SRR 2000, Winter 2000
Employer Beware
There's more to employee background checks than meets the eye. If you don't know your legal obligations, you could find yourself facing a lawsuit.
Hiring the First-Time Worker
Due to a booming economy and a tight labor market, employers are being forced to evaluate teenagers, recent college graduates and others with no full-time work experience.
In Search of Excellence
Where are the best employees? Chances are, they're working happily—for someone else. Use these six strategies for recruiting great employees in a tight labor market.
How to Talk to a Tough Customer
Uh-oh. Here it comes: the flushed face, the rapid breathing, the clenched teeth—the angry customer. Remember the Perato Principle? It's the one that says 80 percent of your sales come from 20 percent of your customers. That's true for many businesses. What's true for all businesses is a variation on the Perato theme, a Principle of Tough Customers: 80 percent of these walking, talking, complaining headaches come from 20 percent of your customers.
Planning for Profits
How to create realistic goals for a profitable 2000—and achieve them!
The Best of Best-Seller Advice
No matter how well you think you know your customers, Paco Underhill's newest book, Why We Buy, will surprise you with its insights into the true nature and habits of shoppers.
Getting Started on Credit
There's great news for entrepreneurs, especially women. Gone are the days (not so many years ago!) when few businesswomen were taken seriously enough to get start-up or expansion loans, no matter how good their financials. Today's picture is entirely different. Record numbers of women business-owners are looking for money through bank loans and lines of credit—and getting it, according to the National Foundation for Women Business Owners (NFWBO). And they're obtaining that credit in greater amounts than ever before.
The Five C's of Credit
Cash. Money. Capital. Financing. No matter what you call it, one thing is for certain—you can't start or run a business without it. A business may begin with a concept, an idea, a vision, but it takes cold, hard cash to turn those intangibles into a viable enterprise. If you own a business or plan to start one, sooner or later you will need financing. Lenders often use the "Five Cs" of credit when assessing a business loan proposal or credit line application: character, capacity, capital, collateral and conditions.
Seven Secrets of Profitable Websites
So you joined the gold rush to the World Wide Web, only to strike fool's gold. You are not alone. Many retailers have sunk their pickaxes into the wild, wild Internet... only to wish they hadn't.
Well, take heart, prospector! By following some key marketing principles unique to the cyber-frontier, you can stake a claim to a gold mine instead of watching your investment turn to dust in the wind. Listen to the following sales experts who reveal the top seven secrets of retailers with highly effective websites.
Women in Retail
These women mean business! Record numbers of women have acted on their entrepreneurial spirit in the last decade, inspiring them to create businesses as individual as they themselves.
Pet Profits
From a holiday cart in Las Vegas to nearly $1 million in sales, the Vino family has expanded Animal World to locations across the US, all catering to animal lovers and their passion for collecting.
Shoppertainment, Statistically Speaking
At TASK Management, professional entertainers focus on "shoppertainment," but the sales they generate are managed by a very precise, statistical method. Here's a look at how one company has combined fun and finance to generate more than $10 million in sales.
No Time to Lose
Aviva Jamensky turned a supermarket job into a super opportunity to start her own business. Today, sales exceed $12 million.
Greetings from Denver
If you're one of the thousand-plus savvy retail entrepreneurs expected at this year's ICSC Conference and Expo in late February, then you'll be visiting the entertaining and vibrant city of Denver, Colorado.
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