Have you ever wondered why your retail store isn’t attracting and keeping as many customers as you would like? The answer has much to do with your retail manager.
In my years in the retail industry I have come across some outstanding men and women in retail management. Sadly, they have been too few and as such, the retail businesses they represented suffered from far lower profit than was otherwise possible.
So, what were some of the characteristics and qualities of these outstanding retail managers who were able to attract significantly more customers to spend money in their stores?
- Firstly, they cared deeply about their staff. They cared about them as people. They took an interest in their lives away from work. They asked questions about hobbies, pets, football teams, partners, children, what they did last night, what they planned to do on the weekend.
- They accepted mistakes as a part of learning.
- They respected their staff’s opinion and often sought their input.
- They extended their people by sharing management work
- They were very well organised.
- They had a great sense of humour.
- They were calm in a crisis.
- They were creative thinkers
- They took pride in their store’s appearance.
- They were very detail focussed.
- They had excellent selling skills.
- They achieved budgets and set records.
- They were very good teachers.
- They formed excellent relationships with their customers.
- They were interested in the art of retailing and read extensively on the subject.
- They dressed professionally.
These retail managers had acquired the skills on how to get more customers and build highly profitable retail stores over a long period of time by themselves. The business they worked for had very little to do with their professional development. I have made it my business to collect the very best retail ideas so that you can apply them in your business.
The sad thing is that many retail businesses regularly appoint retail managers to million dollar, even multi million dollar stores and expect excellent results BUT, they offer very little in the way of training in areas such as customer acquisition, selling skills, people skills, and marketing skills.
Management and business owners should not expect excellence when they don’t teach excellence. That is as silly as giving someone a fishing rod and expecting them to be excellent in fly fishing.
Excellence must be consistent throughout the retail business; not just in the occasional store.
How about this for a retail competitive advantage that will guarantee you get more store traffic and more profitable sales? “We pride ourselves on having the best retail managers in the industry”.
Just imagine how inspiring it would be to be known as “the company with the best retail managers?”
Imagine what difference it would make to have happy, motivated, inspired staff all of the time.
Just think of the energy, the sense of pride, the respect and attention to detail your customers would experience as soon as they walked in to any one of your stores.
All of this is possible, but you have to decide to make it so.
There is no genie in a bottle or magic wand to make getting more customers and increasing your profit happen miraculously overnight. It takes commitment of time and money and a clear focus on the end result.
Putting in the effort to have the very best retail managers is a competitive advantage that will make your cash registers sing!
To your abundant success,
Leon Skaliotis – Founder, Retail Fundamentals.