Viewpoint on Retail -
Retail Articles
Retail
Communications:
Meet With Your People…Often.
Retail Math
- Managing by Numbers: The first time a Store Manager realizes
that their store, and their performance in managing that store, is being judged
by the numbers they quickly understand that there is more to managing a store
than getting all of the work done, making everything look nice and being good to
customers...
75 Ways to Build
a Retail Performance Culture Worth Millions: Did you ever wonder
how some retailers manage to build a superb performance culture within a retail
organization? You know, that culture that makes people outperform all others;
the culture that inspires everyone and turns average employees into Super
Heroes? ...
Empowerment - Shaping
Customer Perceptions:
How one seemingly reasonable company policy or one
staff member who is not empowered can single handedly disappoint a top customer
with a huge life time value...
Retail Tips for the
Holidays: Here is a handy checklist to help you make sure you’re doing everything you can
to make the most of the holiday traffic that comes into your store...
What is the Real Source
of Turnover in Retail?
The biggest
impact on ET is bad management. Did you know that 49% of retail associates leave
their retail position due to bad management?
Missed
Opportunities: Quantified:
Retailers need to take a closer look at their missed
opportunities; they need to quantify lost sales. I
am going to do that right now, for a large office
supply chain with very little competition...
Customer
Service and Empowerment: I have recently been subjected to three of the most unbelievably bad customer
service experiences of my life. In all three situations, large well known
companies were involved.
One is a prominent, on-line travel provider; one is a monopoly in the telephone
service industry and the other is a huge conglomerate...
See and Feel the Relationship
Between You and Your Customers:
Stop looking at your stores through your own eyes, and start seeing them through
your customer's eyes...
The
Retail Training Equation: Economic
times are cyclical. At present, the cycle is in a down phase and needs to
recover as quickly as possible. During such times, it is people who will make
the difference in your business. It is most often the people who have been
trained appropriately that rise to meet and overcome these challenges...
Why
Every Manager Should Understand Design and Visual Merchandising:
Your store
should be your #1 Brand Ambassador, providing an image and feeling of your brand
that connects with your customer on a gut level and makes them want to buy
something - anything
- just to take that feeling home with them...
Insane
Retailing:
It has been said by many that an
appropriate definition of insanity be ‘repeating the same actions time and time
again, expecting different results’...
Cutting Edge in Retail
Sales and Training:
“Cutting Edge Sales” is in and of itself a buzz phrase describing a competitive
sales advantage that every retail sales associate is looking for, a bit like the
fountain of youth. Like the fountain, though, “Cutting Edge Sales” is something
that is more inside of oneself than something concrete to be found...
Know how to interpret your
Retail KPI’s?: Gaining an understanding
of retail math lets the Store Manager put everything in perspective. Once
competent in making all of the calculations for KPI’s pertinent to his/her store, the Store Manager gains new
insight into exactly what is going on in their store. It’s like having the
blindfold removed. Suddenly, everything makes sense...
How to Lift Your Retail
Spirits During Slow Times: All we hear these days is how bad the last few months of 2008 are going to
be. The National Retail Federation, in the United States, is predicting an
increase of approximately 4% over last year, and they generally predict a bit on
the bright side so the reality, in North America at least, is probably somewhat
less than that...
|
The
Value of Professional Training:
Industry specific training provides a myriad of
advantages to an individual within that field. They will gain confidence
in dealing with day to day challenges. Having the knowledge that
professional development training provides can enable the individual to
approach, assess, evaluate and resolve problems with less stress and expedite an
appropriate solution much more quickly...
External Conditions:
Most retailers generally plan their targets, or budgets, based on the actual
sales of the previous year. As the saying goes ‘past performance is a great
indicator of future performance’.
But every wise retailer will also carefully look at external conditions before
committing a target or budget to paper; before using the numbers as a basis for
buying merchandise and setting expense budgets...
Introducing the 6th
Pillar of Retail: It started
out with 4 pillars (or 4P’s): Product, Promotion, Price and Place. People did
not count for much back then. In early 1980’s with the revolution in management
fueled by such publications as “In Search of Excellence”, “Re-inventing the
Corporation” and many others, suddenly people woke up to the importance of
people and added that to the retail arsenal. We’re now able to talk about the 5th
pillar of Retail; People...
How I Went from $7.00/Hour to
$100,000.00/Year in Less than 5 Years Working in Retail -
A True Retail Career Success Story
The Effect of Incompetent Middle
Managers - Retail employees can rise up through the ranks fairly quickly
compared to a lot of other industries. It makes a great career in that respect.
Entry into retail is easy and promotions come quickly provided the individual
can operate a retail store, make the sales happen, follow the Policy and
Procedures manual to the letter and always say the right things to visiting Head
Office executive...
Performance
Culture and Retail - A recent shopping trip to a store - one of many
stores in a large, well recognized chain - indicated clearly, that a performance
culture does not exist in that organization.
How Important Retail
Associates are to Your Retail Business - A study recently published by Wharton, University of
Pennsylvania and Verde Group discusses the findings of a survey of 1000 randomly
selected consumers. The objective of the survey was to discover what problems
shoppers were encountering during their shopping experiences at retail stores
and which of those problems were most likely to be discussed with others and
which actually put customer loyalty at risk...
First Response - Cut
Hours/Wages at Store Level -
Retailers often
respond to a financial problem by cutting hours and wages being used at store
level...
