Back to basics: scanning training is important for retail employees
Does everyone working in your retail newsagency know how to scan barcodes?
I urge newsagents to check in with everyone working in their businesses, to see how they scan. Inaccurate scanning can result in register over rings, under rings, inaccurate inventory data … and more problems than these.
Please don’t dismiss this advice as professional scanning reflects the professionalism of your business.
I was talking with a newsagent last week about a theft problem that was not discovered as early as it could have been because of the lazy approaching the business to scanning. I know of another where customer throughput at the counter is regularly impacted by poor scanning techniques.
So, take a moment to check that your employees scan professionally:
- Be aware of where barcodes are located on products.
- Do not put price labels over barcode.
- Pass a barcode across the scanner once.
- Pass from one side to the other, always following the same path.
- Only hold one product when you are scanning.
- Rapid movement back and forth does not assist scanning.
- Rubbing a barcode on a scanner does not assist scanning.
- Hitting a scanner with a product, barcode facing toward it, will not assist accurate scanning.
- Scanners should only be cleaned with screen cleaning cloths, using an abrasive cleaner will not help the scanner.
- Place the scanner on the side of the register than the majority of employees prefer – knowing left handed employees will have a different preference to right handed.
While this topic may seem to be of minor interest, there are plenty of retail businesses I have seen where following the simple steps above will improve accuracy, shopper throughput and data integrity.
Ensuring the Pacific Magazines promotion is top of mind
We have a small reminder of the titles that are part of the Pacific Magazines $150,000 competition placed just above the Point of Sale screen at the counter. This placement is as a reminder to team members from their side of the counter about the promotion and the titles involved. Since this is a newsagent-only promotion, anything we can do to reinforce this the better for us.
Sunday newsagency challenge: list what hasn’t sold
Go to your software and run a report listing stock on the shelves for which you have not sold one item in the last six months. In most newsagencies where I run this report the owners are shocked as it lists the value of this dead stock. A common response is to do nothing about it. I tell people buying newsagencies to not pay wholesale for dead stock – it should be discounted by its age.
Sunday newsagency marketing tip: stop marketing what everyone else is marketing
I continues to be surprised at how much time newsagents spend marketing lottery games, newspapers and the top selling magazine titles on social media and other marketing platforms for their businesses.
This marketing is not differentiating for your business.
The only time I see value in promoting a lottery game, scratch ticket, a newspaper or top-selling magazine is when the context of the marketing message is unique to your business. That uniqueness could be convenience of the shop, the hours or some other genuinely unique factor.
Unless there is a unique factor to offer context, the marketing of the lottery game, newspaper or magazine is not useful to your business.
For every social media post or every ad, you have to ask: what does this say about us?
Some of our national suppliers have been good at training us to promote their brands in a way that is not unique to us. That has to change with their products now widely available on many different retail businesses.
Sunday newsagency management tip: have a policy on people who take photos in your newsagency
If you do not have a policy on photos being taken in your business you need to establish one and share with all who work in the business.
The policy needs to be simple: easily understood and easily enforced.
For what it is worth, here are my thoughts.
PHOTO POLICY OF THIS BUSINESS
- You are welcome to take selfies and photos of friends while in the shop.
- Please ensure others are not captured in your photos.
- Please do not take any close up photos of products without permission.
- Please do not take any photos of the business without permission as there are aspects of what we do that are commercially sensitive and such photos could disadvantage us.
Is News Corp. acting to harm newsagency sales when it wants newsagent support for its federal election promotion?
News Corp. appears to have launched a major hotel promotion with newspapers being provided, possibly free, to CBD hotels on the same day News Corp is asking newsagents to run its federal election promotion for capital city dailies and The Australian.
I have seen supply data for hotels due to receive significant numbers of papers from Monday with this note in the email to newsagents from News: the hotel listed below has been increased as from and including Monday June 13th to Sunday June 26th to the figures as show. This hotel is across the road from the newsagency.
Increases have included supply where no newspapers were previously supplied.
I cannot see the sense in News Corp. running this hotel promotion at exactly the same time as the election promotion as both target the same shopper.
Is this one part of the company competing with another?
Footnote: News sent out the advice after 5pm yesterday, Friday, for a Monday morning start. That is poor form in my view.
Changing the way we display cards in the newsagency
While the card department in the newsagency serves destination card shoppers, it does little to drive impulse purchases. We regularly pursue impulse purchases of cards by placing cards outside the card department, way outside, usually in a way to disrupt the shopping experience.
Every week or two we make a move with cards, to change-up the approach and have cards seen by people who might otherwise never purchase cards from us.
This photo shows one such move with cards. We have pegged a range of naughty cards to a black wire-frame mannequin. We felt this stand was an appropriate host for these cards as it plays against the naughtiness of the text.
The beauty of our approach of playing with cards outside the card department is that we can do this for ourselves, we have more control.
Make sure that computer you buy for your newsagency is what you think it is
A newsagent recently purchased a computer based on the brand and the claimed technical specifications. While the badge on the computer was of a known brand, the computer itself was refurbished. It was made up of parts not in the original machine. It was not of the specification claimed. It was not new.
No wonder the newsagent was angry when the manufacturer represented by the brand on the computer box did not honour the warranty. They did not have the claim by the supplier in writing and was therefore limited in action they could take.
A simple rule applies to computer hardware: something that sounds like the best year ever probably is too good to be true.
