1. Creating the Ideal Sales Team  

2. Merchandising Your Store in Today's Ever-changing Business Climate  

3. Anatomy of a Salesperson  

4. Get a Grip on Your Business Financials

5. The Art of Merchandising

6. It Ain't Just About Sales

7. Salvaging the Good Ship Retail

8. 2010 & Beyond - The Strategic Guide

9. Developing a High Performance Sales Force

10. How to Succeed in Business

11. Identifying Operational Opportunities Through Your Financials

12. Inventory Allowance and Open to Buy Systems

13. Exceeding Customer Expectations

14. Succession Planning for the Independent Retailer - Family-Owned Business

15. The Management Challenge:  Delegate Unto Others Before They Delegate Unto You

16. Identifying and Eliminating Costly Delivery Mistakes 

17. Engineering Positive Merchandising Outcomes

18. The Mystery of the Budgeting Process

19. The Secrets of Recruiting the Best Sales Professionals

20. Cash Flow or Cash Flop? - Retailer to Retailer

21. Mega Margins - Retailer to Retailer

JRM's staff of retail industry experts average 30+ years of hands-on experience.  Contact us for additional information on any of the following seminars and speaker availability. info@jrmsales-mgmt.com

Creating the Ideal Sales Team

Do everything else right but this and your company will dramatically under-perform, and could fail!

• What are the must have qualities and how do I avoid making a hiring mistake?

• How do I utilize incentive compensation but avoid conflicts?

• How do I train, coach and hold salespeople accountable?

• How do I know if I have the right amount of salespeople?

• what do I need to do to get my lower performers towards the middle, the middle performers towards the top, and help the top performers reach their goals?

Gain the much needed information to identify, hire, and retain the best sales team you could ever hope for.

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Merchandising Your Store in Today's Ever-changing Business Climate

Does your merchandising engage customers through a better understanding of their preferences and behaviors?

• How should your merchandise lineups be structured?

• What does the first 500 sq. ft. near the entrance of your store tell the customer?

• How are you merchandising your floor; what's new?

• Your product tagging strategy; is it customer friendly?

• Your customers; what demographics are you merchandising to?

Merchandising must enhance the customer experience and create environments that make customers want to buy.

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Anatomy of a Salesperson

What makes one salesperson succeed while others fail?

• What is the magic profile for a strong salesperson in our industry?

• Where do I find my best candidates?

• Why would top salespeople come to work for me?

• How do I increase the probability that I can position salespeople to succeed?

• How do I ensure that my salespeople have enough but not too much of my stores' traffic?

Assuming the answer can not be both; then ask yourself:  Would you rather have a beautiful store with a terrible sales team, or an ugly store with a great sales team?

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Get a Grip on Your Business Financials

Gain penetrating insights into your financials:

• Learn how every financial document tells you a story.

• Understand and identify how a P+L or Budget gives you the initiatives you should be going after.

• Learn the early warnings that can appear in your financial documents.

• Learn when to change a company's direction into something new.

• Understand what it takes to keep a company safe.

• Understand how to have predictable net profit.

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The Art of Merchandising

Proper merchandising and buying takes time and skill. This seminar is designed to show you how to acquire the skills and methodology for maximizing your investment dollars in your inventory.

• You will gain invaluable insight into how to best determine the breadth of your assortments to ensure your store reflects your vision.

• Learn how to determine your open-to-buy dollars in just a few steps monthly.

• You will learn how to measure your effectiveness as a merchandiser.

It Ain't Just About Sales

Ultimately we are in business to make a profit and use it to improve the quality of our lives. If we improve our businesses in just one area (say sales), without holistically understanding the implications on all others areas of our business, we set ourselves up for ultimate disappointment and failure.

• Gain insight into maximizing the potential of all aspects of your business which will position you for sustainable increases in sales and profits.

• We will discuss how to build an environment that is enjoyable and minimizes stress.

• How to stop suffering results and begin to engineer holistic positive outcomes.

Salvaging the Good Ship Retail

Learn how to stay afloat while others are sinking. This seminar will cover the 10 warning signs that might be indicators of a slow leak and how to plug it.

• You will learn what you can do in the next 60 days to “Raise the titanic!” and how to move away from the rocks and toward the smooth waters ahead.

