Control what you can - Inventory is a prime candidate ...

How to increase sales during tough times…

When the going gets tough, you begin to wonder, what is it that you can do, apart from hoping to get new customers.

Actually, there are quite a few things..

1. Inventory.. Reduce Fresh supply… Evaluate each and every purchase with an eagle eye. I am often surprised, to find owner/retailer hand over this critical responsibility to a few old and trusted employees. They are no doubt doing what they have been doing for many years now.

New Action:- Just ask a few questions when the next order is about to be released and you will surely find orders, which you could avoid placing.

2. Check Inventory.. Check out the age ( less than 30 days, 90 days etc) of the different SKUs that you have, not just on display but even those in your warehouses.

New Action :- Take a stock statement from your computer and go out and physically check, if what the computerised statement which is showing the stock, is actually available and is shown to you . You will be surprised with the answers.

3. Identify..Best sellers …If you can do an analysis of the best sellers in your store, then take out the top 20 % of the best selling SKUs or say the top100 SKUs.

New Action :- Find out if those SKUs are in your store..If you don’t have the knowledge to do that, ask us, we have a specialised service for such analysis and reporting..

Both of us will be surprised, to find , how many of such products which are your best sellers are in your store? Want to take a bet ?

4. Identify the non movers ! If the stock is in your system as part of the highest age stock, ensure that those products cannot be ordered at all ! ( See point 1 above).

New Action :- Brain storm, what all can be done to recover what ever value is left in that “dead stock”.

5.  What is your average inventory value for the past few months. ? What was it last year ? Do you think, you can maintain or improve the performance this year ?

New Action :- Take a training session for your employees on the concept of inventory, inventory holding cost, stock turn and ask for actions/ suggestions

Reward the best ideas and bigger rewards for implementing them. Most Retailers give rewards for sales performance, but rarely do employees get rewarded for inventory control.

Finally :- Try it out ! Inventory management is still in your hands, Purchase is as always, mostly in your customer’s hands ! Selling skills count a lot, but that is for another learning blog in the future...

Oh, lest we forget, as this joke said, how about making a real effort in selling the inventory to the customers ? Really "Selling" the old fashion way face to face ? not displaying, not advertising,

Share your learnings on Inventory with us and win rewards ..

http://www.RetailGurukul.com

Join us on Twitter,Facebook, Linkedin

Call us and share your challenges in retail on - 0 90 360 365 24. We are eager to help !

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WagonrSmartIdeas.com. Contest 10 lakhs prize money !

Rs.10 lakhs+Wagon R+Venture Capital Support....

WagonR has again announced their 3rd Annual WagonRSmartideas.com contest, where we can enter our BIG idea across Agriculture, Arts, Construction, Education, Internet, Manufacturing, Media, personal hygiene, personal and professional services, retail and wholesale areas can be covered with your BIG idea. There are multiple rounds and  prizes and votes to be won....

My own submitted idea is about http://www.RetailGurukul.com, which will be India's first online/offline Retail Staff Training portal focusing on S.M.I.L.E. ie Selling Skills, Marketing, Inventory, Loyalty, English speaking skills will  be provided to them at their stores at their convenience, with the advantages of the internet, cost and time convenience.

This is possible, because of CLOUD Computing, Cloud Telephony and under a SAAS model.

May be you have your own ideas on what you have always wanted to build, but did not know how to go about. But with so many areas open for entry, I wish each and every blogger on this network is able to put together atleast one entry .

It will give you a good opportunity to share your ideas beyond the boundaries of the blog. Over 15,000 entries were received last time and this time over 20,000 are expected.Even if we are able to go beyond the first couple of stages, it would b a great achievement.

My own entry can be checked at shivaram /Retail/Bangalore and has the following image attached.

http://www.RetailGurukul.com

My request :-
Click on the link and vote for my idea, write a comment, back link to your website /blog. Use this as an oppotunity to help the cause of the Retail Staff across as many fora as possible.

