During a pre-installation session at a client’s office, his store supervisor told me about how great one of their stores was being run and how it would be a great pilot store for us to test some added features we had just introduced. I asked the store supervisor what made that store better than the others. He replied, “One cashier is the best. He never misses a day of work and he is never short of cash at the end of a shift.”
“Never?” I asked. “No he is always a dollar or two over,” he replied.
Naturally, I had to visit the store and meet this cashier extraordinaire. More importantly, I wanted to see his 401K contribution for the day. Sure enough, he was kicking it “old school” and had a scorecard on the side of the register. You know the drill. He had a nickel ($5), three dime ($10 each) and a penny ($1) next to the register drawer. So far, his self directed 401K was totaling $36 and he still had 5 hours to go on the shift! No wonder he never misses a day of work!
You see, he was counting how much money he was short ringing on the register during his shift and using a multiplier of ten so he and could pocket the money before handing over the cash drawer to the manager. Of course he would kick a $1 back into the drawer to come up “over” for his shift.
How could an employee clip you for $50 or more per shift without you knowing? Easy, if you aren’t enforcing scanning with tight inventory controls. Are you allowing cashiers to ring up sales without scanning? If you have an in-store inventory of $80,000 those “short sales” leading to “cash overages” will get lost if you are not doing a rotating item level count, checking trend analysis reports, no-sales and voids report trends, etc.
Remember: walking out of the store with cash is a lot easier than stuffing 3 cartons of cigarettes in your shorts (and it causes far less chaffing).
No employee should be “short” every day. And no employee should be “over” everyday. The ones who are consistently “over” have not short- changed a customer, they have short- changed you!
The good news is that when you fire these knuckleheads, they can go to a competitor and open a new retirement plan at their store.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008
Are Your Memorial Day Promos Ready for the Weekend?
By now you should have your Memorial Day product promotions set up for your stores to be ready to have a terrific weekend of inside sales, right?
With the price of fuel at record highs, in-store promos are more valuable than ever, driving traffic inside where you still have some margin.
If you are not set for promos yet, it’s not too late.
Login to the software system you are using and enter the starting and ending date of the promotion and the grouping of products. To speed up the process you should be able to select the promotion items by any of the following:
Feel free to forward this tip to friends, co-workers, employees, business partners who you feel might enjoy or benefit from it.
With the price of fuel at record highs, in-store promos are more valuable than ever, driving traffic inside where you still have some margin.
If you are not set for promos yet, it’s not too late.
Login to the software system you are using and enter the starting and ending date of the promotion and the grouping of products. To speed up the process you should be able to select the promotion items by any of the following:
- UPC
- Price Group (common priced items, i.e. 20 oz Pepsi products)
- Category/Department
- Vendor
- Item Group (products grouped by manufacturer, i.e. all RJR products)
- Store or by Zones (groups of stores)
Within a few minutes you can set up all of your promotions from your home office ahead of time and send the products, the pricing, the beginning and the ending dates of the Memorial Day specials to all or selected stores in one easy process.
After the holiday, your system will automatically revert the sale items back to the regular pricing. If you are not able easily handle promotions with your current pricebook system, give me a call or check our website.
Have a safe and profitable weekend and don’t forget those who died in service to our country:
In Flanders Fields
John McCrae, 1915
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
To learn more about pricebook and inventory management solutions, call Joe Terranella at 800.211.5980 or visit our website http://www.cmisolutions.com/.
Feel free to forward this tip to friends, co-workers, employees, business partners who you feel might enjoy or benefit from it.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Do Canned Sardines Have An Expiration Date?
Boy, I sure hope so, because the c-store down the street from me still has the same 12 cans on its shelves it had when I moved into the area 10 years ago! Let’s help this guy out.
Do you have any cans of sardines in your store? How about other slow moving products? You know you do, but what are you doing about it?
Does the 80/20 rule prevail in your store? This rule occurs when 20% of the inventory accounts for 80% of your gross profit. Do you know your percentage?
The 80/20 rule is conventional wisdom for everything from sales to management to finding a mate online; but Pareto's Principle was never meant to be linear. And it certainly should not be our goal. We can do better and we can do it right. With fuel heading to four bucks a gallon, we have to.
What if you could improve your chances by just 1%? Would that make a difference in your cash flow? With an inventory of $80,000 in a typical c-store, you bet it can!
It’s not hard to get the ball rolling. Here are two steps to get you started:
1. Print out a list of all of your store’s 50 slowest moving items. (For an example of a Bottom 50 Moving report, click here)
2. Print out a list of your top 50 selling items. (For an example of a Top 50 Moving report, click here)
Now here’s the fun part. Take those 50 items and clear them off your shelves. (Yeah I know, lots of dust bunnies, right?) OK, clean off those shelves and let’s move in some top selling items.
