As the owner of a retail business, you do it all—from operations to finance. You wear a lot “hats” during the day, which is why being more organized and knowledgeable about each area of your business is very important. This also leaves you with very little time in the day to research and find ways to make your tasks easier.
Keep This List Handy
To help you save time and energy, we’ve compiled a list of some of the best small business resources* that will help you stay on top of the latest trends and changes in the marketplace. Whether it’s instructional or an application, the resources below can help you and your employees become more productive.
Sales Training
- The Retail Doctor: Sales Training
- 5 Best Practices: Training for Retail Sales Associates
- Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions (Book)
- National Retail Association: Sales Training Resources
Resource-Filled Websites
- Google Retail Resources
- National Retail Foundation
- Small Biz Daily
- MasterCard Biz Resources
- Score Infographics
- LinkedIn Retail Industry Professionals Group
Management and Branding
- Retail Management: A Strategic Approach, 12th Edition (Book)
- Retailing Management, 8th Edition (Book)
- Be Like Amazon: Even a Lemonade Stand Can Do It (Book)
- What Great Brands Do: The Seven Brand Building Principles that Separate the Best from the Rest (Book)
- List of Free Marketing Tools from Small Business Trends
Apps
- Retail Dive (Updates on the latest trends in the retail industry)
- Asana (Communication and collaboration with employees)
- Proven (Job posting made easy)
- Trello (Project management)
- Mail Chimp (Email Marketing)
- Dropbox (Cloud storage for important files)
Government
- S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Learning Center
- Small Business Tax Center
- USA.gov Small Business Resources
- State Specific Websites with Business Resources
Research, Testing, and Implementation
It’s best to do some research before you implement changes to your operations. Once you’re sure that it’s what your company needs, test it on yourself or with one employee to see where the bugs are, if any appear. Then, you can implement it into your daily schedule.
This is a great strategy especially for the apps in the list, as well as sales strategies. Before you know it, you’ll wonder why you hadn’t made the change earlier.