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Negotiating commercial leases: Reduce your square footage
Dale Willerton and Jeff Grandfield RetailFor many commercial tenants, negotiating a good lease or lease renewal against an experienced agent or landlord can be a challenge. While an entrepreneur focuses on marketing and managing, savvy real estate agents and brokers are specialized salespeople. Their job is to sell tenants on leasing their location at the highest possible rental rate. Whether you are leasing a new location for the first time or negotiating a lease renewal for your business, here are two money-saving tips.
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3 ways to better manage retail sales staffing
Catherine Iste RetailThe best business schools have always praised two things: efficiency and numbers. So, in retail, when sales go down, it makes sense to cut staff and hours, right? And from this "cut" mindset, we look for minimums: how few people do we need to stay open? What other costs can we cut to save money? Then, when we look at the bottom line, we see results from doing this and continue the same behaviors. However, this approach is not sustainable, and it excludes consideration of critical data that is less easy to measure but just as impactful on the bottom line.
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Fire fast, even in an employee market
Catherine Iste Business Management, Services & Risk ManagementPay is up. Jobs are increasing. And the opportunities of the gig economy continue to unsettle traditional job paths. None of this changes the fact that it is better for culture, retention and the bottom line to fire fast. But how do we balance the imperative to fire fast with the more basic need to have staff? Here are a few tips on how to fire fast, even in an employee market.
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What dairy pros need to know about the USMCA
Ted Jacoby Food & BeverageThe wait is (kind of) over. Trade authorities in the U.S., Mexico and Canada have agreed to a trilateral free trade agreement that replaces NAFTA. The finer points of automotive manufacturing earned most of the headlines during the protracted negotiation period, but dairy trade was another key sticking point. Here, we hope to offer some details and context to provide a clearer picture of how things will look once the deal is effective. Or, more like if. The deal first must survive legislative review in three separate national capitals.
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Travel2020 at CES2019 — Technology for a better trip: Part 2
Lark Gould Travel, Hospitality & Event ManagementThere is no place like CES, the Consumer Electronics Show that happens in Las Vegas every year, to find the latest skills that Alexa can perform or new ways to conquer your world one robot, one pair of smart glasses, or one new 8K television at a time. Travel2020 cut through the clutter (and that’s a lot of cutting with 4,500 products to peruse!) to come up with the latest in newfangled travel gear for travelers looking to make their trips more comfortable. This is part two of a quick glance at technology that is changing the way we travel.
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How to create Facebook content that performs better in 2019
Emma Fitzpatrick MarketingNew year, same problems! Every social media marketer on the block is still trying to figure out what to do about the ever-dwindling numbers on our Facebook Pages. For the umpteenth year in a row (or since 2014 if you want to be exact), organic reach is down. An Agorapulse analysis found organic reach for Facebook Pages dropped, on average, 13.62 percent in 2018. Not only are fewer people organically seeing your Facebook content, but they’re also engaging far less.
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When it’s better not to focus on profit
Lisa Mulcahy Business Management, Services & Risk ManagementMaking as much money for your company as possible is a no-brainer — that's why you're in business, right? That's true, but there are some situations in which it can actually benefit your company's long-term bottom line not to strategize for immediate maximum profits. Your reputation, relationships, and long-term planning can be used to an even greater advantage if you know when to pull back and how to refocus your aim. Use these tips to reboot for the short term and become even more successful in the long term.
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What’s old is new again in retail for 2019
Catherine Iste RetailRegardless of age or profession, every citizen in a small town understands retail’s fundamental principles: trust, word of mouth and network. As Amazon, voice-controlled devices, and smart homes change the way consumers and retail interact, these fundamental principles of human interaction will continue to become more important. Here are three old practices that will enjoy renewed importance in the year to come.
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Travel2020 at CES2019 — Where the robots hit the road: Part 1 of 2
Lark Gould Travel, Hospitality & Event ManagementWhat do you get when 180,000 verified geeks and 4,500 newfangled gadgets descend upon a few long blocks in Las Vegas? A lot of enhanced plastic, paper, wires and a possibly scary vision of the future at what is now fondly called CES. The Consumer Electronics Show that has been happening yearly since 1967 has come a long way from the portable Motorola televisions and next-gen eight-tracks that were once the siren song of a budding battalion of obsessed electronics fans. Today, it is more like an ocean of FOMO enthusiasts looking at the latest in any field of technology you could imagine.
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Have you heard of TikTok?
Emma Fitzpatrick MarketingApple recently announced 2018’s most downloaded apps. Unsurprisingly, the top five free iPhone apps were all social media platforms and included YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Messenger and Facebook. But a few spots down on the list at No. 16, a new social media app emerged: TikTok. It’s an app that lets users create short videos set to music that are up to 15 seconds long. The company differentiates itself by saying it’s "not your ordinary destination for short-form mobile video. It's raw, real, and without boundaries."
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