This one’s going to be short and sweet and to the point: if you want to generate traffic and get the customers coming in the door when every newspaper on the planet is screaming about the meltdown on Wall Street, you gotta give them a reason to come in!

This means making deals. The prices on EVERYTHING are going up, up, up. It’s true in my store, and I know it’s true in yours. When was the last time a vendor called you and said, “Hey, we like you so much we’re going to eat the rising cost of gas because you’re that awesome?”

If you’re like me, that’d be never.

So prices are going up, everywhere. The customer’s feeling it no matter where they go.

Send them coupons — 10% off anything in the store. Run lots of specials. Put things that are NEVER on sale on sale. It’s time, right now.

These don’t have to be super deep discount sales. Especially if you’re a niche market, with lots of brands that never, ever discount. Customers know and understand that they’re not going to get 50% off some of these items — and that’s ok: they’ll buy at 10% off, when they may very well not have at full price.

Realizing 90% of a sale is a lot better than realizing none of it!

The most common mistake retailers make when times get tight is to stop promoting, to stop making deals, to stop reaching out to the customer base. That’s just wrong: this is the time, more than ever, that you’ve got to be out there, constantly, giving the customer a reason to buy.

If you’ve been reading along, you know that in the past three months, we’ve moved two stores. This has been a crazy, hectic time in our life, especially since one of the moves involved moving the headquarters — an office that had been in one place for almost 30 years!

Along the way, I’ve learned some stuff. And boy, some of it really wasn’t pleasant.

You have to understand that we’ve got vendors we’ve been working with for years. Decades. So when they offered to help us set up the new store, absolutely we jumped at the chance. We’ve got strong relationships with these companies, and I was looking forward to seeing what they could do.

It was mind-boggling: mind boggling how much these vendors really didn’t care about us! In a lot of cases, I wound up with double inventory, when vendors ordered the same exact merchandise I was moving from the old store to the new store!

And I’m flabbergasted at the absolute lack of the ability to merchandise effectively! This is what vendors do, all day every day! Yet we gave them endcaps to fill, and they put product in — but no pricing, no signage, and they didn’t even check to see if the product was in the computer system!

For example, one guy handled canned pet food. He had five flavors to stock — and he arranged them horizontally, filling the shelves so full you couldn’t get a hand in there to take a can out. Think about that: arranging five flavors, horizontally. What happens if you want the flavor on the bottom?

Another display had dog harnesses all the way at the top of a 7 foot tall gondola. Kareem Abdul Jabar couldn’t have reached these things without jumping — how are my customers supposed to get them?

Honestly, Mr. Vendor, Ms. Vendor, all independent retailers want from you is for you to make it easier for my guys to sell your products! Now, my guys are in hot water too — they should have never let you out of the store with the shelves looking like that! Now we’ve got a new rule going on the books: nothing goes out on our sales floor if it’s not priced, in the computer, and signed.

We just want to sell your merchandise. Why are you making it so difficult?

The economy hasn’t been particularly great lately.  That’s not likely to be news to any retailer: we’re often the first one to notice when there’s less money floating around. 

This is the environment where, even though we should be doing it all the time, retailers start focusing on controlling expenses.    Today I’m going to talk about two areas where you can really save some money — if you’re willing to take the time to do some research.

These two areas are utility bills and credit card processing.

Utility Bills

Recent governmental deregulation means that suddenly, there’s dozens of ways for a retailer to get the power that runs their store. There are real savings to be had — but it’s difficult to find out who is offering the best deals.

All of these utility companies are telemarketing. I know — you have a dozen other things going on during the day. However, you should take some calls and get quotes for two or three competing utility companies. Consider those quotes — and give your existing utility company a call to see if they can match what you’re being offered. You can save a ton of money, with just a little time on the phone.

Credit Card Processing

I’m not a betting man, but I’d be willing to put down some serious money that the average retailer gets a call an hour from telemarketers promising that it’s possible to save a gazillion dollars on credit card processing.

Every day, more and more customers are paying for their purchases with credit cards. Processing fees can take a huge chunk out of your sales. It is well worth it to take a few calls to see what the offerings really are.

The only way to really tell what is a good deal and what is just a bunch of high-powered sales spiel is to send the potential processing company a couple of months’ worth of statements and ask “What would it cost me, if we gave you this amount of business?”