Next time, you are out shopping, you might be able to get a good shopping experience and you can thank RetailGurukul for the training .

If you had a bad experience, then tell them to learn from the RetailGurukul.com website and improve their service. Remember to blog and tell us. We will help improve your experience.

Www.WagonRSmartideas.com is the link to go to now and check out the contest prizes...

Preparation for submission :- If you have an idea, and want to submit, please prepare seperate chapters as per the word control mentioned and then load the content once and for all. Note, once content is submitted, then you cannot change. Difficult to make any changes there after or get any support, as their help desk is over burdened with too many questions as it is.

http:///www.WagonRsmartideas.com

Best of luck,

Shivaram
http://www.retailgurukul.com
On Twitter, FB, Linkedin RetailGurukul
Phone 090 360 365 24.

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An unrefusable offer for Bloggers ..

Background :-

We are all customers for a wide variety of products like daily grocery shopping, lifestyle products, consumer products, homes, etc etc. Many of us are regular bloggers on the indiblogger network and other networks as well. Currently we blog what is closest to our hearts and hope that it is of interest to others.

In another world, are the retailers like me representing 1000's of brands who spend their entire lifetime understanding customers like you. Some time successfully, many times failing badly.

Recall the number of times, we have made  you happy with your shopping and times we have upset you. We know we should do better. Your happiness is our survival after all.

Give us a chance to correct and improve ourselves... We have Crores of investment to take care .

The opportunity  :-

Retailers are always looking for honest, critical feedback on their business to help them improve.

The current methods of understanding customers , doing surveys, focus groups inside 5 star hotels or door to door surveys have their limitations.

For the 1000's of bloggers on the Indi Blogger network, I have an unrefusable offer :-

We are setting up India's first Online /Offline Retail Staff Training Portal called http://www.RetailGurukul.com

Unrefusable Offers :-

We are looking for authors to write on the entire shopping experience from the Customers perspective . What you liked , what you did not, what made you buy, what put you off , what can we do it make it better, make you happy :), how to solve a problem ?

We like authors, customers and anyone interested in providing feedback, suggestions and comments on the way Brands are retailed in India.

You have typically discussed your experience with your friends and family about your experiences, but rarely got in touch with the retailer or the Brand itself. Most often you have gone back to the store if you  had a good experience or voted with your feet, if it was bad.

Brands and Retailers are spending enormous amount of time and effort to understand the customers, often with mixed results.

Let us talk ? And make some decent money too.... Nothing is lose any way ! Everything to gain.

Call me Shivaram

90360 365 24.

www.retailgurukul.com

http://www.retailgurukul.blogspot.com for my blog

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Happy and Prosperous New Year !!

Whether you are an entrepreneur, employee or even a government "servant", you are about a start a new financial year, ie 2012-13.

Looking forward, the top 5 things, you may consider doing.

1. Goal. Set yourself a "Goal" and announce it to your team, friends and relatives (TFR) who wish you well. This can range from achieving a sales turnover, a bottom line target, setting up new stores, training and even rewarding your staff.
2. Ask for suggestions, criticisms and way forward from your team above (TFR ) on how they would like to achieve the goal. They will initially say all the nice things , but on seeing your genuine interest, are likely to come up with really beautiful and workable ideas.You will need to be genuinely interested in that, but you will be surprised at their feedback.
3. Plan of Action. Once you have enough ideas that you think you can handle, all of you, should detail out a plan of action.  It will be a brief business plan . Where ever possible, set out due dates, responsibilities etc.
4. Summarize  the action plan into a few major points. Once this is done, get adequate posters, stickers, etc printed. An easy way would be even outsource some of these to a 3rd party like http://www.jademagnet.com , who can develop them for you.
5. Rewards Set a reward which makes all the effort worth it. This also needs to be announced, and dont forget to celebrate even a small milestone.


Simple way to remember this is GAPS filled are Rewarded. These are Goals, Ask for suggestions, Plan action, Summarize and Rewards.


Best of luck and a happy new year again..

RetailGurukul@gmail.com

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