Every day in every newsagency across Australia customers talk with employees about things they do not tell their own families. Just in the last week in my shop we’ve heard from the wife struggling with her husband’s Alzheimer’s; the girlfriend who has fallen out of love with her long term partner; the lady who had been looking forward her friend’s 100th birthday party; the mother with a son in jail for drug offences and upset at the Van Nuygen case; someone asking for help with a personal ad.
We cherish these stories and the humanity they bring to our counter and to the relationships with our customers.
I’ve decided to collect these stories into a live journal for no real reason other than as a keepsake for ourselves. These stories are from our community and it’s important to me that we preserve them as a reminder of our day to day personal journey with our community.
We have an exercise book behind the counter into which our front line team is encouraged to write the stories shared with them and to read others.
While my shop is a place of commerce, it’s also part of each of our lives. Hopefully our journal will remind us of the privilege of the personal contact we enjoy each day with our customers.
This personal contact is what sets small business apart from its competitors. We know our customers.
We agree that a situation exists, which when exploited, should see additional spontaneous sales.Although the various state Lotteries demand total exclusive use of their space we say challenge this thoughtfully and they are unlikley to more than voice displeasure at our actions. Remember that the “exclusivity” clause in their own respctive states will be reviewed over the next few years, and from discussion with various bodies the consensus is that this “exclusivity” will be renewed on a short lived basis or removed entirely. This removal will lead to wide market expansion / erosion and those who cross market or have tried cross marketing stand a better chance of maintaing or increasing their share of the available market or creating new additional markets. Our suppliers will assist if asked, as we know from past experience, they will activly seek new markets and existing markets without us if they can. If we actively work with our suppliers on cross marketing we stand a better chance of not being left right out.