Advocacy Articles

Advocacy: Are You Really Prepared and Proactive?
By Mark Palmore

If your sales have exceeded your goal, are you prepared? If you have communicated that fact to your boss, are you proactive? The answer to both of these questions is maybe! No, I am not trying to be funny, but very serious. Institutional/self-op store directors often ask me how can they insure that their store will not be leased. I then ask how the store is performing. Usually they say sales are up, customer service is great, and their Web site is growing by leaps and bounds. I then say that sounds great, but how does your administration feel about your store performance? In most cases the answer from the store director is "I don't know." WOW! What an answer--and why don't they know?

The primary reason is that the store director and the campus administrator are not on the same page with regard to the direction of the store. Do you know the mission of your store? YES, because you probably wrote it. But do you know the mission of the auxiliary service division/student union/foundation/or whatever campus administrative group you report to? In most cases the answer to that question is unfortunately no.

I urge you to learn that mission, whether it is written down or not. Find out exactly what your administration expects from the store. After you know the mission you can help establish the goals for your store and implement them with your staff. Don't fall into the trap where you believe your store is doing great only to come back from vacation to learn that your administration has sent out an RFP because they do not feel the store is accomplishing their mission.

I know this sounds fairly obvious, but since the summer of 1999, when Connect2One developed the first full-time Institutional Store Advocacy initiative, we have worked with close to 200 institutional stores. Many of those stores were not aware of the mission of their administration. Some learned and helped save their store, while still others have become contract managed. Knowing the mission of your administration and working toward that mission is no guarantee you will stay self-op/institutional, but it is good place to start. After all if you don't know where you are going, how will you know when you get there!?

For more information on the Connect2One Institutional Store Advocacy Program, please contact me at (800) 563-9034 x228 or via e-mail at mpalmore@nebook.com.