Everyone loves Top Ten Lists.
Here is my list of my Top Ten Most Viewed Blog Posts from 2012
1. Two Thing You Can Correct Right Now – Two simple things you can do that won’t cost you an arm and a leg, but will make the next year better than the previous year.
2. Lessons From MLK Quotes – Five of my favorite quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr. and how they apply to independent retailers.
3. Two Days to Take Your Customer Service to Shareworthy Levels – Announcing a class I am teaching alongside Tim Miles at Wizard Academy on January 29-30. (You really should go!)
4. What to Do About Showrooming – We all face the problem of customers walking in with smart phones, checking out our product, asking our advice, getting our knowledge, scanning the UPC codes and buying it online. You might be surprised at my answer to this ever-growing problem.
5. This Will Be a Successful Year If… – A different, better approach to the dreaded New Year’s Resolution (Appropriate that this would make today’s list. By the way – I accomplished three out of four!)
6. Is JC Penney Making a Mistake? – They announced their new pricing policy at the beginning of last year. I had my opinions on whether it could work or not. Go see if I was right.
7. The Goldilocks Effect – I was egged on by a friend in another online group to discuss this inventory management topic about how to stock and merchandise your store to fit the needs of your customer base better. Apparently other people liked the topic, too.
8. Tell Me About a Time When… – The absolute best interview questions you should be asking!
9. Shopping Local Benefit Salt Lake City – Mostly a link to a great article about a study done in Salt Lake City. Either I have a lot of fans in Salt Lake City or people love to read more articles about the positive impact of shopping local. (You should forward the article to everyone you know in your local and county government economic development positions.)
10. Fair and Square – Another post about the JC Penney pricing fiasco. Their idea was right. Their implementation was wrong, wrong, wrong. Don’t look at their failure as a policy problem, only an implementation problem.
Definitely an interesting mix of posts, don’t you think? Covers a wide gamut from Hiring to Customer Service to Inventory Management to Shop Local to Pricing to Leadership.
Thank you to all who are following publicly, lurking quietly, or just plain stumbling onto this blog by accident. If there are topics you would like me to write about more in 2013, please let me know. I get the feeling the indie retail movement is on the cusp of some serious positive growth over the next few years.
-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com
PS One of the reasons I believe we’ll see more people Shop Local, Shop Independent is because of a sense of community that they feel at your stores. If you have not yet read the book Pendulum, you need to go get it today. “Sense of Community” will be a driving force for the next decade at least. You should be playing up that aspect of your business.
I would like to read more about how mobile marketing can help local retailers get into the game. It is certainly a way to get customers on the spot when they are ready to buy something but there are the costs to consider versus the returns.
Jared,
I am assuming you probably sell some form of mobile marketing. Personally, I do not think mobile marketing is a smart approach for most indie retailers. It is geared towards the heavily transactional customer who is looking for a deal. Those customers are first and foremost the main customers of the big box stores. Second, they are not very profitable or loyal for indie stores. I'd be happy to write a blog post, but if you sell mobile marketing, you probably wouldn't like it. Probably the only local indie retailer who could benefit from mobile marketing might be a restaurant whose character diamond is not about elegance and fancy dining.