Pawn Peer Focus Groups Bolster Camaraderie, Profitability, And Success

What are Pawn Peer Focus Groups?

Pawn Peer Focus Groups™, created by Jerry Whitehead and Pawn Shop Consulting Group, connect pawnbrokers. Together pawn operators learn, observe, and critique each other while sharing best practices. Over the past decade, members have become great friends that travel together, work together, and even vacation together. PCG Peer Focus Groups offer an opportunity to become accountable to your pawn industry peers because peers are accountable to peers, the level of accountability is unmatched by any other system.

Why Join A PCG Pawn Peer Focus Group?

Becoming a member of a Pawn Peer Focus Group has many benefits. Here are a few of the beneficial side effects members experience after participating in these legendary focus groups:

• elevation of business acumen

• better operation performance

• an increase in profitability

• development of lifelong friendships with fellow peer focus group members

• incorporation of peer pawnbrokers’ best business practices into your operation

• valuable insights from peer critique your business

Does PCG Host In-Person Focus Group Events?

Yes, PCG hosts Pawn Peer Focus Group events twice a year. Count on PCG to arrange every detail of these events for you. From hotel contract negotiations to meeting space arrangements to transportation buses, PCG handles it all. Including the selection of guest speakers, presenters, discussion topics, and developing the meeting agenda.

What Happens at Pawn Peer Focus Group Meetings and Events?

Group members examine the business data from each member in detail. Your fellow pawnbrokers, your peers see and discuss the data from all aspects of your business. The analysis highlights operations, personnel, financial metrics, compensation programs, goals, marketing, social media aptitudes, best practices, and more. The level of analysis and transparency this process offers tends to outperform other efforts industry-wide. Below are more details about what we do at these gatherings.

• A group meets two times a year in the member’s market area.

• Focus group members travel by bus for an in-person on-site store tour.

• Following the store tour, members meet in a hotel or conference center, found in the member’s market area, for group sessions.

• In these sessions, members critique the operation they observed during the store tour taken the previous day.

• The operational critiques from members take place live on-site.

• During the live member critiques, the operation that is the critique’s subject typically has their supervisory employees present.

What Topics Do Operational Critiques Cover?

• Operators’ Best Practices

• Financial Metrics

• Key Performance Indicator Analysis

• Personnel Team, Structure, Performance

• Bonus and Compensation Systems

• Competitive Strengths and Weaknesses

What More Do I Need To Know To Before Becoming A Member?

• Prospective members must petition the Pawn Peer Focus Group members to join.
• To join, members must receive a 70 percent majority vote from the group.
• Pawn Peer Focus Members sign an official participation agreement when joining the group.
• Only one member per market area per group.
• Within a focus group, each member has a unique market area.
• Group members are not market area competitors with fellow group members and do not plan to be.
• No personnel poaching or market area hindrances between members
• Up to 15 store or company members per group
• Unless there are other arrangements, members can bring up to 4 individuals from each of their pawn operations to group meetings.

Will You Join Us?

Members create lifelong relationships with each other. The global network of peers expands to include all focus group members. Having the collective available for questions or concerns provides a wider range of access for all members and participants on real-life day-to-day issues affecting you and your business in real-time.

If you would like to petition to join a Pawn Peer Focus Group, contact PCG directly. Groups are forming now. Find out about the upcoming 2021 event.