For the last five months I have been presenting seminars and writing articles that cover some aspect of: Growing The Size Of The Market One Specialty Retailer At A Time: No Matter What The Economic Conditions!

This premise leads quickly to a question I now ask in all of my seminars and teleseminars:  Is there any specialty bicycle retailer out there who doesn't want to grow their business?  Believe it or not, I do get an owner now and again who will have the courage to raise their hand and say...they don't want to grow their business!

These exceptions have all been small stores with the owner as the only employee.  They don't want to grow because they simply can't handle anymore business!  However, when it is pointed out that their taxes and costs of doing business have not, and will not stop increasing...they can get their heads around growing their operating margin and net pre-tax profit as the two points of growth they need to manage in order to keep even, and hopefully get ahead and put something away for their future.

It doesn't take long for all of us to get on the same page, and agree that planning to grow our businesses is a good idea.  However, to grow most specialty bicycle retailers have to embrace change, and adopt a new, or at least different business strategy. 

This is the really hard part for most of us, because doing the same old thing all the time is comforting and it is just easier to keep doing things the way we have always done them! 

It helps to take a page from our friend T. Scott Gross, the author of Positively Outrageous Service and Why Service Stinks...and Exactly What to Do About It!  Scott is fond of telling us that: "Insanity is sometimes defined as repeating the same behavior but expecting a different result with each repeat." 

We now live and work in a society and marketplace that has changed dramatically and profoundly, and what worked yesterday, isn't working today, and sure as heck won't work tomorrow!

There are five ways to grow your business, my business, any business for that matter, and they can grow your business in just about any economic conditions.  Even better...the five ways are low to no risk, which means little or no downside, and a whole lot of upside. 

1. Increase the value of transactions:  Real world examples include
   establishing pricing policies, merchandise mix and assortment planning for your business to help you control all of your stores gross margins, adopting a Smart Hiring program focusing on customer service naturals, consistent and ongoing staff education including an initiative to increase average transaction value and close rates, supported and encouraged by a staff incentive program. 

2. Increase the number of transactions:  We work with a retailer that consistently does over 95-percent of his annual business with existing customers!  He treats his customer database like gold, because it is more valuable to his business than the precious metal itself...and he uses his customer database to drive cost efficient direct response marketing.
3. Increase the number of customers:  We encourage retailers to embrace a simple form of Net Promoter whereby they ask each and every customer if they enjoyed their shopping experience so much that they will recommend the store to friends, relatives and co-workers.  If the answer is "yes," sign them up for your formal referral program! 

   Positive Word Of Mouth, or WOM, is huge as an influencer on behalf of your business, and getting frequent testimonials and posting them on your web site and including them in all the forms of your direct response marketing can prove invaluable to increasing the number of customers for your retail business!

   Please Note:  These first three "ways to grow your business" are taken from Jay Abraham, http://www.abraham.com/.

4. Complete retail process:  A common sense retail process for your store that includes every step from the time a shopper enters your store, and doesn't end until 30-days after the sale is made, and which covers:

   Consistently providing extraordinary customer service, making shopping for a bicycle fun, getting customers contact information in to your point of sale system database, consistently using your POS database for direct response marketing, controlling inventory and operating expenses. 

   A store-operating manual is an important tool in establishing, maintaining and effectively teaching your retail process to your staff, facilitating buy-in and consistent execution.  The whole reason for focusing on a formal, written, complete retail process is to continually raise your whole store organizations ability to consistently deliver an extraordinary retail shopping experience!    

5. Work with business partners that add value:  The key to first surviving and than thriving...is supporting high inventory turnover and GMROI (gross margin return on inventory) while providing a satisfactory merchandise selection and availability. 

   This requires establishing working relationships, or partnerships with suppliers that can provide what you need, when you (and your customers) need it.  Web based B-2-B transaction capability is a necessity, as is access to real time supplier inventory and same day shipping performance.     

These five ways to grow your business are loaded with changes.  None of them are rocket science, none of them are high risk, and most of them have no risk associated with them at all.  They are all relatively low cost, have already been proven in practice, and you can start implementing most, if not all of them...now, today! 

There are three additional changes that over-arch the five ways to grow your business, and are integrated into all five.

First, develop a passion for retail that is equal to your passion for bicycles and bicycling!  Don't be confused...you are a retailer first and foremost, because that is what consumers and shoppers expect from you, and that is how they will finally reward you, or not! 

Next, focus your whole organization on becoming consumer-centric...that is your whole store organization being completely dedicated to consumers and delivering an extraordinary retail shopping experience, and individual lifestyle solutions.  Make it all about them...not you, your staff or the products! 

Lastly, make a commitment to lead!  I can't tell you how many times we have watched a specialty bicycle retail business go off the track of success because the owner simply would not commit to leading, or worse yet, allowed the staff to "run" the business.  Good managers are essential, and an owner can lead effectively through a management team.  However, letting the staff have their way because of the owner's fear of having to find replacements just isn't going to contribute to growing any business.   

Face it, owners and managers are informally training or at least conditioning their retail staff every day by their actions and behavior...and literally lead by example.   

The point is that an owner can't expect the necessary changes to become reality if he or she isn't willing to show their own commitment to implementing the necessary changes for growth and making them happen. 

The biggest risk to you and your business...is continuing to do what you have always done.  My firm believe is that we can grow the bicycle market one bike shop at a time as long as owner's are willing to make the low to no risk changes in thinking, practice and operations to make it happen!