• How you can tell if your crew is ready to mutiny.

We will focus on getting ahead of the competition, and what you can do to survive and even profit in these challenging economic times.

2010 & Beyond - The Strategic Guide

How to Survive & Thrive

Having consulted with hundreds of furniture retailers over the years, Joe Milevsky has seen companies struggle during the best of times and others excel during the toughest of times.  2010 and beyond offers many challenges but even more exceptional opportunities.  During this seminar you will gain a clearer understanding of the things that you cannot control and how to minimize your focus on those things.  You will also learn how to strategically approach the things you can control.

The various challenges for 2010 & beyond may include:

• Dealing with fluctuations in traffic - Sales perspective

• Dealing with fluctuations in traffic - Marketing perspective

• Maximizing merchandising efforts with less available inventory dollars

• Utilizing financial tools to ensure that your company stays safe and productive

• Building a great place to work and a highly organized efficient environment

• Understanding the six areas of your business that must be consistent with each other

During this seminar you will gain a better understanding of how to proactively embrace change and excel in your future business efforts.  Not only will you be shown methods for surviving tough times but also the things will allow you to flourish and achieve your goals. 

Developing a High Performance Sales Force

Learn how to develop a high performance sales team:

• Find, interview and hire top salespeople

• Properly set sales goals

• Use appropriate measurements to understand variances in individual sales performance

• Use measurements to coach improved salesperson performance

• Develop the customer experience that best fits your company’s culture

• Hold salespeople accountable for performance

• Create a positive and fun selling environment

• Keys to developing and keeping top performers

During this seminar you will learn how to dramatically improve your company’s sales performance by capitalizing on your company’s current assets,  without wasting more money on additional advertising, etc.

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How to Succeed in Business

Many of us eternally try to reinvent the wheel.  The results are often less then satisfying and lead to frustration and under-achievement. 

• Discover qualities that successful businesses have that less successful businesses lack

• Gain insight on how to develop and achieve your personal plan for success

• Develop improved skills for running your business through your employees

• Begin to develop the skills to maximize employee effectiveness and satisfaction

Gain dramatic insight on how to keep your quality of life in balance with the responsibilities of running your business.

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Identifying Operational Opportunities Through Your Financials

Company initiatives should be developed based on the company’s financial performance in all operational, sales and merchandise areas.   How do you really direct your activities to insure you are affecting the company outcomes?  This seminar will help you understand your options as you look at tough areas of your business. 

• What should I look and do at when I miss sales forecasts?

• What can I do when margins drop?

• How do I know if my advertising is effective and what components should I measure?

• Does the backend of my business perform as well as it should and how do I know?

• How should I evaluate my merchandise strategy and is it right?

• My expenses keep going up.  What expenses should I cut and how should I do it?

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Inventory Allowance and Open-to-Buy Systems

This seminar will explore the various methods for understanding how an Open-to-Buy System works and how inventory allowance is determined. 

• During this seminar you will learn how to quickly evaluate your financial statement and how it can be an early warning signal to your buying habits and potential cash flow issues. 

• Gain an in-depth understanding of turn rate not as an outcome but as a planning tool to help you determine the inventory level for your company. 

• Gain tips on how to determine how many weeks of supply you currently have on hand and what you truly need to achieve your company’s goals.

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EXCEEDING CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS

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Succession Planning for the Independent Retailer - Family-Owned Business

Less than one third of all family businesses survive transitioning to the second generation and only one half survives the transition from the second to third generation.  Although it is difficult to face and procrastinated by most, succession planning is a critical process.  It is not simply critical for the business unit, but perhaps more importantly critical for the family unit.  Poor succession planning processes tear families apart!

What are the options?

• Transition to the next generation and keep the family business alive.

• Keep the family business alive but run it through outside management.

• Sell the business to employees through an Employee Stock Option Program (ESOP), etc.

• Sell the business outright.

• Do a Going out of Business Sale.

There are several reasons why family businesses do not survive the transition to the next generation.  These reasons include

• A poor business model – the company is not set up properly for long-term success

• Poor business performance – the company will not financially survive the transition

• The reason for owners’ reluctance to let go and procrastination to deal with succession issues include the following:

  • Facing the loss of power, prestige, influence, etc.

