How to Run a Retail Store That Outsells the Competition

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship ArticleIf you own a retail business and you aren’t satisfied with just being part of the bunch, then you’re probably looking for some tips to go about out-selling the competition and really carving your mark in the industry. Most retailers are facing pretty strong competition these days, so the idea of outselling them all can be rather intimidating.

Before you let the fear and doubts set in, here’s a look at some tips you can start to use right away that will help you to out-sell even the stiffest of competition.

Install the Right Systems

In order for you to be truly successful in your retail business, your store needs to operate smoothly and be well-organized. Investing in a ePOS system that meets your specific needs as a retailer can certainly create that flow your business needs. For those unfamiliar with a ePOS system, it is a point-of-sale system that is meant to make selling easy from your perspective and buying easy from the customer’s perspective.

Where it used to be that a ePOS system referred to a cash register in a physical store, today it can also refer to a system that resides in the cloud for online retailers. It allows customers to go about transactions quickly and smoothly, which will make them want to return either to the store in person or your online store.

Vend is a popular example of a ePOS system that makes it possible for businesses to sell in both a physical storefront and online. The system lets you manage your inventory, your customer profiles, add items, create receipts, and of course, fill your orders. Vend provides customers with a positive experience, which means they are more likely to return to shop with you in the future.

Give Serious Thought to Your Location

If you operate a physical store front you will want to think long and hard about the location you choose. Spending time checking the demographics can really pay off, as you want to be located somewhere that gets the right traffic, traffic that will be drawn to the products you sell.

At the same time, you should check out the competition in the area. It may not be wise to set up shop where you are basically surrounded by competitors. You’ll want to try to be subjective as you look around for the perfect location and try to see how it would look through your customers’ eyes.

Find a Niche and Appeal to It

Another way you can out-sell your competition is to become an expert in one area. Find a niche and really focus on that area. Become an expert in your community when it comes to that niche so that customers will believe you are the one with the most knowledge.

If you’re unsure of what niche you could specialize in, take a look at the current trends in the industry.

Stick with Your Goal

The goal of outselling all your competition is certainly a lofty one, but when you take the right steps and you stay focused, it’s more than possible to reach the top. All it really takes is thorough research and planning, then as soon as you know what you need to do, you can put all your resources into making it happen. Remember that just because one tactic is working for your competition, doesn’t necessarily mean it will work for you. Thus, you need to focus on formulating a plan that suits your business and target market and stick to it.

Roads to Recovery After a Failed Product Launch

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Working hard, taking risks, and failing nonetheless is a part of life – and it’s certainly a part of business life. The failure tastes especially sour when you’ve fired up an entire bottle of midnight oil and invested all of your energy and resources into the launch of this product, just to see it crash-land as soon as it’s unleashed.

Although most successful businesses today have experienced a few spectacular disasters through their life, all of them managed to pick themselves up and keep pushing forward. Their failure made them robust and innovative; learn from their mistakes and bounce back after the miserable product launch as well, stronger than ever.

Analyze the situation

When you’ve put your mind into recovering and not losing hope quite yet, the first thing you should do is to gather as much data as possible. You can learn so much from the way your product or service was received – and sometimes, you might even find that it was never a problem with your product in the first place.

It may have been the marketing strategy, how you presented it to the market, and whether or not you managed to communicate its purpose properly. A business can launch an exceptional product that should have been well-received, only to realize that the target group never really understood its benefits.

Talk to your customers

Reach out to a few of your customers and find out what they disliked about the product. This is the first step to recovery and a potential recipe for re-launching it with greater success than ever. Send out a survey in a newsletter and offer some form of reimbursement for taking the time to answer your questions – such as a discount or similar, and gather as much data from this as possible.

By looking at their answers, you may find that there was, in fact, something wrong with the product that should be fixed. Maybe you find that you never reached the people who could have loved the product, and you should find room for improvement with the product launch instead. Finally, it could have been challenges around the market you targeted that kept your product from soaring.

