With popular new Christian titles available these days from many sources, church stores need to develop a strategy for dealing with best-selling books. Here are some things to consider:

Define: What are the best-sellers for your store? Are they similar to those found on many of the industry best-seller lists?

Today's P.O.S. systems can help you determine the best-sellers for the existing product mix of your store. By selecting various time frames and product departments within the report generator, you can develop a specialized best-seller list for your store.

Price: Can you afford to discount? Your strategy should depend on your size, your circumstances and a handful of other points. Small- and medium-sized bookstores will never be successful in establishing a long-range, low-price strategy as a leading merchandising theme. They do not have the gross margin dollars available to discount.

A good indicator of your ability may be your accounts-payable ledger. If you can't afford to keep your vendor accounts current, you probably don't have enough gross-margin dollars to give away by discounting titles.

Merchandise: If a local big-box retailer introduces a special, you may want to match it for a time-both with visuals and as closely as you can with price. More than likely, the move will generate a lot of discussion-and maybe an opportunity for you to build customer relationships that will help them pass up future specials at another retailer.

Stock: You can't sell what you don't have. Unfortunately, statistics confirm that many Christian retailers do a below-average job at keeping best-sellers in stock. Keeping in mind that 80% of a store's sales are provided by 20% of the titles, stores need to do a better job of keeping on top of availability for these titles.

While your store can't always compete with secular stores when it comes to the pricing of best-sellers, it can compete in terms of customer satisfaction and availability.

-Bob Steele was a consultant, trainer and retail and distribution executive in the Christian products industry for more than 30 years.

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