Real Life Business help.....Expert advice>>>PZ?

hi i just turn 20 n my family runs a small grocery store. lately for the past year the business have been dropping... i believe its due to poor management n partly the ecomony...i challenge myself n told my parents that i want to manage the store.. i believe i can bring the store back on its feet... they just currently agree to hand me the management job... since i am inexperience.. please give me some helpful advice on how to obtain loss n new customers while also keeping current customer happy... there are 2 other grocery stores around n thoose r my competitions,,, i analyze that my target market are 90% hispanic n 80% of the serious shoppers r between the age 30-50 ... please give me some helpful advice....Real Life Business help.....Expert advice%26gt;%26gt;%26gt;PZ?
1. Keep the store looking exceptionally clean. People will not buy food from a place they perceive to be filthy. This means your bathrooms must be clean, your floors, your windows....everything.





2. If you have fresh produce....make sure you only display it if it looks fresh. That mean no brown bananas. If you have excess produce, then sell it to a restaurant or in your store at a discount, but get it out of your store before it looks old.





3. The poeple working for you...they must be cheerful and helpful to customers at all times. encourage workers to ask customers names, and remember them. If you have rude employees, it costs you sales because people will shop somewhere else, and they will tell a handfull of their friends too.





You have to remember the most important thing...you are not in the grocery business...you are in the ';Making and Keeping Customers business';....and often, that is an entirely different process than selling groceries. Everything you do in your company has to make it easier to make and keep customers, if it does not, then you stop doing it or get rid of/re-train any person who does not fit into that concept.





Help your employees understand that they are in the ';Marketing'; business ( marketing is the art of making and keeping customers) not the service business.....';good service'; is a tool used in marketing. If your employees understand this angle, they will be more inclined to do little things such as ';oh I noticed you have hot dogs in your cart...did you know we have pickle relish and sourkrout in aisle 5?'; ..now they've increased the possibility that the customer will buy more items. its called ';Upselling';Real Life Business help.....Expert advice%26gt;%26gt;%26gt;PZ?
Want some real expert advice? Contact the people at SCORE:





http://www.score.org/index.html