Roy Prevost, Oakray Marketing
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Retail books come out infrequently and as soon as one does come out I like to grab it quickly to see what I can glean. Roy Prevost is a Canadian and writes this book from a Canadian perspective. He comes from the giftware sector and is now a conference speaker on retailing. His presentations revolve around ‘turbocharging’ your business.

I like this book as it is an easy to read book on a four hour airflight, something I judge books by.

It challenges the retail reader to think about how they are operating their own business. If you are looking for merchandising and display ideas, then this book is not for you. If you are looking to challenge yourself and your team on attitude, business management, developing your team and customer relations then this is a book for you.

Roy challenges the reader, for example “Offer a guarantee so strong that no one else in your niche would dream of doing it”.

As he says this will scare some readers, but he argues that this is an especially strong marketing tool for your business.

I love the idea of “Welcome Parties” for new team members to your business. I know some businesses do this ,but many do not. As Roy says, “Remember how you felt on the first day at work at a new business, you probably needed a welcome hug”.

There is an excellent section on Transactional selling versus Relationship selling that defines the difference between both styles of retailing. This is especially important when the big boxes are exceptionally good at transactional selling and forcing the independent retailers to redefine relationship selling techniques.

I would make sure this was one of the books on my business bookshelf if I was an independent retailer.

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