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Suggest You - The Small Retailer's Survival Guide - Part 3 - Strategic Pricing
Copywriters that try to be clever, humorous, abstract, or use double entendre with their headlines and ads will normally find that they flop and are thus a waste of both time and money. Many of the Super Bowl ads fall in this category. While they are often funny to watch, most people don't remember what company the ad was promoting. Ted Nicholas tells the story of how a book that he had written was not selling very well. He had titled it, "How Not To Drown In A Sea Of Debt." One day he stopped by a bookstore and looked for the book in the personal finance and self help sections but could not find it. So he went to the information counter and asked if they carried the book. He was told yes they had it in stock, and it was located in the swimming section! Ted subsequently changed the title to 'How To Get Out Of Debt' and the book sold well from that point on. If you are trying to promote something, keep your titles clear and simple. Leave clever and humorous to the entertainers. Headlines that are too abstract are often unclear to the reader and do not clearly identify to the reader why they should be interested in the information contained in the follow on copy. Make your headlines clear. Identify a ben
Call Centers, or customer services receiving and transmitting multiple requests by telephone, were introduced as offshoots of telecommunications providing streamlined service for consumers of large companies with extensive customer support needs. Normally, a call center is able to handle a considerable volume of calls at the same time, i.e. to screen calls and forward them to skilled support staff, where most issues can be resolved. Organizations starting from mail-order catalog companies and telemarketing companies to computer product help desks use call centers. Typically, there are two types of calls ? inbound and outbound. The latter suggests the agent's calling potential customers with intentions to sell or service which is amply used in telemarketing. Apart from it inbound calls are made by the customer to get information or ask for help reporting malfunction of the product.That's where the problem of management performance is acute. Performance measures and benchmarking are indispensable to any well-run call center to eliminate criticism of call centers on common themes such as non-expert operators, poor training of agents incapable to process customers' requests effectively, automated queuing systems resulting in long hold times, opera
Now hear this: if you are going to sell you products at high prices which are above your competitors, you'd better have a unique selling point that sets you apart from those competitors. Here is a list of some unique points that may justify higher prices:
(i) your store may be far nearer to the main catchment community than competitor stores
(ii) your store may have exemplary standards of customer service and hygiene
(iii) you may sell an exclusive range of goods or have the exclusive license for lottery or other services
(iv) you may offer a loyalty scheme where customers can have cash back or money off in return for historical purchases
If you cannot demonstrate any of the above advantages (or any others I have not listed) that benefit most of your customers, then you are in the thick of the battle and you simply cannot afford to overcharge for the products you are selling. If you do, life will be one big struggle as most potential customers go elsewhere.
<I recently came across W Edwards Deming and have since been doing some homework to discover why there is so much resistance to what is essentially some very basic philosophy.Deming’s early work on statistics and quality was built around an ability to analyse complex systems and the use of that analysis to predict complex outcomes.Deming was a statistician and his work very soon leaves the basic philosophy and becomes bogged in the complex use of numbers to define complex systems.The very complexity of his approach deters many students but there is a more fundamental problem with complex systems that was identified by the later work on chaos.There seems to be two approaches to the world.There is the modern Digital approach where every action and interaction is controlled at the microscopic level by single bites of information.Below this level it is not possible to go because a single bite of information is not divisible.But we know from chaos theory that below the level of that single bite of information there is a whole world of complexity that has huge and unpredictable outcomes.The flaws occur when we begin to realise the limitations of the start point digital data.When the weather centre
Now hear this: if you are going to sell you products at high prices which are above your competitors, you'd better have a unique selling point that sets you apart from those competitors. Here is a list of some unique points that may justify higher prices:
(i) your store may be far nearer to the main catchment community than competitor stores
(ii) your store may have exemplary standards of customer service and hygiene
(iii) you may sell an exclusive range of goods or have the exclusive license for lottery or other services
(iv) you may offer a loyalty scheme where customers can have cash back or money off in return for historical purchases
If you cannot demonstrate any of the above advantages (or any others I have not listed) that benefit most of your customers, then you are in the thick of the battle and you simply cannot afford to overcharge for the products you are selling. If you do, life will be one big struggle as most potential customers go elsewhere.