Improve the product

With the amount of data you have and the feedback you’ve received from your market, it’s time to get back to the drawing table. Sometimes, you need to make major changes to the product or service, and many business owners before you have scrapped the idea altogether when they understood the costs. You can easily apply for some of the best small business loans to improve your product and make the money back, though, so don’t let this stop you.

Implement the changes and present the new and improved product to the ones you’ve surveyed earlier. Explain that you have considered their opinions and tried to improve it before asking them to try it out and give some final feedback.

Maybe you still need to improve it – or maybe you’ve learned from your mistakes and created something brilliantly useful.

A failed product launch doesn’t have to mean disaster, especially not when so many successful companies have failed miserably just to grow stronger within a short year. The key to success is, of course, to analyze your mistakes and learn from them the best you can, giving the market exactly what they need in the end.

Top 5 Ways to Improve Your Business

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship ArticleWhether you’re a small business owner looking for advice on how to boost your business, or a professional working for a large business wondering how to make an impact, understanding the different ways businesses can improve is important. There are a number of tips and tricks to do with marketing, sales and the more technical side to businesses that can aid growth, but in many cases, improving businesses can be much simpler than that. Here, we’re taking a closer look at the top five ways to improve your business.

Invest In Your Business

The best way to improve your business is simply to invest in it. You don’t need to have a huge budget in order to do this, and there are many low-cost ways that you can make a better working environment and a better business as a whole. For example, consider looking into sales or automating your marketing for an effective solution. If you do want to invest a little bit of cash, but don’t quite have it to hand, then consider taking out a loan from a bank or something similar to Wizzcash short term loans. This will give you a little helping hand to help you boost your business when you need it.

Set Goals

A simple way to improve your business is to know what you want to achieve, and work out how to achieve those set goals. This way, you know that your business is consistently striving towards something, meaning you will continue to improve your processes and work environment as you go.

Monitor Trends

Events around the world, no matter how big or small, could have an impact on your business. Staying up to date with your industry and even the current economic, social and political environments around you can help you to improve the way your business runs. Monitoring trends doesn’t have to be difficult either – just open your eyes and ears to your local community and this will be done for you.

Boost Employee Motivation

While getting the sales in and ensuring that all work is complete might be at the top of your list as a business owner in order to ensure that you are getting a profit, the best way to do this is through employee motivation. This is one of the most overlooked aspects of businesses, but generally, those who look after their employees will see their staff turnovers decline and see your business begin to boom. There are a number of ways that you can do this, such as regular staff events, rewarding hard-working employees, recognising achievements and encouraging personal and professional development.

Know Your Limits

One thing that many business owners tend to forget is their limits. As they are fuelled with the idea of success, they can quickly wear themselves out and hit bigger hurdles than they may have imagined along the way. Know your personal limits as a business owner, employ the right staff around you to help hold up their end of the business that they may be experts in, and manage your resources in a much better way, and your business will begin to fly.

Cashing In On Your Passion: Turning Your Blog Into a Business

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Blogging is now a huge deal in the online world, and it’s fair to say that readers can’t get enough of the ‘written by the people, for the people’ format. Their honest content and down to earth style is seen as a breath of fresh air after years of glossy magazines with airbrushed models and columns written by journalists. The companies of the world have tapped into just how influential bloggers can be, which gives aspiring writers and bloggers the opportunity to earn money doing something they love. Many have even been able to turn it into a well paying full-time career. If you’ve been blogging for a while but want to push it to the next level and start earning some cash with your passion, here are a few things to bear in mind.

