Retail Revitalisation

 8 rural businesses in Cheshire East will be receiving a ‘surgery’ visit from the Shop Doctor during April.

Shops in Gawsworth, Cholmondeley and Sutton have already been visited  enabling the Shop Doctor to evaluate issues impacting on business performance and helping identify cost effective solutions to develop sales.

Each of the shops provides a bespoke service to its local community from the one month old (and extremely well presented) community shop operating with a paid manager and 23 volunteers in Gawsworth to the superbly equipped and stocked Farm Shop at Cholmondeley and the wide convenience offering at Sutton Lane Ends.

Opportunities were identified at each shop and these will be incorporated into a comprehensive written recommendations ‘prescription’ highlighting routes to enhance performance.

 

Following the winding up of South Lakes Development Trust (www.sldt.co.uk) Let’s Talk Shop Ltd has taken on the key business support activities originally established by the Trust to help support small local businesses in South Lakeland.

A range of support services are now available from bespoke telephone call handling in the name of the local business or general handling of transferred calls.

By filtering out unnecessary sales calls or ensuring that customers are talking to ‘real people’ rather than taking the risk of recorded messages not being picked up the service proves invaluable to small business operators.

For more information refer to our Business Support page.

‘Shop Doctor’ Bill Smith has recently been working with Cheshire East Council advising 22 retailers across Nantwich , Middlewich and Sandbach how to improve their retail vitality.

A ‘Let’s Talk Shop Retail Masterclass’ was also delivered which challenged those attending to think about how they present their businesses and what they could achieve by implementing some simple changes.

The visits were the first phase of a programme that will see more ‘Shop Doctor’ activity in Cheshire East over the coming months.