If you are the kind of manager that likes to be the go to person whenever the challenge of any problem comes along, you may have heard of buck plants. So you may have wondered why there are “brick and mortar” stores that go out of business in record numbers versus those that simply provide more service/value.
There are two sides to every story; one is the customer’s side and one is the store’s side. So you have decided to visit an electronics store and the only option is to have someone walk behind you and check out the displays while you have a dull conversation at the counter, it seems to be more of a business to customer relationship. The customer’s side represents the sales, while the store’s side is the service.
Brick & mortar stores may have products, but are sometimes unable to determine what they are really selling; and seldom have the capital to expand to meet those higher selling prices. You know the old saying; “a man is only as good as his product.
And to the customer’s side this simply means that the products that they purchase should meet or exceed their expectations. The store should provide them with service that reaches and delights their needs and demands. When Great service is demonstrated to be relevant to the customer, even the best product in the world isn’t good enough.
And if you think “brick and mortar” is all about price and bottom line; then “brick and lapak303” is certainly not making you any money today. If you are selling a product, that is what is going to be the bottom line.
Instead of drilling a hole within your organization and then saying “go process to fix it,” and looking at all your numbers with the “give the clients eye candy and they will come,” stop saying, “go process for that technology and we will make on the computer a deal that will make you line items in the bottom line.”
If you just say “yes” and someone says “deliver” or “get a commission,” then you have just crashed your organization. Your team isn’t going to want to deliver against those criteria either. Your team needs to be motivated to deliver against what they deliver. The synergistic energy that happens when your team unionizes mutually and helpless against their client success will always be unseen.
If you are in a “brick and mortar” store, and your customers are saying, “stop the sales pitch” and saying, “take me to the wall, I want to go!” then it’s time to do things differently. In reality, there are just two sides.
One side is the customer; and the other side is your team. And if you are doing things against what your team says, you are probably not setting your stores up properly to succeed. Goal setting is only part of success; but without those other elements that a great team creates, there is no goal setting.
In the modern day retail environment, you want to find those elements in your team that have the capacity to make each sale, that create customer loyalty, and those that are creating the buzz with your customers. And this is done by establishing goals along the way.
So again the goal setting exercise starts with understanding what you are trying to do, and developing road maps and operations procedures that enable you to turn a potential client into a client.
If you find yourself pointing the finger at an innovation process or demonstration process and believing that your team is there, then you are really missing the mark, unless you know specifically why. The other thing that you need to address is how you are measuring your team or your innovation executives. So no matter what the metric is, the goal is going to be ineffective.
So that’s why it makes so much sense to have metrics at the shop. Results drive more sales, and customer loyalty. Products are only the vehicle. Customer relations, your marketing, and your sales process are the activities that create those results.
And being able to measure results and the Return on investment is the only key factor to increase your sales into your business. No matter the vehicle, you need to be able to measure the results of where you want to go in your organization, define executive action steps, and measure the results that you are getting.