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This may seem a strange topic to introduce. Yet, it is the most under-used skill by many retail managers, but one of the most important roles in their supervision.

1. You Are the Maitre of Your Business

Your role is take that of a maitre d’hotel. You should meet your guests (customers), welcome them and ensure they leave with a positive feeling about your business. You should set aside at least one hour a day to walk the store and talk to customers.

2. Overcoming Embarrassment

Many owners will not walk the floor and talk to customers because they get embarrassed starting a conversation. If this applies to you, then take out a sample of products and ask customers to try them. This always starts a conversation and then you can ask them what they think about your store.

3. Clean the Tables

An alternative approach is to clean the tables in a restaurant or work on bag filling at the checkout. These are ideal locations to start a conversation and really find out what customers are thinking about your store.

4. Walking The Floor Should Be Done Openly

When walking the floor introduce yourself to the customer as the owner. Get them to provide you with ideas on how they believe you could improve the service to your customers.

5. Vary The Time Of Day You Walk The Store

It used to be traditional for owners to walk the store at opening time. This is still a strong tradition in Japan where it still is a very formal arrangement. You will gain more from varying the time of day that you actually walk around. This will enable you to meet different customers and see your team and store at different activity points.

6. How Much Time Should You Spend On The Floor

Some of the leading retailers spend as much as 20% of their time walking the store. They also believe this is the most important and enjoyable part of their working week.

7. Feed Back The Ideas

Make sure you feed back comments to your team. Remember, praise in public, reprimand in private. Your team will be interested in your comment. Make sure they are aware of why your walking the floor. Make sure you talk to them as you walk the floor. This will relax them and make them feel your part of their team.

Management Memo

A message from McDonald’s

One day while on his way back to the office from an important lunch in the best restaurant in town, Ray Kroc, owner of the McDonald’s chain in the United States, asked his driver to pass through a few McDonald’s car parks. In one he spotted papers caught up in shrubs along the outer fence.

He immediately went to the nearest pay phone, called his office to get the name of the manager, then called the manager to offer to help him pick up the offending rubbish.

Both the owner of the McDonald’s chain in his expensive business suit and the young manager met in the carpark and got down on their hands and knees to pick up the paper.

As managers we are frequently more interested in the activity inside our business premises than in the building’s outside appearance. The appearance of your building and it’s surrounds is at the front line of your organisation’s public image – as Ray Kroc was well aware.

About The Author

John Stanley is a conference speaker and retail consultant with over 20 years experience in 15 countries. He regularly contributes to retail magazines around the world and has authored several successful marketing and retail books including the best seller Just About Everything a Retail Manager Needs to Know. Visit www.johnstanley.cc

Among the smaller businesses that I work with, I often come across people who have little idea how to contact their customers by email and some are even aware that they need help to learn the skills properly:

• I love email – it is quick, low-cost, tangible, asynchronous and generates a record.
• I also hate email if it is spam, pointless or poorly presented.

Be legal and delightful

The law is the first aspect that I impress on my clients:

• The UK Data Protection Act became law in December 2003.
• A similar USA anti-spam law became law January 2004.
• These and other laws aim to stop people from sending out emails that are unwanted, distasteful or dishonest.

Then I remind my clients that customers who find your messages interesting and delightful will keep asking for more, whereas those that you annoy will close the door on you. If you take an approach that stays legal and delights, you will remain free to remind your customers what benefits you can offer.

Be transparent

Besides being a legal requirement, I feel that it is polite and professional to ensure that your emails say:

• who you are,
• why you are mailing and
• which valid email address your customer can contact in order to opt-out of future messages.

If you make these three aspects of the email easy for people to see, you will actually have fewer opt-outs even if the value of your message is marginal.

Only contact consenting customers

Generally you should only send marketing materials to customers who have given their prior consent to receiving your marketing messages. Unsolicited mail is only allowed in three conditions:

• If you collected your customer’s email address in the course of a sale or in negotiating a sale;
• If the products and services you promote are similar to those your customer already takes;
• If your customer gave you their email address even though they had a clear opt out (when it was collected) and if you continue to offer that opt out each time.

Be attractive

As you design your email message, do use the same guidance that you apply to your business letters: use plain English, state what you offer, say what benefits are available and suggest how you want your customer to respond.

Check the presentation quality of your message

And before pressing the Send button, ask yourself

• What will the recipient see when they read this?
• How does this build my business reputation?
• How will this delight my customer?

For major email campaigns, I like to email a sample message to myself, print it off and read it the following day. That way I read the email with fresh eyes so I can spot items that are ambiguous, mistaken or poorly presented.

Keep track of your messages

Finally I encourage my clients to integrate their emails into their Customer Relationship Management system. When you review your customer’s record, you want to see at a glance the sequence of emails, presentations, sales calls and closed sales for that customer.

This shows the value of a good email – it is one of several means of building and maintaining a profitable relationship with your prospects and customers.

Adrian Pepper specialises in helping small business to sharpen their marketing, increase their sales and grow their income. You can contact him through Help4You Ltd, through his website at http://www.help4you.ltd.uk or by phone +44-7773-380133. At http://feeds.feedburner.com/help4you, you can listen to his podcast for small businesses.

A recent survey provided the alarming fact that a remarkable 70% of us are unhappy with our bodies, and body image problems are being seen in younger and younger children. In fact, eating disorders have been seen in girls well before their teens, and a growing number of boys are experiencing eating disorders as well. That is why it is important for every parent to constantly be on the lookout for signs of common eating disorders.

Whether it is bulimia, anorexia or one of the many other eating disorders, it is important for parents and loved ones to be ever vigilant. It is of course not at all unusual for young girls and even boys to be concerned with their looks and to be unhappy with their weight. When this focus on weight becomes all encompassing, however, an eating disorder could be on the horizon. If the teenager in your life is constantly complaining about the way he or she looks, or constantly trying to lose weight, it may be time to have a long talk about the danger of eating disorders.

There is a great deal of misinformation about bulimia, anorexia and other eating disorders among young people, and many young girls and boys severely underestimate the dangers posed by these eating disorders. In fact, eating disorders can cause a host of serious, and permanent, medical conditions, and the nutritional imbalances brought on by bulimia, anorexia and other eating disorders can leave those young people at risk of fatal heart attacks and organ breakdowns.

The past few years have been witness to a great deal of research into eating disorders, and doctors are often able to predict who is most at risk of developing an eating disorder. If you feel that someone you love may be at risk, it is a good idea to consult with a trusted physician. Early intervention before an eating disorder has taken hold can help to break the addiction and get the situation under control. It is always better to treat an eating disorder at the beginning stages than to try to repair the damage it has done later on.

No one ever said that dealing with an eating disorder would be easy, but it is certainly important. Conditions like bulimia and anorexia are serious medical problems, and it is important that they be treated with the seriousness they deserve. People can and do die from these conditions, and it is important for those in the person’s life to be proactive and to be on the lookout for any potential problems before they have a chance to spiral out of control.

For more information on dealing with an eating disorder go to http://www.eatingdisorderunit.com