the first of the independent appliance stores to close. However, store number 2 continues on with business that is improving every year.

To compete in this market place you must:

1. Adapt to change.

2. Find out what your competitors do good and bad and make your store better than theirs.

3. Find out what products you can carry that your competitors do not and exploit a market.

4. Have a clean inviting store.

While doing this things do not guarantee success, doing nothing guarantees you will fail.

Be Consistent

One of the most upsetting events that customers encounter is inconsistent policies especially toward returns. If you are a chain and have multiple locations, this can be created by different managers having different policies. This can also be created in a single store if all managers and the supervisors are not on the same page.

Here are some suggestions to improve this situation:

1. If you are a chain make sure that all your stores follow the same policy. Put the policy in writing and make sure all the management follows the policy.

2. If you are a single store make sure all the people in the store that make return decisions are on the same page. Write down the policy and ensure that all employees are trained properly on the why, what where of the policies.

3. While you do want to protect yourself against fraudulent returns, make sure that your return policies are not so stringent that you are sending customers to your competitors.

4. Go to all of your competitors and find out what there return policy is. Go even further and buy products from the store and see of they follow their policies. See how they react to the returns and if they try "save the sale".

5. Make returns seamless whether the customers has purchased in your bricks and mortar store or purchased on line. Nothing is more frustrating for a customer than to buy something on line and not being able to return in the local store or worse, the store telling the customer there is nothing we can do or there a separate operation.

6. Many customers think that if they go "over the heads" of regular employees management will do what they want. Once again you must have a policy in place that not only allows the customer to fell as though they are being treated right, and gives the employee the knowledge that management is behind them. Once again the best way to make this happen is have a customer friendly return policy.

Once again, one of the biggest frustrations customers have with stores is inconsistent policies. Work as a team to build workable policies that will work for the company but also work for the customer.

Welcome to Business Connect. This blog is run by the Dornoff Consulting Group. We have over 20 years experience in retail and customer service. This blog is designed to give helpful information for small businesses to run more effectively and compete against the Wal-Marts of the world. In addition we also specialize in Transit Oriented Development in helping find the right mix of businesses to locate in these developments and to help businesses and developers make their complexes a success.