Paying Attention To Pay
Business owners that make a large investment in payroll need to make a small investment in time to explain how wages work.
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Author: Gordon Hecht
Fourth and Goal
In a normal year, this is about the time that the major league baseball pennant races are getting interesting and football season is starting to fire up.
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How to Become a Recruitment Dynamo
It was just ten short years ago when businesses had the upper hand in hiring, and finding good employees was as easy as putting up a “Help Wanted” sign or posting something on social media.
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Why Store Owners Should Promote Themselves to Sales Associate
The business owners and entrepreneurs reading this article share a common drive with folks like Sam Walton, James Cash Penney and Mary Kay Ash.
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The Story You Are About to Read is True
Those old time TV cops would have made great salespeople, because asking the right questions can help you solve the mystery of finding the right mattress for your shopper.
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It’s the End of Retail (Again)
Compared to the history of the world, my history with our retail world is rather short, only about 47 years. I was lucky enough to start my first real job in May 1973, just ahead of a world-changing, albeit manufactured crisis that affected retail in a big way (see Crisis No. 1).
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How to Calm Impatient Customers
Ask someone to describe a rice cake and they’d probably tell you “It’s about the same diameter as a CD, only 10 times thicker, and the CD tastes better.”
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Let Your Customer Win the Battle if You Want to Win the War
I don’t believe in the old saw “The customer is always right,” but I do believe that it is our job to make them right.
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The Match Game
Twenty years is a long time in the entertainment industry, and if you were watching television sometime between the Everly Brothers warbling “Crying in the Rain” (1962) and John Mellencamp belting out “Hurts So Good” (1982), then you probably saw Gene Rayburn host a show called “The Match Game.”
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Horton Hears a Sale!
Theodore Geisel, who you may know better as Dr. Seuss, probably never thought of himself as a business writer.
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What’s it Gonna Be, DYKWIA or VIP?
OMG! Sometimes I just have to SMH when I see all of the initialism used in modern day communication.
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Hit Me with Your Best Shot
You have to be a real tough cookie to survive, flourish and grow in 2020.
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HSN (Home Selling Network)
By Gordon Hecht, Serta Simmons Bedding Walk-in shopping traffic has surely changed over the last few decades. Back in the
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Making a Splash in a Sea of Sameness
Rule No. 1 of marketing, and retail in particular, seems to always be the same: If something works, then run it until you beat the snot out of it and watch it die.
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Little Big Men
Today’s retail world may seem like a frightening chapter in a fairy tale. Here’s some thoughts on how to deal with the storybook characters you may have on your store team.
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Are We There Yet??? Retail Takeaways from the Lighter Side of Social Media
It was the favorite whine for kids whose parents would take them on long road trips (like New York to Disneyland) with no rest stops.
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Honey Don’t
If you are reading this article, congratulations! It means that you’ve made it through another week of shelter-at-home. And if your showroom is still open it was probably a week of minuscule traffic.
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Opinion: Independents’ Day
Over 2,600 years ago Sun Tzu, the great military leader and strategist, proclaimed, “In times of peace prepare for war. In times of war prepare for peace.” His advice rings more true today than ever.
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Filling the Empty Seat
It’s hard to deny: the U.S. economy has provided amazing job opportunities in the last few years.
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Make Valentine’s Day More Than Just a Box of Chocolates
February is typically a big mattress month due to Presidents Day, but the more celebrated occasion is, of course, Valentine’s Day.
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