? (Not just monetary value.) You have heard the old bromide that you sell the sizzle, not the steak; the hole in the wall and not the drill. That (sizzle) is your proposition. It is not about features, it is about benefits. How does this sin manifest itself? ·         Image ‘drift’ ·         Always on sale ·         Focusing on what you have instead of what they want Sin #2: Not having (enough of the right) stock Timing your clearances and timing your buying is at the art and science of being true merchant. How does this sin manifest itself? ·         Falling in love with your stock = thinking you are the customer ·         Not knowing what is selling and what is not (no proper system in place) ·         Not knowing the metric and not knowing what to do about it Sin #3: Not presenting properly Configuration and visual merchandising is crucial to drive retail productivity. Everyone knows that, but few people seem to understand the difference between visual merchandising and interior decorating. How does this sin manifest itself? ·         Don’t understand the hotspots ·         Trying to manipulate customers instead of simply fishing where the fish are ·         Fail to use smart design principles to lead the sale ·         Unbalanced allocations (too much space for poor contributors and vice versa) Sin #4: Not attracting the right customers Not all customers are equal. If all you sell is ‘on price’, all you’ll attract are cheapskates. That is only a good idea if it matches your proposition; for the other 90 per cent, it is a really bad idea. How does this sin manifest itself? ·         Poor marketing comprising most clichés and noise, and a promise of the cheapest price ·         No point of difference ·         Fail to use proper psychology (not the pop psychology of pseudo experts) Sin #5: Pitching price instead of value. Customers can not be persuaded to buy stuff just because it is there – not frequently enough to be a viable business anyway. Retailers don’t understand the (true) cost of consumption and trade offs the consumers take in order to do the transaction. How does this sin manifest itself? ·         Price only advertising Sin #6: Not persuading browsers to be buyers Too many retailers have become lazy in their selling. It is true that no one likes being sold to, but you should still ‘help them buy’. This can be done effectively with the application of the correct techniques. A few years ago we persuaded a newsagent to allow us to experiment and we had a few days of ‘active selling’ and compared those days with like for like days in the previous week, month and year. The results varied between 18 per cent and 28 per cent up in a business that was trending down. Despite that, they still weren’t prepared to allocate a staff member to the floor. Go figure. How does this sin manifest itself? ·         No/slow sales growth ·         Customer Complaints ·         Walk-outs Sin #7: Not building the system to deliver the outcome Often people claim to have 20 years’ experience when they really only have one year’s experience twenty times over. Retailers are no exception. In order for a business to make a step-change to the next level, it has to do something different ahead of the step change; that is only logical. If you merely arrive every day to make it through the day, doing approximately what you did they day before, nothing changes. How does this sin manifest itself? ·         Tired, demotivated owners ·         Unsellable business The overall message may appear to be negative and critical – and it is that too. But the key point I would like to make is that all of these sins are easily fixed – and customers will forgive you in due course. Every singly ‘sin’ is based on a decision you have taken, and each and every one can be fixed in the same way. Simply make the decision to do it differently and follow through. Quite easily done. Dennis: Ganador: Making success happen