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.