Build It Before They Come
Management Guide #5
It is crucial to prepare for success of your recruitment campaign before you implement the plan. It is better to have no volunteers and provide fewer services than to dive into a volunteer program ill-prepared. Take your time! The upfront work is tough and time consuming. Convince yourself and the top administrators of how important the process is to positive outcomes. Think of yourself as an architect. You cannot begin with the penthouse.More

Interviewing Volunteer Applicants Using Role Playing
The Corporation for National & Community Service
The traditional methods of asking interview questions do not always accurately assess the abilities of potential volunteers. This effective practice from Steve McCurley, publishing editor of e-Volunteerism newsletter, and experienced trainer in the field of effective volunteer involvement, explains the pitfalls of traditional interviewing techniques, discusses the development of good volunteer interview questions, and describes volunteering interview scenarios using role playing.More

Evaluating Your Organization's Volunteer Climate
The Corporation for National & Community Service
A concerted and methodical approach to assessing an organization's volunteer friendliness pays off in retention. Although this evaluation process takes effort and honesty, having trained volunteers stay can add much to a program's success. Taking a closer look at your organization before recruiting and orienting new volunteers can be a revelatory experience.More

How to Develop Your Product Placement Management
Just About Everything a Retail Manager Needs to Know
Your objective is to maximize the sales across your whole store. Therefore where you position products in the store can have a major effect on the overall return on your investment. Product placement should be based on your understanding of individual products' classification.More

Avoid the Diamond of Doom
Retail Owners Institute
As a retailer, one of your primary goals is to boost profit margins. You know that good inventory management is essential to producing top-notch profits. You also know that bad inventory management can cause big problems with profit. However, you may not know the actual cause and effect of bad inventory management. This diagram, the "Diamond of Doom," illustrates in simplest form the problems created by carrying too much inventory.More

Designing a New Experience and Putting Fun Back into Retail
Retail Customer Experience
Intuitively, you know that making your customer's experience better makes your business better. As every business person knows, word-of-mouth is the best advertising. As a retail leader you probably have first-hand experience of a customer who so loves the shopping experience you provided. What you may not know is how to focus on just the right things and make just the right changes to get customers consistently oohing and aahing about their experience of your brand.More

Prioritize the Customer Experience
Entrepreneur
In the absence of clear-cut rules employees will simply make up their own, and those policies may not be the way you would like to be represented. It is the business owner's responsibility to make sure employees understand how they wish things done, and to reinforce it on a regular basis.More