Retailer Edge has unveiled a new comprehensive retailer training program called RETAIL PROFIT BLUEPRINT. It is the solution many of you have been waiting for to take your business to the next level. Art Freedman has poured 40 years of retail experience plus 10 years of consulting experience for global retailers into this training system to ensure it has everything you need to bring your business to the next level. This is real world training filled with NUGGETS OF GOLD you can use in your store immediately.
Have you ever asked yourself the following questions? Do you still?
- Will I make payroll this month?
- How can I improve my top line revenue, when I have very little money to spend on advertising?
- How can I increase bottom line profit when I feel like I’ve done everything already?
- How can I educate and motivate my associates to delight my customers each and every time?
- How can I reduce shrinkage so I’m not throwing away money?
- Finally, how can I create a system or blueprint that my staff can follow to make my business operate at the highest level possible?
Retail Profit Blueprint will give you a retail profit optimization system—a blueprint to follow for success. Once you have a system in place for consistently operating a great retail business, your income just steadily grows every year and life becomes a whole lot more fun.
WHAT DO OTHERS HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THE SYSTEM?
“Art turned my store around! With the economy slipping and a new roadway being built in front of my store, I didn’t think we would make it. With this program, Art helped me turn everything around, he substantially increased our bottom-line profits.” -Jim Michener, Washington.
Others say:
“In just over two years, Art has increased our company’s margins 5.2 pts. The result has been over $2.8 million to our bottom line!” – Mike Costello
“His teachings are necessary for every retailer. The entire presentation was worth more than any other presentation I have seen.”
Michael Ellis – Indianapolis
And many more:
“Excellent content and delivery. Easy to understand and grasp the concepts”
“A great reminder of where I should be excelling and what is most important.”
“Very practical hands on explanations. Crystallized a lot of fuzzy concepts about
service.”
“Powerful presentation.”
“Eye opening and very impressive. Invoked a lot of thought process and gave me a lot of areas to improve in.”
“Excellent. Highly motivating with solid strategies”
“An excellent presentation on what we deal with on a daily basis as a retailer”
PROGRAM SPECIFICS
The Retail Profit Blueprint program is a package of mentoring, coaching and training materials designed specifically to work within a retailer’s time-lines. Here are elements of the program:
MENTORING PROGRAM
- Mentoring store visit
- Private Coaching twice monthly
- Training Modules
- Access To Members-Only Training Center
- 275-Page Workbook/Training Manual (All Slides and all Notes)
- Making Money is not illegal Immoral or Fattening book by Art Freedman
- 20% Off all Retailer Edge Products
Fee: only $4,997 per six month program
The mentoring program is an in-depth analysis of your store complete with hands on consulting by Art Freedmen. He will visit your store in order to:
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COACHING PROGRAM
- Group Coaching (2 calls per month)
- Training Modules (8 CD program described below)
- Access To Members-Only Training Center
- 275-Page Workbook/Training Manual (All Slides and all Notes)
- Making Money is not illegal Immoral or Fattening, book by Art Freedman
- 20% off all Retailer Edge Products
Fee: only $97 per month (6 Mo. min to receive unlimited access to all items above)
Coaching provides you with Live Coaching Calls with retailers that have similar businesses to yours. Questions will be emailed in advance to discuss on the call. Each topic will be addressed as an individual MasterMind session and recorded for your later access.
SELF STUDY PROGRAM
- Training Modules (8 CD program described below)
- Access To Members-Only Training Center for one year.
- Eight Module series CD package
- 275-Page Workbook/Training Manual (All Slides and all Notes)
- Making Money is not illegal Immoral or Fattening, book by Art Freedman
- 20% off all Retailer Edge Products
Fee: only $499
TRAINING MODULES
This is an 8 video training series that will get you thinking differently about your business. All are available via access to our Members-Only Training Center where you can review the digital version of our eight module training CDs instantly, from anywhere in the world whenever you want. The training modules are:
- Getting Started This module is all about setting the right framework for thinking and learning about this course and your business.