  • Potential reduced income

  • Retirement

  • Ultimately to face up to the prospect of death

• Unattractiveness of the business to the up and coming generation – the up and coming generation observe the stress that mom and pa have been under and believe that there must be something better for them

• Little or poor planning processes – even where above bullet points are non issues, most transitions still fail due to poor business and family planning

During this seminar we will focus on the critical issues that surround the transition to future generations.  We will share with you comprehensive strategies for the selection process of both asset distribution and company leadership, how to proactively deal with family situations resulting from non-selection, how to develop an environment that will encourage future generations’ interest in the business, how to understand when to let go, and basic estate planning concepts.

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The Management Challenge:  Delegate Unto Others Before They Delegate Unto You

The Choice is Yours. The stress of growing a successful business can only be mitigated through managing your people.  Small businesses can only grow by delegating responsibilities the way successful larger businesses delegate.  We hire employees simply because we do not have enough time to do everything ourselves and simultaneously grow our business.

JRM Sales and Management has worked with hundreds of retailers of all shapes and sizes.  It is clear as to why some companies do not achieve the level of success to which they aspire while other companies are able to excel.  

During this seminar we will show you how to excel while discussing: 

• How to get everybody in the company on the same page.

• Developing and respecting lines of communication.

• The importance of having appropriate job descriptions.

• How to communicate employee performance and coach improvement.

• Better understanding of multi-directional accountability.

• The importance of resolving conflict.

• How to improve your teams’ effectiveness in problem resolution.

• How to ensure that task completion dates are met.

• Develop tools to assist employees in promptly completing tasks.

• Proactive recruiting strategies.

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Identifying and Eliminating Costly Delivery Mistakes 

Delivery mistakes or exceptions are very costly in both dollars and customer satisfaction. And most delivery issues or exceptions are 100% preventable. Eliminating or reducing these exceptions will have a dramatic impact on your bottom line. In this workshop you:

• Will learn how to significantly reduce delivery exceptions and increase customer satisfaction and the profitability of your warehouse and delivery operation

• Will learn the 15 most common delivery exceptions or mistakes in the retail industry

• Will learn how to track and identify these delivery exceptions

• Will learn how to identify the source of the problem and correct

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Engineering Positive Merchandising Outcomes

Ineffective merchandising strategies lead to negative sales trends, cash-flow issues, as well as overflowing warehouses and stores.  Learn powerful merchandising strategies that will lead your company to dramatic performance improvement. 

• Determining your target market

• Creating a slotting plan, merchandise plans, & war rooms

• Implementing nail-down strategies

• Implementing item elimination strategies

• Utilizing open-to-buys

• Pricing strategies

• Competitive shopping

• Vendor relationships, buying, and market strategies

• Sound re-order buying processes

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The Mystery of the Budgeting Process

Most independent retailers do not produce an annual budget.  Professionally run, successful companies produce budgets and work their budgets to facilitate positive outcomes rather than simply accept less than positive results. 

Discover processes that will keep your business safe.  Learn how to:

• Create and understand how to use a budget.

• Establish a chart of accounts that will define company safeguards.

• Benchmark your company’s performance.

• Set reasonable, achievable and detailed financial goals.

• Hold management team members accountable for their performance to budget.

• Build company initiatives to effect positive financial performance.

• Make your profit more predictable. 

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The Secrets of Recruiting the Best Sales Professionals

As business analysts and consultants we constantly hear “I can’t find good salespeople”. 

The fact is they are all around us.

• The reason we don’t see them may be because we may not know what we are looking for in a salesperson. 

• When we interview them they sell us, but when we put them on the sales floor they can’t sell our customers. 

• Many don’t last very long, or worse, they might last too long, are unproductive, and create conflict in our organization. 

• The fact is that some organizations do a great job of recruiting the best sales professionals.

• Learn their secrets and gain a greater understanding of how to increase the probability of a successful

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Cash Flow or Cash Flop? - Retailer to Retailer

What are the main causes for poor cash-flow and how do we fix these problems?

(Click to see slide show)

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Mega Margins - Retailer to Retailer

Higher margins does not necessarily mean lower sales.

(Click to see slide show)

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