Their answers will allow you to make apple to apple comparisons: you’re moving past the hype into actual nuts and bolts, real life numbers. You might discover that it is possible to save a lot of money by switching processors — or you might discover that you’re fine just where you are. The key is this: you’ll KNOW.

Bear in mind that this is a very dynamic industry. Things change all the time in the credit card processing word. It would be prudent to check these numbers on a regular basis: it’s just as important to save money when times are good as when they’re tight!

This post is for any retailer, any where — in fact, it might be fair to say this post is for anyone who owns a business, period!  There are the Ten Commandments we’re all familiar with — but there’s another one, an eleventh one, that we’re going to study today.

The Eleventh Commandment: Own Your Building!

Here’s why:  If you are a typical business owner you will never get enough out of your business to retire comfortably.  It’s next to impossible to accumulate a nest egg, especially if you’re a typical Mom and Pop style store. 

If you’re living in the moment, but want to keep one eye on being prepared for the future, there’s only one to make sure you’ll be okay in your later years.  That’s to own your building!

Nineteen years ago, I bought a building for one of our stores.  It has not appreciated one cent since I bought it — which really doesn’t sound like good news, does it?

But for nineteen years, I ran my business there.  Instead of paying rent, I paid the mortgage.  Now, we’ve decided to change locations, and I’ve sold this building.  At closing, I was handed a check for EXACTLY what I paid for that building, nineteen years ago.

Which means, you know, I pretty much operated rent free in that location for close to twenty years!

In one of our other locations, I pay $20,000 a month for rent.  Assuming everything stays at that level (which is doubtful, to say the least!) in twenty years, I’ll have paid 4.8 million dollars to that landlord, and when I close that store, I WALK AWAY WITH NOTHING.

You have to own your building.  Let’s say you don’t close your business, or move your store.  Owning your building is still a great idea.  After the mortgage is paid off, you have one huge expense off the table, which obviously means better numbers for your business!  Or, you could refinance the building, which gives you a huge glut of cash tax free.  That can be pretty handy in a pinch.

And then, when you do decide it’s time to close or move or retire — YOU STILL HAVE THE BUILDING TO SELL!

I can’t stress this strongly enough.  Learn and listen to the eleventh commandment: Own Your Building!

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos says “The definition of a brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

If you want to be a successful business owner, you need to keep an eye on what people are saying about your brand.

One way to do this is to look for what people are saying about you on the internet.  (A side note: you might want to take a Valium BEFORE you do this!)  Go online and check out the local forums and bulliten boards. 

9 times out of 10, you’ll find something about your store.

Here’s some things to keep in mind:

The Internet is an unregulated wasteland.  Anyone can go onto forums and say whatever they want.  That means you’re open to commentary from competitors, angry ex-employees, people who just don’t like you, and more.

Guess what?  These people aren’t going to say nice things!  It’s a sad truth about human nature that people are more than happy to say bad things whenever they’ve got the opportunity — yet when the time comes to say positive things, you can almost hear the crickets chirping!

So what good comes from reading bad things about your organization?

First and foremost, you’ve always got to be open to the fact that some of what might be out there could be true.  If you’re reading that your stores are dirty, that your employees are rude, that your prices are the highest in town, you might want to investigate.  If the stores are dirty, if the employees are rude — well, these problems can be fixed.  If your prices are higher, you need to have a good reason why — and make sure that reason is clear to the public!

Use a mystery shopper!  Have someone investigate these claims for you. 

Other things you read aren’t going to be true.   For me, that’s the infuriating bit.  It’s very hard to read lies about your business, the one you’ve put your heart and soul and life into.

However, you’ve got to, absolutely HAVE to, set emotion aside when dealing with false commentary on the internet.  As good as it may feel to tell some random internet poster that they’re an idiot, the fact is you’re a business.  You need to be calm and professional. 

Defend your brand by presenting facts.  If you’ve got research you can link to, great!  Stay level-headed and make sure you’re representing yourself in a positive light.

This is hard to do.  I’ve screwed up in this area, and wound up alienating a lot of customers.  I regret that — but at the same time, at least I’ve had the experience and learned from it!  It’s hard to stomach that there are people who aren’t going to like you no matter what — but the more important fact is that there are a great many readers who judge you and your store by how you respond to that angry, unpleasant person.