Improve Employee Productivity.

If you've been examining your P&L looking for opportunities, don't forget to consider employee productivity. You can compute employee productivity by dividing sales by the number of full time employees (part time are figured at 1/2). Most industries have benchmarks compiled to give you a comparison point. However, the best comparison is your own figures. Work to improve production per employee over a period of time.

How do you start? Well examine critical factors that can improve the number. You'll want to schedule in a manner that gives your staff very little or no free time. There should be constantly assigned tasks to prevent this. Each employee should have a clear picture of her responsibilities and the way in which you rank the importance of those responsibilities. Of course, customers are always job one.

In addition to this you should hold regular staff meetings to convey your expectations to your employees. During these meetings share data regarding productivity and clearly convey that it is your intention to improve this number. Offer them a token reward when you meet your goals. Explain to them that employee productivity is a two side equation and to improve the ratio either wages must go down or sales must go up. And then empower them to raise sales through product and sales training. Get them to "buy in" to your intentions and you'll be amazed at what you can accomplish together.

More Effective Marketing.

I recently enjoyed the honor of speaking on the NRHA (North American Retail Hardware Association) stage at the National Hardware Show. The show was truly a grand event.

I chose More Effective Marketing as my subject. Here are a few of the key points I covered:

One can not effectively market until she understands her brand.
Brand is all things by which your company is differentiated, both good and bad.
Brand is dynamic and steerable. Therefore you should contemplate regularly what you want your brand to be and work toward building that image.
All advertising is marketing, but not all marketing is advertising.
Advertising is communication designed to sell a product or service.

It was a lot of fun delivering my message in this environment and now Gary and I are looking forward to the NRHA Convention which will be held in Savannah in July. We will be presenting there as well so try to make plans to join us...should be a great time.

Let's Talk!

Did you know that we do phone consultations? We have customers who regularly tell us how they benefit from these interactions. The consults are not expensive and they're a great way to discuss your opportunities and issues with industry experts. The phone conversations must be scheduled in advance. If you're interested, just drop us an email or give us a call at (888) 292-6531

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