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Making it Count
by
Dereck Ethington, LPC, CFI
Regional Loss Prevention Manager
Hibbett Sporting Goods
Strive to be a catalyst! In order to make a difference in
the world of retail, it is our goal to play a significant
role which requires each and every one of us to fully commit
every day we are in this game called loss prevention!
Instead of going with what worked in the past, my challenge
for us is not to embrace the status quo, but instead, to
begin thinking differently - in a way that will offer new
solutions and new ways of thinking that will ultimately
revolutionize our perception of loss prevention as a whole
and also the retail world as we currently know it. Let’s
face it, being a 'team of one' can be quite challenging when
it comes to truly making a difference in how our stores
perceive the company’s LP initiatives. On average a
district/regional LP manager can be responsible for covering
anywhere between 12 – 400+ locations. With that being said,
it is imperative for loss prevention professionals at the
district/regional level to ensure they are having meaningful
conversations with everyone they come into to contact with.
It should be a goal of ours to walk away from every
conversation leaving behind a 'golden nugget' of
information. And for this type of conversation to ever take
place, our dialog must be current and relevant to the issues
at hand and delivered in a way that commands the recipients
attention from beginning to end. On the other end of the
spectrum, we risk that a portion or the entire message may
be lost in translation if we fail to deliver without ever
reaching the heart and soul of the message which were the
intentions from the very beginning. This is where the
challenge truly lies – being able to convey a message to
numerous amounts of people one conversation at a time. The
difficulty in this process is that the LP professional may
lose heart or drive over a stretched out period of time.
Being on the road and traveling from store to store hours
upon hours has the ability to bring any one person to a
screeching halt. And for this very reason, we must commit
daily to reignite our fire before we step back out into a
hectic world where it is our goal and objective to raise
awareness dealing losses by way of initiating conversations
one store at a time.
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