You know the feeling, you’re dashing off to your store, your mobile phone is ringing, your partner/child/ or employee is asking you a question, all the while, you’re thinking about orders that need to go out, stock that needs to go onto the shop floor, bills that need to be paid and heck, did you even have breakfast. How often, do you experience that feeling of being pulled in every direction. You feel like you’re dropping the ball, and as you bend down to pick it up, you see that there are a dozen other balls on the ground that you need to pick up as well. You can’t be everywhere at once, but here are 5 strategies you can use, to make it seem like you are. Create an FAQ resource. Whether it’s on your website for customers to read, or in your store as a first point of reference for your staff, having an FAQ page, and teaching people to look their first, can majorly reduce the number of requests that you have to deal with. When it comes to your website, have a big button, or list all of your FAQ’s, BEFORE the customer gets the information on how to contact you. Conditioning people to help themselves first, trains them for the future – plus, they get instant results Create a live or pre recorded training. If you constantly get asked how something works, make your life a lot simpler, and devote a small amount of time, to show how it works once. Don’t even wait to direct people to the training. Stick in your FAQs, or if you have a website, make sure the world can see it. Stick it in a blog post, or even on the product page. The bonus when you do this, is you get added authority from the google gods, how simply love videos, when it comes to ranking websites. Use tools. Do you really need to go and meet someone? Could you have had the discussion over the phone, or via skype. Yes, in some cases, you do have to be face to face, but batch these occasions, so that you are getting maximum results for minimum time away from your business. Hold live group workshops. If you have a product, or even a service that you’re providing that’s super popular, instead of explaining it to every customer that walks in the door, hold an information night, or a VIP night. Maximise economies of scale. What might take 1-2 hours to discuss with a dozen or more people, could have taken 12 or more hours, if you did it one by one. Talk about it If you’re really knowledgeable and super passionate about a topic, offer to be a guest speaker at an event. Get the word out to many people at once, whilst also cementing yourself as the go to person in your field. You started this retail business, because you were passionate about what you sell. So go and spread the word. Follow any events like this up, with an FAQ or information resource, so that you’re not, in fact, creating more work for yourself. If you’ve found this information useful, come join the Bringing Business To Retail community. You’ll be joining a bunch of retailers from all around the world chatting all things business. Best of all, it’s free. Until next week Be profitable