Smart Retail: How to Turn Your Store into a Sales Phenomenon [Paperback]

"A really practical and helpful guide, essential reading for anyone involved in retailing." Charles Dunstone, CEO, The Carphone Warehouse

"This book is full of practical good things to make running stores that bit easier to get right." Julian Richer, Chairman and Founder, Richer Sounds

"A wonderful insight into the world of retailing. A fun and inspiring read, particularly for those close to retail." Vittorio Radice, Executive Director, Marks and Spencer (former Chief Executive, Selfridges)

"A book about doing it." Allan Leighton, Chairman, Royal Mail (former CEO, ASDA).

"Very much to the point and a great practical guide to retailing." John Thornton, Chairman of Thorntons

®€˜I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.®€™
Simon Stephens, District Manager, Sunglass Hut

®€˜This is a great book which delivers sensible pragmatic advice applicable to all retail sectors at all levels®€™
James Heneage, Managing Director and Founder, Ottakars plc

This is how it's done.

A book about doing it

A really practical and helpful guide, essential reading for anyone involved in retailing.

This book is full of practical good things to make running stores that bit easier to get right.

Very much to the point and a great practical guide to retailing

Retail is amazing. It is immediate, exciting, risky, and downright tough. Running shops gets into the bloodstream. But at a time when retail takes credit for saving whole economies it is still possibly the least understood of all business practices. Smart Retail is your ticket to a better retail life.

'A really practical and helpful guide, essential reading for anyone involved in retailing'
Charles Dunstone, CEO, The Carphone Warehouse

'A wonderful insight into the world of retailing. A fun and inspiring read, particularly for those close to retail.'
Vittorio Radice, Executive Director, Marks & Spencer (former Chief Executive, Selfridges)

'This book is full of practical good things to make running stores that bit easier to get right.'
Julian Richer, Chairman and Founder, Richer Sounds

'This is how it's done.'
Umesh Vadodaria, General Manager, PC World

This book is the first 'how to' retail handbook. It uncovers the key elements that separate the great retailers from the average, the killer teams from the also-rans and the High Street success stories from the back street strugglers. Covering everything from creating the ultimate in-store experience to understanding your customer and from promotional strategies to building energised and motivated teams, this is the book that will equip store managers, aspiring team-workers, retail entrepreneurs and indeed anybody who sells direct to customers, with practical winning ideas and strategies for retail success.

'A book about doing it.'
Allan Leighton, Chairman, Royal Mail (former CEO, ASDA).

'I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.'
Simon Stephens, District Manager, Sunglass Hut

'This is a great book which delivers sensible pragmatic advice applicable to all retail sectors at all levels'
James Heneage, Managing Director and Founder, Ottakars plc

'Very much to the point and a great practical guide to retailing'
John Thornton, Chairman, Thorntons plc

Thanks for considering Smart Retail. I wrote it for people in stores. People like me as it goes. Retail is bloody hard work. People outside of our industry often find that hard to believe. No matter how long you've been in the business; 10 minutes or 20 years; the pressure is always there. Everyday could be a disaster or a triumph. But when it goes well, ahhh man do we all love that feeling: a team pulling together, customers happy and spending, product shifting. Those days, that magic, that's what my book is for - to help us all to have more of the great ones!

Cheers,
Richard

Discover the secrets of Retail and learn how to grow your sales - and your career. This is the book that reveals what the most successful retailers in the world already know.

Discover how to:
- Identify and apply performance improvement ideas
- Create a great store culture that boosts profit
- Motivate people to get out of bed and be fantastic for you
- Surprise and delight customers into parting with their money

Whether you are a team-member, store manager, franchisee or shop owner, you are one of 4.4 million UK retail professionals. With Smart Retail you’ll be the one people notice.

"Retailing needs smart people and Richard Hammond is a smart guy who provides good advice on how to improve stores and build a better business"

Nick Bubb, Britain’s leading retailing analyst

Richard Hammond has lived and breathed retail at every level - as a wide-eyed kid, in executive positions within Head Office teams and latterly as a consultant, specialising in retail. In his consulting work, Richard has helped leading retail brands such as Whitbread, Pizza Hut, Barclays and KFC to engage and motivate their people.

Stars of the shop floor

A good chain-store manager, or owner, can make a huge impact on the success of a retail shop, much more so than a high-flying marketing director or clever finance chief can. With a good manager at the helm great sales people, assistants and administrators can also make a big and immediate impact. The ideas in this book are so accessible that any member of the team can use them to achieve something special, to help boost business performance.

Your motivation for reading Smart Retail might be to earn better bonuses, to boost your self-esteem, to accelerate your retail career or to keep the bank happy. My motivation is to try to make a tough job just a little bit easier. The ideas, strategies and techniques covered here are a distillation of the best in the world. I have spent time with the UK's best, the USA's best and learned too from excellent stores in Japan, Spain, France and Germany.

I'm hoping that you will read Smart Retail, apply some of the ideas and enjoy improved business performance, but for some readers this experience will lead to more than just extra sales and profit. Some people, and I hope that might be you, will read this book and a light will go on, they will see more clearly than ever before that they are special. That they can achieve anything they want to in this business. It's been fun writing this book but if just one person, maybe you, uses Smart Retail to better realise their real potential, well that is what will give me the biggest reward.

We are entering a retail era in which the merchants, those who have served on the front-line in the stores, are back in charge. That is very good news for you. Whatever your current position in the company, store manager, new assistant, or experienced area manager, there is nothing to stop you taking the plunge and surging ahead in your career. Nothing to stop you from running the company one day. If you have passion and energy, if you like people and you value the pleasure you are delivering to customers then you are in with a real chance. If you already own a single store, then there is nothing stopping you from taking on the big players and winning, nothing to stop you from adding new stores to that successful first one. Indeed the tools you need are all right here.

There has never been a better time to accelerate your retail career. 4.4m people work in shops in the UK. Everybody else, without exception, shops. In other words; millions of us earn our wages from retail and all of us use retail. So crucial is retail that American President’s down the years have urged their people to shop the country’s way out of recessions. Here at home the strength of our retail sector, the one you are an important part of, is credited by economists as the reason why Britain escaped the turn of the century recessions that hit Germany, France, Japan and the US.

Good retailers, at all levels, are in demand as never before. You are reading Smart Retail at absolutely the right time: now! Wages, conditions, challenges and opportunities are opening up fast. Single stores have become multi-million pound businesses. Even village convenience stores can be turning seven figure revenues. Chain-store managers in the big out-of-town sheds can be earning more than accountants, management consultants, or civil servants. Indeed in at Home Depot (American store that’s a lot like B&Q) in 2002 the average general store manager earned an annual salary of $150,000. This is a wonderful time for you to have chosen to boost your retail career.

Now, let's get down to business!