Getting ahead of the competition is easy, what does it take to stay ahead all the time?

When local market become tight in consumer spending, and you want to stay number one in the market with the existing, budgets, tools and resources that you have. Where will your focus of discussion with your executive team start. The strategy can be two fold: cost cutting which is the quick solution and does not address the challenge, however, achieves the desired board results. Listen to team input in resolving the turn-around and put costings into each suggestion and analysis the pro's and cons. Ask the hard questions, be honest, open minded and test viability. You might have the answer, however, by giving your team the opportunity, you will have a change of direction or look at the opportunity from a new perspective. Look at what attracted customers/clients to your company, if you loose one customer be VERY WORRIED, take personal interest and follow up, you need to win that customer back at all cost. Do not look at the value of the transaction, but the merits of what upset the customer to decide never to return to your company. Ensure that this never happens again in the future. How will you achieve this? The next focus will be looking at your competitors: what are they doing different? What attracts customers to their stores and spend their money there? What are their loyalty Unique Selling Propositions (USP)? What are their target markets and you need to inspect: pricing, quality, promotions (lead products and pricing), advertising (tools) and more importantly look at their winning lines (products). Compare this valuable information to your company offers and products. Questions that you need to ask your team: Objective: How can we increase our market share with all of this information? With each answer or suggestion, turn each answer into an operational strategy with costs, time frames, areas of responsibility required from each support department. Then create workshops with from staff from various stores to represent each job function to achieve result.