4 Colours pens at the counter work
Moving this stand of 4 Colours pens from the stationery aisle to the counter kicked up sales. People purchased the pens on impulse. This simple move paid off and reminded me of the value of thoughtful tactical placement of items at the counter. As with any most like this, measuring the result is crucial.
I urge any newsagent reading this to right away introduce something new to the counter, to chase impulse purchases.
The newspaper stand is a thing of the past
For decades newsagents were required by newspaper publishers to dedicate close to two square metres of space in prime location at the front of the shop to the display of newspapers. There were rules about the design of the stand and what we could place on the stand.
Many newsagencies today still have the fixtures in place as they were expensive and purpose built – removing them is expensive.
So long after newspapers lost their value in retail newsagencies, costs associated with a bygone era are a challenge for some newsagents.
The experience is a reminder to newsagents of the risks of agreeing to give over part of the store to a supplier for long after the supplier’s focus on the newsagency channel has faded, the costs of their required engagement continue to be carried by the business.
Today, newspapers work from almost anywhere in the newsagency. While publishers pressure for a front of store high-traffic location, their actions with other retailers and online lead to most newsagents not listening to their pleas.
Consistency needed on newspaper promo coupons
We take collecting coupons for newspaper promotions seriously in the newsagency, even when we are not required to pass the coupon back to the distributing agent for the publisher.
The coupon is part of the transaction, as it says on the coupon itself.
What do you think.
It frustrates me when people come in asking for the offer, in this case the Footy Powers 3 game card pack, and expecting us to sell them the pack without the coupon.
One customer last week yelled at us saying every other newsagent gives them to us without the coupon. When they said this I realised the inconsistency in the channel was a bad look for us.
What is the point of the coupon if every newsagent does not always collect?
I’d prefer News Corp. to resolve this for us, to stop requiring the coupons and stop printing this as a requirement – especially when we don’t have to hand the coupon back. Otherwise, the inconsistency continues and we all look like disorganised fools.
Promoting the Pacific Magazines $150,000 magazine campaign
Here is how my other newsagency is promoting the newsagent exclusive magazine campaign being run for us by Pacific Magazines. This placement is seen by everyone entering our main magazine aisle.
This is a vitally important campaign for us not only because it helps us differentiate but because history shows campaigns like this work at driving magazine sales.
The end of mass media?
Medium has published Death to the Mass, an essay by respected media observer, commentator and journalism school professor Jeff Jarvis. The essay touches on points some newsagents will find interesting as it explores the future of business that for more than 100 years was the reason our newsagency channel existed.
We all know the fate of Gutenberg’s invention. I have nothing against print, just as I have nothing against horses as a means of transportation or telephones as a means of talking, but we cannot hold onto an unsustainable technological artifact out of romanticism. I have been among those who argue that news must become digital first. To the companies I work with I offer a simple definition of that buzzphrase: A legacy news company must become a fully sustainable (read: profitable) digital enterprise before the date at which print becomes unsustainable. And that date is…? Sooner than we wish to think.
Jarvis eloquently explores the future of journalism, separating the profession from the dying distribution business.
When we read the article, we newsagents can think beyond journalism and newspapers and think about our model, across a range of challenged product categories, and explore our future.
The unnecessarily large Blueshyft stock file
XchangeIT has sent newsagents a large stock file for the Blueshyft services product. The approach being taken here is 100% in the control of Blueshyft and XchangeIT. It is an approach that I and experts at my newsagency software company have disagreed with from the outset.
I make this point today because a newsagent has told me they were told Tower helped create the process leading to the large file with 1,000s of entries. Tower did not help create the process. As recently as a week ago was advocating to Blueshyft they find an alternative that represented best practice in terms of retail data management.
While the world will not end and newsagency computer systems will not grind to a halt, these systems will be loaded with junk data as a result, and there are consequences for junk data.
Anyone focussed on serving the needs of newsagents would not agree to this.
Promoting the local newspaper
I’m in Cairns today and share here the pitch from the Cairns Post. Overtime I am here I check out their building in the centre of the city as they continue to promote the local paper, while other newspaper offices too often promote only digital. I love the focus on local news here – locals tell me this helps drive sales to tourists.
Tatts marketing for The Lott
Click here to see the marketing email from Tatts to their customers about The Lott branding – sent a couple of days ago.
Handling the News Corp election offer
Newsagents need to manage the News Corp bundle offer so that sales data flows to News and the company is able to measure engagement. There has been some confusion with communication from XchangeIT and News Corp.
To serve the need of newsagents in any state or territory, my newsagency software company Tower Systems published advice Sunday and Monday.
Newsagents ought to check with their software company in order to run this promotion the correct way. If they do not do this it could impact measurement as well as proper compensation.
Winter socks promotion with the Herald Sun
I love this winter newsagent only winter socks promotion to run with the Herald Sun this Saturday. I love it because it is timely, part of a broader Victorian state government promotion, newsagent only and the mechanic is simple. It is this type of newsagent / newspaper promotion that is good for our channel.
Promoting the Pacific Magazines $150,000 giveaway
Here is one of the ways we are promoting the Pacific Magazines $150,000 giveaway in-store. This tactical placement in the front part of the store is vital as is promotion at the counter and in with magazines in their usual promotion.
Pacific runs promotions such as this as they work in achieving sales growth. This is why I encourage newsagents to engage.
This is a newsagency channel exclusive promotion. It is an excellent opportunity if you compete with supermarkets.