Now do this every week for the next month and you will get rid of at least 1% of the dust collecting items in your c-stores. Start today and by Memorial Day weekend you will have items on your shelves that customers actually purchase!
Don’t know how to tell what your bottom 50 and top 50 are? We can help. Give me a call or check our website, www.cmisolutions.com.
Now…what do you do about the can of sardines when they have expired? Put them on a display and sell them as bait. Deep sea fishermen, who can use the old sardines to catch bottom dwelling fish, love ‘em!
Do you have any cans of sardines in your store? How about other slow moving products? You know you do, but what are you doing about it?
Does the 80/20 rule prevail in your store? This rule occurs when 20% of the inventory accounts for 80% of your gross profit. Do you know your percentage?
The 80/20 rule is conventional wisdom for everything from sales to management to finding a mate online; but Pareto's Principle was never meant to be linear. And it certainly should not be our goal. We can do better and we can do it right. With fuel heading to four bucks a gallon, we have to.
What if you could improve your chances by just 1%? Would that make a difference in your cash flow? With an inventory of $80,000 in a typical c-store, you bet it can!
It’s not hard to get the ball rolling. Here are two steps to get you started:
1. Print out a list of all of your store’s 50 slowest moving items. (For an example of a Bottom 50 Moving report, click here)
2. Print out a list of your top 50 selling items. (For an example of a Top 50 Moving report, click here)
Now here’s the fun part. Take those 50 items and clear them off your shelves. (Yeah I know, lots of dust bunnies, right?) OK, clean off those shelves and let’s move in some top selling items.
Now do this every week for the next month and you will get rid of at least 1% of the dust collecting items in your c-stores. Start today and by Memorial Day weekend you will have items on your shelves that customers actually purchase!
Don’t know how to tell what your bottom 50 and top 50 are? We can help. Give me a call or check our website, www.cmisolutions.com.
Now…what do you do about the can of sardines when they have expired? Put them on a display and sell them as bait. Deep sea fishermen, who can use the old sardines to catch bottom dwelling fish, love ‘em!
Monday, May 5, 2008
What Are Those Ball Caps Doing In My Store?
Several years ago, I walked into a c-store with a company owner and, to his surprise, a soft drink display in prime space had been replaced with a rack of some of the tackiest baseball caps anyone could imagine.
“Who bought 500 baseball caps,” the owner asked the store manager. “I did,” the manager proudly responded, “because the vendor gave me a great deal on them… only $5 per cap!”
The owner just rolled his eyes, turned to me and said, “How soon can we install your software?”
He had 10 stores and was doing the math. The owner understood his manager had just tied up $2,500 in unauthorized inventory that would take forever to sell.
This is an extreme case, to be sure, but chances are you have had a similar experience. Maybe it was the DSD delivery driver who tells your store manager the new strawberry-mocha-energy drink is a sure seller or the extra 100 cases of beer are needed for the long weekend (even though it’s Easter weekend, not 4th of July).
Do you have unauthorized or slow moving inventory in your stores? Do you know what is selling and more importantly what is not selling? Why not? It’s your money!
While we can appreciate the entrepreneurial spirit of the store manager, in a time of escalating costs of food and fuel prices, inventory management is critical to remain in business.
What is the solution? Try CMI's centralized pricebook and inventory management system, PriceBook Manager, which authorizes products and product pricing for each store. For more information, click here.
“Who bought 500 baseball caps,” the owner asked the store manager. “I did,” the manager proudly responded, “because the vendor gave me a great deal on them… only $5 per cap!”
The owner just rolled his eyes, turned to me and said, “How soon can we install your software?”
He had 10 stores and was doing the math. The owner understood his manager had just tied up $2,500 in unauthorized inventory that would take forever to sell.
This is an extreme case, to be sure, but chances are you have had a similar experience. Maybe it was the DSD delivery driver who tells your store manager the new strawberry-mocha-energy drink is a sure seller or the extra 100 cases of beer are needed for the long weekend (even though it’s Easter weekend, not 4th of July).
Do you have unauthorized or slow moving inventory in your stores? Do you know what is selling and more importantly what is not selling? Why not? It’s your money!
While we can appreciate the entrepreneurial spirit of the store manager, in a time of escalating costs of food and fuel prices, inventory management is critical to remain in business.
What is the solution? Try CMI's centralized pricebook and inventory management system, PriceBook Manager, which authorizes products and product pricing for each store. For more information, click here.
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