A Retailer's Guide for Promotion of Your Store: Good Times or Bad

The psychology of what is probably going on in your own mind, concerning the debt level you are currently contending with plus the fact that traffic in your store is down dramatically and the general malaise and anxiety in the society over the economy has you in a corner.

What I have attempted to offer up to now is general “how to” aspects of direct mail and techniques of setting up a direct mail letter to your customers and clients.

This is going to be a concise and frank address as to your real needs, right now!

A full liquidation of your inventory and all of your fixtures may be the only answer for your particular situation. The most important advice I can offer is that you should not allow yourself to get down on yourself.

I was a traveling Consultant for Independent Retailers throughout the mid 80's for approximately 10 years. From Anchorage, Alaska to South Carolina and I was in the mid-west consistently throughout the drought years and the Farm Crisis. So, I would hope that you comprehend that I do know what I'm talking about, to some degree.

In that particular cycle, many of the businesses that I was in to help reconstitute or put out of business by sell through of their entire inventory were creative and well thought through businesses with descent reputations in their communities. The owners were not “failures”! The economy and government decisions to protect the criminality, in that instance of the Savings and Loan debacle had put those businesses in dire circumstances. The drought and Farm Crisis had put the “icing on the cake” so to speak.

There are multiple retail oriented outfits currently reconstituting “liquidation” or “Consultation” programs for this particular cycle. Some are probably very good and some are poorly designed and developed and you won't know how to distinguish the difference; until it's too late!

Reality: Most of those firms simply hire on an “Independent Contractor” basis, former Retail Management and Executive types and send them out to fulfill contracts on behalf of those umbrella organizations. They train to their specific programs and then hope that those people get out in the field and do a good job. Some do. Some don't!

Some of the people get out in the field and fall apart. They have their own personal situations, many are going through divorces simultaneously to being out and attempting to help the business and sustain themselves through their Independent Contractor status simply to keep some money coming in while they deal with their own problems which are uppermost in their minds and psychologies.

Pg. 2 “Guide”

Some of those Consultants get out in the field and evaporate. Complete meltdown was a general concern and happened, I would guess about 5% plus of the time. Not a bad failure rate, unless you happen to be that account in the 5%.

After several years working with multiple Retail Consulting Firms, I decided to open my own. Then I started confronting the realities and problems that plague those outfits.

In the first place, an advance person has to come out and look at your store and your inventory and do a general presentation and evaluation of your psychology and need and conditions of your business. They are supposed to evaluate and report accurately. My experience was that in most cases, they didn't. Their first and primary concern was getting a signature on that agreement to send in someone to execute their program for your store. I had failed contracts that did not fail because of the owner or my efforts while there. Quite simply, they were contracts that should not have been written because the basic criteria were not present as the base of requirements in order to fulfill and execute a correct and accurate result.

In some instances, the Retail Owner had “overlooked” mentioning facts/factors like, oh say, an additional personal signature loan that was not only due; but had been due for 25 days and within one week of my arrival I found myself doing a tap dance with that Owner's Bank over a note that was not possible to pay immediately. I had one case, when an owner was in the final stage and last notification of an I.R.S. tax seizure that occurred in the third week I was on site and not one word had been told to my Company or me after arriving until the second or third week of the contract with absolutely no time to react.

More times than not, I received very good contracts and assignments with excellent owners who simply wanted the agreement and execution of their quitting business sale to go well. They were creative and honest and willing participants in the process. Many were agreements written as something other than a “Quitting Business Sale” in order to give us time to possibly turn the business around through quick short injections of cash through sale of inventory in order to clean up credit problems and prior debt. Those were particularly tough sales promotions since in many instances; the Owner had opted for that program rather than simply admit that the business was too far gone, to save. Naturally, the Sales Representative that my outfits had sent out was more than happy to go along with that destructive decision, simply to get a signature on an agreement, in order to collect what they could in commissions for having brought back a signed contract.