As an FFL or range owner, you’ve got a lot on your plate. Inventory, budgets, marketing, staff, taxes, profits, sales and events — it’s the never-ending list of keeping a successful business up and running.
Most of those things become routine. You cut paychecks every two weeks. You file federal taxes quarterly. Your inventory orders are queued up and timed to take advantage of distributor specials and seasonal needs. It’s all running smoothly until …
The Phone Rings
It’s a reporter from your local television station. She wants to talk with you about a domestic dispute that turned deadly in an apartment across town, because the gun found at the crime scene has been traced back to having been sold by your store.
Um, hmmm, um … no comment?
With today’s 24/7 news cycle, the chance of your FFL being contacted for an interview are much higher than it used to be. This is true whether your store has supposedly or actually been linked to some criminal incident or simply because you’re a handy source of background information for some more benign story they’re airing to fill air time on a slow day. This is especially true for FFLs and ranges in proximity to large cities and high-population suburbs where crime rates are high.
Regardless of your location, you want to be prepared when that phone rings or — gasp! — there’s a reporter with a camera crew walking through your front door. Our Retailer Seminar “Mastering the Media and Public Relations” is designed to do just that. Media consultant and former news anchor Ann Baldwin, along with firearms training facility owner and instructor Stephen Powell, will walk you through not just how to survive instances requiring damage control and crisis management, but also how to win the day with positive public exposure for your brand. This seminar shows you how.
Now, back to business as usual. You’re amply staffed for the weekend rush, the inventory of hot new whiz-bangs has arrived, the marketing campaign behind it has your phone ringing off the hook and a regional IPSC match in town has ammo, cleaning supplies and range bags flying off the shelves when …
“Nice to Meet You. I’d Like to Buy Your Store.”
It’s not the Mega Millions or Powerball lottery, but you have someone quite unexpectedly standing in front of you, check in hand with a lot of zeros to the left of the decimal point. Do you hand him the keys, pay off your mortgage and head for Antigua? Maybe. That check sure looks good — but maybe your store’s worth more.
Actually, it doesn’t matter whether you have someone in front of you wanting to buy everything as is, a developer who wants to raze the whole thing to put up an office complex or you simply want to sell out and retire or make plans to ensure your family will inherit a business they can sell for a profit. The point is, everybody leaves this business at some point, and you want to do that on a high note.
Our Retailer Seminar “Your Exit: Planning for Retirement” presents the information you need to properly value your business at any stage and the tactics you can use to increase its value year after year. Best of all, this is DIY — no need to incur the cost of a professional appraiser. We held this seminar, moderated by business expert Gene Marks, last year, and had so much positive response from those who attended, as well as people who hadn’t been able to make time for it requesting we hold it again, that that’s exactly what we did. This seminar takes place Wednesday, Jan. 23, at 1:00 p.m., so mark your schedule now.
The full list of the 2019 SHOT Show’s Retailer Seminars is available here, and we encourage all range and retailer professionals attending the show to take part in as many of these sessions as possible. Each session is just $25 for NSSF members and non-members. Once you’ve completed your registration to attend the 2019 SHOT Show, simply add the seminars of your choice (including the ATF Town Hall, which will have a $0.00 fee) to your shopping cart. As a reminder, our standard retail and range members are entitled to free admission to one seminar of their choice (beyond the free Town Hall), while our Premium members can attend two sessions on the house. Members should contact me at jmcnamara@nssf.org for the code that will take the price of their session/s down to $0.00 during checkout.
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