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Two Money Making Tips for the Price of One

Guest post by: Rick Segel

Article Overview: It’s not the silver bullet and there are certainly other reasons why businesses fail, however, it’s a bullet in your arsenal of weapons that can hit the bull’s eye faster and more accurately than many of our other weapons. Here are two tips you can keep in your arsenal.

Two Money Making Tips for the Price of One

Here’s a simple tip that I just learned which can help to keep you on top of what your competition is doing. One idea that’s been around for a while, and if you haven’t done it you should, is to go to Google Alerts and create an alert for the name of your business, your name, your employees’ names, your industry, and/or any of the important vendors you might carry and anything else that you would want to know if any news is written about them.

What Google does is to search the web so that anytime any of your key words are mentioned in any type of news story or mentioned in the media, they will send you an email alert. Here’s the interesting twist that is so obvious, but I never thought of it. You should create a Google Alert for all of your competitors. If they are mentioned in the media you will be aware of it. Most businesses will do press releases when there is some type of change or initiative that they want the public to know about. Don’t be the last to know – be the first to know.

Here’s tip number 2 – Obviously business conditions are challenging. Even the stores that are doing business and thriving are really working at it by constantly coming up with new promotions and activities to become a destination store in the eyes of their customers. There is one thing that is so obvious again that we sometimes fail to discuss. That common denominator that all successful stores seem to have is the fact that they are selling a hot product that customers are willing to pay for even during tough economic times.

In other words the trump card for slow business is that hot re-orderable item. So what does that mean? That means that we shouldn’t take the buying process for granted. We must work harder than ever before in selecting merchandise for our stores. We also must be constantly networking with other retailers and shopping other businesses to be able to pick up hot new trends that can be our new winning items. We need to be able to pick up these winners earlier on the curve because a winner will start up the bell-shaped curve and get to the peak and slowly come down. Too many times we are finding these hot sellers at the top of the peak or on the decline of the curve and we don’t get the full benefit of that desired item.

Also you must remember that when the item is on the incline the margins are fatter. On the decline the margins become thinner because everyone has it. What we have to do along with networking and shopping is to read as much trade information as possible. I like to go to trade shows or showrooms to see which are the busiest. In many cases it is an unscientific way of finding a winner and so many times that way works.

During economic slowdowns people might not buy the quantity that they bought in the past. They might not spend as much money as they have in the past. But we all seem to make room for that one item that everybody is buying. During the great depression there were still vendors who were setting sales records while during some of the boom years of the nineties vendors and stores were still going out of business.

It’s not the silver bullet and there are certainly other reasons why businesses fail, however, it’s a bullet in your arsenal of weapons that can hit the bull’s eye faster and more accurately than many of our other weapons. The bottom line is to work a little harder, work a little smarter, ask a few more questions, and most importantly go out and shop, shop, shop. It will make a difference.

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Article Tags: business, business success, business tips, retail, retail sales, sales tips, slow business, success



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