- Principles of The Most Profitable Retailers In this module you will learn the key differences between the two types of retailers and how to become a highly profitable “professional” retailer.
- Planning for Profit To improve your retail business you must develop, create, and implement a plan for success. Do you know how to create a Retail Operating Plan? Do you know the Top Key Performance Indicators to manage your business success?
- Advanced Profit Optimization In this module, you will learn the tools and techniques used to increase store margins by 2, 4, and even 10 pts above average. Depending on your store volume, this could be $35,000 to $72,000 on the low end per year.
- Reducing Loss = Keeping More Profit No one likes to talk about Loss Prevention. But if you don’t fix it, all you’re doing is wasting money every single day until you do. In this module we go over targeted strategies on how to reduce loss and put more money in your pocket every month.
- Your People Drive Your Profits Leadership is an essential and sometimes overlooked component. We assume it to be there, but it can be difficult to define sometimes. In this module I’m going to remove the “fuzziness” around leadership and walk you through the specific proven steps you need to take to be an effective retail leader.
- Boomerang Customer Service You will learn how to turn your associates into customer “wowing” advocates. By using the natural strengths of your business model you can out-“delight” your competitions customers and keep a steady flow of profitable clients for your business.
- Increasing average Transaction Size and Items Per Transaction In this module we are going to walk-through specific and proven strategies on how to increase the average transaction size and item count. By implementing this module coupled with an optimized pricing system, your profits will accelerate quickly.
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Get started today!
Get started today!
ABOUT ART FREEDMAN
Art Freedman is an internationally renowned retailer with more than forty years experience in retailing, during which he has held every job position at the store level. He also has had regional responsibilities in a corporate environment as well as being a multi-store owner. Art has delivered real-world training and mentoring to more than 500 groups, touching more than 15,000 retailers. He has presented across America, and more than 20 other countries, including Australia, South Africa, and Ireland.
For a moment, think of the store as a stage. You are about to put on the best Broadway show in history! You have actors, props, lighting and sound crews and you are the stage manager. Your job is to ensure everything goes off without a hitch; the actors must deliver their lines, night after night, in the same way with great enthusiasm. This show is live, so if there is a mistake, it is there for all to see—including the critics, who will be writing about the performance in the local newspaper.
Your store is just like a Broadway performance. You are a Stage Manager, rather than a Store Manager, because truly what you are doing is creating an experience for the customer. The experience has to be exceptional to influence how the customer perceives your store. Your team has an opportunity with every individual who comes through the door. Don’t let them lose sight of that because, nothing is more valuable than the customer, and great loyal customers come from exceptional customer service. There will always be a bigger retailer that can beat your price, but it’s a real shame if they beat your service!
Your employees are the actors. It is their enthusiasm and consistency on stage that can make or break the performance. So how do you ensure a runaway hit every time? –By delivering the same great performance with every customer every time. In fact, that’s a motto, you can repeat often: “every customer, every time!” Do your employees know what to say to every customer when they enter the store? When they ask for help, during the sales transaction or if the customer doesn’t find what they are looking for or is unhappy with a product?
Hopefully your store has its own standard scripts (if not, it’s time to create them). It is up to you to ensure the employees are following them. Do they know exactly what the store policies are so they can feel confident on the sales floor? For example, when do your employees say “No” to a customer? Do you train employees to say “Yes?” I know many good retailers whose policy is that only, the manager or the owner can say, “No.” You might be shocked to learn how often employees are saying no to the customer without checking with someone else first. They think they are helping the store by not giving away merchandise or profits, but in reality, they are losing customers, who may never return to the store again.
Know what script employees’ use when the customer asks for something your employee believes the store doesn’t carry? If the customer has to go somewhere else for an item you’ve lost the sale of that item and probably whatever else they would have purchased, and possibly a loyal customer. Do they check with you or look for an alternative before sending the customer away? As the stage manager, be sure the actors have every line memorized.
Of all the items you sell, do you know which ones are giving you the most profit? Chances are your top 25 classes are generating nearly half of your gross profits! That is typical for most retailers. 
