This is the seventh of 10 articles to help you increase your retail or restaurant sales or profits by 25%. These ideas are in no particular order.

If you wish to contribute some of your own ideas, please go to:

http://www.quicktopic.com/44/H/kmftrxGq5dfrq

The link above is a link to Quick Topic. This is a FREE online discussion board that you may want to use in your business. If you go to the link above, you will be going to our 10 Tips Guaranteed To Increase Sales and Profits by 25%. It is anonymous and does not require you to logon in order to post to this discussion board.

Tip #7 Reduce Your Rent.

Many retail chains are negotiating rent reductions.

A fast food restaurant in my local mall reduced its rent from from $33,000 per month to $23,000 per month. How did they do it? They gave notice that they were leaving.

According to the Los Angeles Times, some tenants are getting their rents cut by as much as 50%. Many restaurants and retail stores are taking advantage of increased negotiating power by opening up second stores.

In many areas, the vacancy rates have doubled making rent negotiations easier.

You can read the Los Angeles Times article at:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-0524-smallbiz-rent-20100524,0,2250.story

Now how do you negotiate a lower rent?

The first thing you need to do is ask. If you don't ask for a lower rent, you won't get it. Most retail store and restaurant owners never ask. After all, you already negotiated your rent. You are a person of your word. We tend to be embarrassed to ask for that rent reduction.

To start, your landlord needs to know that you are not easy. Your landlord is going to ask for a 10% increase in rent. After all, prices are going up and all the local businesses have to help the landlord paying for his increased expenses.

The best way to prevent a 10% rent increase is to go to your landlord and ask to renegotiate your rent.

Let your landlord know that business is down and store traffic is down. You don't need to plead poverty. You can offer your landlord some facts.

If you read the pcAmerica Newsletter #343, I talked about traffic counters. Traffic counters are devices that track the number of people that enter your store. If you have kept these statistics over a period of time, you have some concrete information to share with your landlord. If your store traffic is down by 10%, you can share that information with your landlord.

For those of you who missed the traffic counter newsletter, go to:

http://news.pcamerica.com/pcamericanewsletter343.html

If you landlord is smart, he will probably tell you that the reduction in traffic count has nothing to do with traffic entering your store, it is due to a lack of interest in your store.

You can reply by asking for help in getting more people to come into your store.

You don't need to have a volatile discussion with your landlord. On the other hand, your landlord will remember your discussion. When it comes time to renew your lease, it is highly likely that the memory of your conversation will result in a lower rent increase (or even no rent increase at all).

Even if you can't negotiate an immediate rent reduction, you can ask your landlord to help in other areas. For example, your landlord may be able to give you some extra perks such as free trash removal (or reduced removal costs if you actually tote the trash to the trash bin). Your discussion with the landlord could lead to increased signage. Prior to having a discussion with your landlord, think of some items that you can negotiate that won't actually cost your landlord more money.

About 700 shopping center owners and managers across the United States recently received form letters from a major big-box retail tenant. "Since times are tough, we've decided to unilaterally reduce our rent by 25 percent," the letter read. Enclosed in the envelopes were checks to the landlords for the newly decreased amounts. In all, that 25 percent slashing of rent translates into a $30,000 annual reduction per lease and total annual savings of $21 million for the retailer in question. (From Retail Traffic magazine)

Read what happened by going to:

http://retailtrafficmag.com/features/rent_reduction_requests_0312/

Starbucks and Quiznos has managed to get rent reductions of 15% and more by renegotiating longer leases. Read about their reductions at:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aPQv7BPDql9s

Unfortunately, Starbucks is not one of pcAmerica's customers.

Here are two articles that can help you with rent negotiations:

Lease Negotiating Strategies & Tactics

http://www.articlecity.com/articles/business_and_finance/article_8568.shtml

9 Ways to Negotiate a Rent Reduction

http://ezinearticles.com/?9-Ways-to-Negotiate-a-Rent-Reduction&id=3872205

Apple has toppled Microsoft. The market capitalization of Apple now exceeds Microsoft by 3 billion dollars.

"Wall Street believes in Apple because Apple continues to put out new products that capture the imaginations of the press and tech pundits," said Rosoff. "Microsoft just hasn't been able to come up with a new multi billion dollar business like Apple."

Read the entire article at:

http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/26/technology/apple_microsoft/index.htm

Most people are still using Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Microsoft Internet Explorer comes installed on most computers and that's what most people use. At the current time, 59.95% of people accessing the internet use Microsoft Internet Explorer.

24.59% of those using the internet use Mozilla Firefox. Why? It's become very popular because it is faster than Internet Explorer and uses fewer resources to work well.

Google has an Internet Explorer alternative called Google Chrome. Chrome has managed to get 6.73% of the market and is growing quickly. The latest released version (Version 5) is lightning fast and is getting fantastic reviews by the experts.

Google is coming out with computers than only run Google Chrome and has placed their browser on many new phones being released.

For those of you who have little computer experience, you can download Google Chrome at:

http://www.google.com/chrome/index.html?hl=en&brand=CHMA&utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-na-us-bk&utm_medium=ha

It's free and easy to install. If you install Google Chrome, you can still use Internet Explorer as your primary browser. Give it a try and see how much faster you can browse the internet.

If you want to see the latest browser market share, go to Netmarketshare at:

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=1