Autologica presents the third part in a series of articles that address common problems and issues faced by family-owned businesses, based on an interview between Al McClymont, CEO of Autologica Dealer Management Systems, and J.C. Aimetta, an expert and coach who specializes in family-owned businesses.Al McClymont: It seems obvious that in every family-owned business there will be members that will work in the company, and members that choose not to. How can the interests of family members that work in the company and family members who do not work there, be reconciled?J.C. Aimetta: Well, first of all, it is necessary to understand that the family members who work in the company do so to make everyone wealthy, even those members that do not work there.Thus, a simple way of reconciling interests is to provide the family owners that do not work in the company with information. Offer them information about how the business is doing, how it is evolving.The simplest data is the balance sheet. An annual or biannual balance, so that they know whether there was a profit or loss, is a way to keep the family members that do not work in the company informed, and help them to learn to appreciate the family business.
(i) your store may be far nearer to the main catchment community than competitor stores
(ii) your store may have exemplary standards of customer service and hygiene
(iii) you may sell an exclusive range of goods or have the exclusive license for lottery or other services
(iv) you may offer a loyalty scheme where customers can have cash back or money off in return for historical purchases
If you cannot demonstrate any of the above advantages (or any others I have not listed) that benefit most of your customers, then you are in the thick of the battle and you simply cannot afford to overcharge for the products you are selling. If you do, life will be one big struggle as most potential customers go elsewhere.
Zoning is very much a part of everyday life and business when you are new or experienced real estate investors, which includes brokers, agents, and any other professionals in the building industry who would be interested in educating themselves on zoning. When you look into Zoning, you need to be very conscious about where you are looking to develop an area for either commercial, homes, and agricultural needs. You need to be aware of the different types of Real-estate Zonings, such as Spot Zoning, Contract Zoning, Down Zoning, Esthetic Zoning, Subdivisions, and buffer Zoning.Spot Zoning is when you have a small area of property or land that is zoned different than the other properties around it. Next is contract Zoning in which a person or business signs a contract to allow that person to rezone an area. Down Zoning is the rezoning of a piece of land that is less Dense, such as, instead of a high-rise, you are allowed only one or two story buildings. You also cannot take an industrial zone and turn it into a residential area.Then we have Esthetic Zoning in which there are certain rules applied to the zoned area such as what is not permissible. Many landowners and realtors will find that they cannot make drastic changes to the landsc
(iv) you may offer a loyalty scheme where customers can have cash back or money off in return for historical purchases
If you cannot demonstrate any of the above advantages (or any others I have not listed) that benefit most of your customers, then you are in the thick of the battle and you simply cannot afford to overcharge for the products you are selling. If you do, life will be one big struggle as most potential customers go elsewhere.
Adopting a united brands philosophy may just be what African and developing countries need if they are to fulfil their dreams of achieving international brand recognition for some of their local brands.This strategy could be successfully tied – in with simultaneous nation branding efforts of their home governments. There is a common ‘bond of brotherhood’ which unites brands in distant markets. Brands from the same countries which may be owned by different companies may be more willing to cooperate and share experiences when faced with a common identified ‘adversary’ or competition. Managers of such brands wish each other well in such circumstances because the ‘bad guys’ would be the well established competing global brands.When brands seek a common refuge under the umbrella of ‘one nation’, they benefit from the resultant ‘country of origin effects’ made popular by Simon Anholt. This may be the strategy that Nduka Obaigbena and his team at Leaders & Company Ltd (owners of ThisDay newspaper group in Nigeria) are pursuing.Nduka may best be described as a media mogul, entrepreneur and lately show business impresario. His deft touch has transformed many of the projects his ThisDay brand has embarked on in the past into gold. He is a m
If, once you have added up your product purchase costs and overheads, you find that the prices you must charge are typically higher than your competitors then, as you no doubt know by now, you are in trouble. You have no choice but to either (i) reduce your costs or (ii) give your store a competitive edge outside of the price. Take the list above: see if you can match one of those criteria. You may wish to read the last article in this series: Go Local! This article discusses the possibility of a store selling goods from local producers. If you choose option (i) reducing your costs and lowering prices, be careful. Do not go from one extreme to another. You could decide to draw a fraction of your normal salary from the business and live on jam on toast for a year, sack your weekend staff and work round the clock yourself in order to bring down costs and then reduce all your prices across the board. In the very short term you may be disappointed. The word takes a while to spread, even with advertising. I guarantee tha
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