Although it’s true that it is almost 2020 and by now the best brands all have a hefty online presence that counts on an arsenal of virtual assets, the physical nature of brick-and-mortar stores can still serve as an immense advantage. You should study and wield your position to your advantage if your business is fortunate enough to count on a physical address. The rules are different in the world of physical retail.
There is a lot to say about effective and efficient retail, but the broad strokes can be boiled down to five simple elements that drive sales like nothing else.
- Hiring
Train your team to be hospitable people-people rather than salesy glorified janitors. Most retailers train their team to basically be drones. “Keep the floor tidy, stock the shelves, sweep the back,” is not enough.
Managers who took part in a LinkedIn survey propose that a much more valuable set of skills to impart on your team are the communications and emotional skills that industrial psychology investigates like how to identify a customer’s needs and wants, match those needs to a selection of products, and then show value in their options.
Your sales team should think of themselves as “experts,” or consultants” rather than just associates. The optimal mindset integrates all associates into the overarching brand strategy at the core of the company. Successful managers and entrepreneurs advocate for intensive hiring practices because your team literally makes your company.
You want your hires will feel better about themselves and the job that connects them with a greater thing they believe in.
The inevitable outcome will be that the members of your team will be more motivated at the same salary point.
- Lighting
It is impossible to have a store in the dark, but nobody really talks about the importance of good lighting or its branding potential. Ironically, lighting is often one of the less visible forces in a customer’s buying journey as he/she walks through a retail location.
The secret power of lighting is in subtly touching on people’s emotions. This hidden factor is omnipresent. Color palette, for example, is a common injection of mood into a brand.
Navy blue is found to be trustworthy, yellow and orange are found to be economic, and deep purple is found to be mystical.
Brands like Tony Hilfiger use colored glass in their cologne fragrances to distinguish individual products within themes and series such as Fall vs Winter; vitality, vs comfort; and young vs mature.
All retailers must apply lighting to differing degrees in the use of color temperature and creation of shadows in their store and around their products. If you need inspiration, there are plenty of easy-to-apply examples of mood branding on the internet. For an insider look at how lighting professionals use and measure the quality of LED lighting, check out the blog at Octopart.com.
Remember that you can use color and light to accurately place messages as intricate and seemingly abstract as altruism, which, by the way, has been shown to produce addictive boosts in dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin for the relevant viewers!
- Wait Times
Research has found that Americans will leave a store without making a purchase after eight minutes of waiting in the checkout line on average.
Never forget that shoppers today can summon the four corners of the Earth from their phones. Whether you think modern shopping impatience is a good or bad thing, customers will still compare your store to online sellers.
How can you achieve this? Start by hiring enough people to handle the crush during peak dates and times. You must always be ready to receive payments available, or at least an iPad POS system for when traffic gets truly torrential.
Stock-outs are another form of the same thing. Avoid it at all costs. Some suggestions on how best to do this aside from using an inventory management system are:
- Always have enough back-up capital that your store will be able to stay stocked in
- Maintain your relationship with your suppliers
- Track inventory data by using the right KPI, if you will
The conclusion is that customers are liable to leave and not come back if you keep them waiting.
Future-proof Your Store with a Goal Checklist
Simon Webster, sales executive at Oudoria, says any successful independent retail operations needs five essential ingredients:
- Store attention
- Managing Inventory
- Passionate staff who ask the right questions and want to sell
- Genuine customer care
- Shopping experience
Keep these goals in mind Apply the simple-but-all-omnipresent principles of proper hiring, lights, and store traffic management and your revenue will thank you.
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