Stop Complaining; It's Your Fault Your Business is Struggling
For retailers the last few years have been tough, really tough. Since 2008 and the whole financial crisis, there has been a steady flow of negative news to ensure consumer confidence remained low and spending, well followed suit.
It is human nature that the majority of us will wait until things are bad to reflect on what and who has caused it. For retailers, there's a few points that they've been whingeing about of late. Online retail is offering discounts that they can't match, the big department stores are on sale 12 months of the year, government (all levels) are making things harder for them, media is beating up the economy and scaring consumers, and worst of all the shoppers are not loyal anymore (they want the cheapest price!).
By all the media reports, things are dire, consumers are not spending and retail is in trouble. It really is a terrible situation and given all the effort they go to, we should all be supporting the traditional retailer during this crucial Christmas retail period. After all, these retailers have been gearing up for Christmas for months, they've organized to dress up their shopfronts, they've run in-store competitions to create some excitement, they've consistently kept chatting with us on their Facebook page, and their customer service is impeccable. If only this was true across the board. Unfortunately, this is rare and many are just still too busy complaining.
So what to do? This year is done and dusted now, there's not much you're going to do in the next week that will radically change your business' performance. So we look towards 2012 with a more positive outlook and a little more self-reflection.
Stop blaming others and ask yourself, your staff and some of your trusted shoppers..What can I do to make this store more appealing? What do my customers want? What has the store across the road got that I don't?
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