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Look Into Ways To Monetize

You can monetise blogs in a number of ways. The first and most obvious is Google AdSense, it’s completely free to set up, and there’s no hassle involved. The ads sit in your blog’s sidebar, and you get a little bit of money every time someone clicks on one. The main issue here is that unless you have a very large following, it probably isn’t going to make you a millionaire (or even enough to pay the bills) however it’s a little bit of extra income that can gained with no additional effort from you. Getting as many views and traffic to your posts as you can will bump these earnings up, so good promotion is essential. This information on Search Engine Optimization from Ignite Digital states that harnessing the power of search engines is one of the best ways to gain traffic. Along with Adsense, there are other affiliate schemes which work similarly, so do some research and find out which would suit your blog best. You usually insert a banner ad or a link within the text of your posts which earn you money for clicks, or a percentage of any sales made. The main way bloggers earn the majority of their income is through sponsored posts. These usually offer a generous payment in return for a link or mention, the only problem is they can be unpredictable. Because you have to wait for companies to contact you, you will probably find that some months you get a lot of work and others are quieter. If you plan on quitting your day job, you could do some freelance writing work from home during these times. This is useful as the work is almost always there, and you can pick and choose how many projects you take on.

Pay Tax

Once you start to earn money as a blogger, you are classed as self-employed, meaning you will need to pay tax on your profits. The exact process you will go through all depends on the country you live in- but it’s something that you will have to do. As they say, only two things in life are certain- death and paying taxes! Keep good records, if you spend any money on your blog as a business such as investing in equipment these can be deducted when it comes to tax time. Self-assessment is usually quite simple to do yourself, but you can always hire an accountant if you’re unsure.

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Boost Your Domain Authority

Because blogging is competitive when it comes to sponsored opportunities, you need to do all you can to appeal to these companies. Domain authority is one way to go about this, this is a metric which can show how much influence your blog has online. Companies will want to work with influential sites, and so this is something you can work on. Getting backlinks from other good websites can boost this, you can do this by asking other bloggers if you can publish a guest post for them. Include a link back to your site at the end and you get a good backlink. Putting out high quality and regular content on your blog will also help with this.

Can You Look Professional Without Paying Professional Prices For Your Office?

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Many things have changed in the world of business, but a few things have stayed the same. Indeed, automation has taken over the scene like wildfire; each employee must be worth their weight in gold, the technology we use is incredibly fast, adaptive and able to do many things online which you once could only do in person. However, the look, feel and image a business headquarters projects, can make or break you. Offices around the world have been updating to keep up with the demand of modern employees who want the work environment to be fluid and encouraging. It’s also key that investors and potential partners get to view your office as a sign of trust and high standards. But how should one go about remodeling a business office? With a little common sense and understanding human behavior, your office can be redesigned to increase productivity and boost morale levels for a healthier work environment.

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Personalizing is the key

Think about it, when you’re at home and working in your office, you feel more inclined to go the extra mile. It’s because you feel right at home, and the room you’re in reflects your personality. The best office spaces aren’t merely functional and efficient; they also capture the spirit of the person and company work in them. If you have a mascot or perhaps your logo, hang it up in the main office area. It’s kind of like planting your flag, whereby your employees will subconsciously treat the work area with more respect. It shows they’re part of a team, and that this spot is theirs and everyone’s little corner of the world, each sharing a common goal. You might also find that having your company colors flourish throughout the office, such as the color of the chairs, computer screens, or even just the pens and pads, can have a positive effect of inclusion.

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Refurnish where you can

Nobody wants to live in a stale and pale environment, let alone work in one day after day. Renovate the office by buying chairs, tables, and desks. You may find that equipment leasing is the best option to quickly and affordably change the look of your office. You can lease some of the trendiest office furniture going around, with correct posture chairs, wide executive chairs for the boardroom, and nice wide tables, so employees don’t feel crowded at their workstations. Refurnish where you can, so if you see the sofa in the reception room getting worn out, replace it with something that’s more in tune with where your business is heading now. By updating the work environment to the current attitude of your company, you also show anyone who visits, that you’re mindful of how you present yourself to both customers and clients.

Artwork and plants

Don’t be afraid to buy plants to put in the corners of your office. Natural greens from vegetation have been proven to make for a better work habitat. Hang up painting you like, to inject a bit of art and creativity to the professional setting. Employees should feel as if they’re not being pressured by the dullness and brutalist approach of most modern commercial buildings.

When you’re looking for that professional image, you should also look for a good deal. Updating your office isn’t just about buying the latest equipment, it’s about cultivating a healthy and productive work environment.