Make it a priority to know the top selling twenty-five items by gross sales, gross profit and gross profit margin, to maximize your profits right now. This information is golden, because it is where the gold in your store is! Never lose sight of it! Now, you can ask the right questions to improve your business. Does your store demonstrate to customers that it is:
- A leader in these product classes?
- The best place to purchase these items?
- Where to shop because they will always find these items?
Walk your store armed with the gross sales and gross profit figures of your top twenty-five. What message are you telling the customer when they look at these products and how they are displayed? Are they shouting out to your customer that this is the best place to buy the items they more than likely came into your store for? Do you have related products next to these items to encourage additional purchases? What type of items are they? Do you have signage that might encourage impulse purchasing of these or related products?
Make it a daily obsession to analyze your top 25 classes. Know what products are moving up, down and off the list, and why. Use it to test your merchandising or advertising actions. You will understand your customers and your store much better than before.
Art Freedman and Brian Chesbro have teamed up to teach you the very latest of what top retailers already know. How to:
- Put 2 to 4 margin points to your bottom line profit, just by improving your business operations.
- Gather competitive intelligence so you’ll know exactly how you rate against the competition.
- Streamline your inventory to measurably increase sales and profits in thirty days or less.
- And so much more!
What is Extreme Retail School?
This is a three-day real world training for serious retailers that want to learn what the best in the industry are doing right to increase profits. It makes it clear the specific actions (not theory) of what you can do to dramatically improve your business.
What are others saying about it?
“Great information and energy, I’ve got new ways to look at my financials that will strengthen my business.” –Jeff Pardini, Owner, Hills Flat Lumber (Do It Best).
“This challenged the way I view my business and mad me think of ways to improve. My expectations were met and exceeded.” –Dirk Koopman, Owner, Koopman Lumber, two stores in Massachusetts.
“This was an eye opener for me. Lots of new ideas to improve my business. I highly recommend this course.” –Eduardo Neuman, Cemaco Manager, Nine stores in Guatemala.
See more written and video testimonials at Retaileredge.com
We really want to see you there. Don’t miss the opportunity to learn and network with other great retailers. Call Meredith at (916) 715-0999 for a full agenda and more details.
In this period of flat or declining sales, market share is crucial to retail sales growth. So, how can you determine if you are gaining or losing market share without breaking the bank? Here are three simple methods to understand what is going on in your competitive market.
1. Count cars – get out and count how many cars are in your parking lot and how many are in your competitors. Pick a standard time of day and start recording the car counts. As you gather more data, you will be able to see who is gaining and losing market share. If your sales and car counts are down, but your competition is maintaining or increasing their counts, you have a problem.
2. Register watch – Position yourself where you can see all the registers in your competitor, then count the transactions for fifteen minutes. Then check your computer system for your transaction count for the same period of time. This will give you an idea of your competitor’s volume compared to yours.
3. Track your closing rate – Give your greeter a clicker and have them count how many shoppers enter your store. Then compare this number to your transactions for the day. Your greeter should count a family or group as one shopper. If you have a 70% closing rate, it means that 30% of the people who are taking the time to drive to your store are purchasing the product they want somewhere else. Find out why, and fix it. While these methods can’t substitute for professional market research, they can allow you to determine where the market is and how to grow your top line.
| How is Your Store Doing?
The Store Evaluation Checklist was developed based on reviews evaluations with thousands of retail stores in the US and Internationally. Work the checklist and you’ll improve your results. Purchase Art’s Coaching Program for only $1.00 and receive a copy for FREE. |
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Art Freedman has motivated tens of thousands of retailers of the years around the globe to improve their retail business. His speakerships are in constant demand by major retail corporations, such as Ace Hardware, Cemaco and Mitre10. The best learning opportunity you can have is to listen to him live; either by attending one of his sought after Retail Schools or via his Mentoring or Coaching Sessions. We know, that isn’t attainable for everyone, so now have an 8 Module Training available via streaming web video or CD available.
