Your New Year To-Do List

Take some time this week to kick off January and the New Year on the right foot by completing some of these timely tasks:

• Ask employees to set goals for the year; for example, increasing front-end sales by 10%, creating more customer awareness about your vitamin/supplement offerings, compression stockings, and/or sugar-free selection, or promoting the benefits of vitamin D, CoQ10, sunscreen, healthy bones, etc.

• Be proactive and offer solutions for overstock, misaligned inventory, and understocks of health care categories, braces, vitamins, greeting cards, and gifts.

• Make this the year employees ask every customer, "How did you hear about us?" and "Did you find what you are looking for?" Develop a habit of thanking every customer for allowing you to be their health care provider.

• Add more natural and alternative remedies to the pain, cough & cold, and digestive categories this month.

• Be aware of an onslaught of new price changes in the New Year. Schedule to have changes completed as soon as possible.

• Replace verbal, unhelpful reports of "we sell a lot of that" with concrete data from your POS reports on OTC, DME, gift, and card sales.

Start the New Year by Looking Up

Let's start from the outside of your store. Take a minute and look up at your front entrance. Are you enjoying the view of a well-lit entrance where even the hardest-to-reach spots are dirt- and cobweb-free? Now, with pen and paper in hand, step inside and inspect the ceiling. Starting from the front left-hand corner, slowly inspect the entire ceiling and make a note of the number of soiled ceiling tiles and burnt out bulbs. Note who will replace the tiles and bulbs and when the chore should be completed. Next, turn off the background music for a minute and listen for a buzzing sound—that sound usually means you have a ballast that will burn out soon. Defective ballasts will make a bulb quickly burn out. It is easy to forget to look up. Now is the time to remember and make it a regular habit.

How Prepared Are You for Winter Storms?

'Tis the season for nor'easters and major snow and ice storms. Stock up on storm supplies for your store and assign someone to shovel, spread ice melt, sand, or salt regularly, and keep the floor dry. Don't forget to take good notes of how cold snaps and storms affected your monthly sales. You will find those notes handy for next year and for future storms.

New Year, New Goals

Make it a goal to do something profitable for your front end every day in 2017. Get tips and ideas in the 2017 Daily Pharmacy Planning Guide. The guide includes 365+ tips on timely front-end department advice, merchandising, and much more. Plus, Guide owners can participate in FREE quarterly webinars on how to use the Guide effectively, as well as seasonal merchandising and marketing ideas. Order now before copies sell out at www.ncpanet.org/bookstore or 1-800-544-7447.

Need More In-Depth Front-End Learning? We've Got You Covered

You or a staff member should join NCPA for a one-day seminar Feb. 17 in Orange, Calif. or March 25 in Dallas that gives you the know-how and tools to build store traffic, attract customers, and increase your front-end profits. Led by NCPA's Gabe Trahan, who has 40 years of store merchandising and marketing experience, the Front-End Profit Building Seminar will cover topics including curb appeal, floor plans and cross-merchandising ideas, inventory management tools, private label profit drivers, popular gifts, and more. Leave the seminar with an implementation tool kit you can start using immediately in your store. Register today—special rates for store team members, too.

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