Sustained Motivation Through Performance Discussions
- We know that many Retail
Business Owners and Store Managers look for ways to motivate their
employees. Rightfully, they believe that motivating their sales associates
will increase business. Creating a motivational environment and culture, and
maintaining the positive effects are not easy; but not impossible either...
How to Hire Right
and Keep Them - Recruitment isn’t just about
hiring, it’s about retention, and that means hiring the right person in the
first place rather than someone who merely appears to be the right person. It
costs far more to hire and train a new employee – on any level, in any industry
- than it does to retain them...
Pay More, Expect More, Get More
- It's time for
more retailers to test the 'pay more expect more, get more'
theory. It seems that
retailers have always argued against higher wages, benefits and
full-time positions citing exorbitant wage costs as the reason. While it is true
that the expense, in dollars would increase it certainly does not
follow that the actual wage percent would increase. And it is the
percentage that is key...
Get Out of
Town - Really -
It is
impossible to direct an operation without knowing how it works. How it
really works, not how it is supposed to work. If you are in charge of a
retail operation and don’t have your next out of town store
visit trip booked …do it now. It’s more important to visit out
of town stores more often than you visit stores in close
proximity to Head Office.
Culture: What a
difference it makes! -
Have you ever wondered
about the impact a true leader can have on the culture of a
company? Having worked for several prominent retail
organizations I have seen the impact of both positive and
negative cultures on the workforce, the customers and, of
course, the success of the business. Have no doubt whatsoever,
the head of the organization dictates, through words and
actions, what the culture will be...
Retail Employees
vs. Customers -
Customers are NOT the
retail employees’ enemy. After viewing a ‘down with
retail’ website today, I find myself very disturbed at the distance that has
developed in the understanding between some retail employees and customers.
Wild generalizations are being made such as ‘customers have no respect for
retail employees’ and ‘retail employees don’t care about their customers’...
Communicating for
Profits and Customer Satisfaction
- The real reason retail
personnel appear to be indifferent to their customers....
The President of a 200+ store division of a major
retailer learned of a serious communication problem
and commented that ‘this was to be expected in large
organizations’. Well, that clears everything up.
Many retail executives don’t believe that
communication is important enough to get it right by
coming up with a methodology that will ensure accurate
and timely communication to field personnel...
The House Account – A case for using it.
-
Retailers use different methods to record and
monitor sales and to compensate their associates. Some allow, and in fact
insist on, the use of a House Account and others forbid it.
Manager
Unfairly Perceived as Negative
- To really
learn about field operations, retail executives need to nurture their
relationships with Store Managers. Many Store Managers have a lot of
valuable information to offer the organization. They are rarely asked to
contribute but often offer it anyway. And that is where the problem starts.
Sales vs.
Task Orientation -
It is reasonable to expect people to do well in
activities they enjoy, or at least, do not find difficult and
unappealing, then it would be reasonable for sales associates
who enjoy selling to be more successful, and to make a bigger
contribution than those who do not. For the
individual who does not enjoy selling-either because s/he does
not have the skills or simply does not want to do it – a
position in a retail store may still attract them due to ease of
entry. Store Managers should be very wary of this individual.
The Store
Manager is a Lighthouse -
Throughout history the lighthouse has
played an important role in navigation and pilotage at
sea; its purpose is to guide, to show the way, to warn
of danger and generally provide safe entry into harbors. The Store Manager is the lighthouse for
the employees of a retail store and the Head Office is
the lighthouse for all of their retail employees
nationwide.
Unreachable? -
What? The
executive team is unreachable? Impossible, you say? Retail
executive, like any others, need to be accessible. Imagine a
situation where employees and management cannot have any access to
the President. Far, far from the open door policy, there are some
retailers who allow absolutely no access to the top executive in the
company...
Customer Service
Fanatics
- Be a Customer Service Fanatic and be proud
of it! If more retail managers were Customer Service Fanatics we would see a
much different picture in the
service industry. All customers, not just a
fortunate few, would be properly treated as they part with their hard-earned and
over-taxed dollars. Isn’t that the way it should be?
...
Multi-Channel
Retail - One Critical Key to Success -
More and more retailers are realizing the benefits of
multi-channel retailing. Leveraging brand equity in multiple
touchpoints has been proven to drive loyalty and interaction among
consumers. With trends clearly showing the Internet as the core
component to pre-purchase research, brick and mortar brands can
ill-afford to take a wait and see approach as it relates to core
multi-channel offerings...
Improving the
Morale of Your Employees: One Step at a Time
-
If your customers are to enjoy a
positive shopping experience and be inspired to purchase whatever it is you
have to offer it really makes sense that your store employees feel like
valued members of your team.
Pushing for Performance
- The fiscal month is coming to a close. The store’s
sales performance has been lackluster for several months but, this month, they
are doing much better. This coming Saturday is the last day of the month. The
Store Manager wants to take the day off to do something with family members. The
District Manager says no...
Change
your conversation, change your life -
The danger we face while taking in all of this bad news is that we may actually
begin to focus on nothing but the bad news. We may start to believe it
completely. When we believe completely, there is a much higher chance of it
being so. More
Retail
Math - Why It Is Important -
There are sayings that come to mind
here: “Look after the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.”
And, “A fool and his money are soon parted.”
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