By Josh Strutt
Associate Director – Deployment, Retail Doctor Group
So much is counting on a strong Christmas trading period for so many retailers. Months of planning will go into bringing in the right stock and staff, and a great deal will be invested in marketing to drive traffic into the store, amongst many other things.
So, what is happening when all this hard work delivers the all-important customer and how do we know we are maximising our sales opportunities and being Fit for Business™ Australians are forecast to spend circa $60Billion in the 6 weeks leading to Christmas. Have you considered just how to are going to claim your slice of the pie?
Instore Fitness Tips
What are some of the key things that maximise a retailer’s opportunity in store in peak trading months?
- Be unique: Have something special to say that has personality, courage, and presence. Be bold and stand out from the crowd. This is your chance to really make your business mark.
- Have a plan over this period to drive sales, margin, customer transactions and stock turn. A good strategy without implementation is fairly worthless.
- Be visible: This is the time for the CEO to be in the field along with other senior executives, proclaiming the vision, pressing the flesh, and serving customers alongside their staff.
Teach your people well (to quote Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) with specific focus on:
Key staff rostered on for high traffic trading times of the week – rosters need to change in the Christmas trading period to correctly reflect the shift in trading hours and customers buying patterns. This is a big one! If your key people are not on when the traffic is at its highest, you will not maximise your potential.
Sales training – Many staff benefit from increasing their selling skills, especially in customer interaction, product features and benefits and mutli acknowledgement.
Reduce the non-essential non sales tasks dramatically. Maximise every available minute of sales and service time.
Treat this period as a specific staff competition period with prizes for sales, average sale, items per sale and conversion rates
Make sure you have your ‘A’ team on show.
Daily start up meetings: Have each team member demonstrate their product knowledge and sales skills. Reinforce the daily target.
Do the early morning shop opening and visual merchandising the night before.
Have a daily sales target to individual sales targets.
Keep lifting the bar. Measure and reinforce the KPIs
Leadership, coaching and motivating our teams that work long hours in this period is vital.
Stock up before and after store trading hours – you want the team to be 100 per cent focused on selling, not tasking. Have a ‘no cartons rule’ during trading times which keeps the store clean, and team focused on customers.
Remember that it’s about being “in line” that is having a well-presented website that is synergistic with the physical retail channel. Up to 50 per cent of your potential and existing customers are pre-researching their purchases on the website.
Lift the quality of the shop formats, late 90’s shopfronts don’t cut it. Dress the windows up to be powerful and attractive, bold, bright, and unique. Invest in new Christmas decorations: Not the same ones you wheeled out last year and the year before. Such as the Christmas gold stars with 10 staple marks in them or the Joy of Christmas’ posters circa 1999.
Customers: Despite what the media may say about increasing customer confidence, there is still disparity between what people read and feel. The answer this Christmas is to make customers feel more special than ever before – engage and reward customers, give them a reason to return to you in the New Year.
Competitors: See what they do, watch them although the real key is to focus on your game and deliver value add to your customer experience.
Inventory – You should have all your product lines on the way or just in the shops by now. Focus on stock turns, sell though, prominent positioning. Here are three quick merchandise fitness pointers:
- Focus on gross margins in this period.
- Sales growth is important, however healthy margin growth is every bit as important.
- Growing the financial health of a business is important as well. Nothing damages the financial health of a business than too much inventory.
Focus on the margin return on sales. There is no real skill in giving it away and profitable margin growth is especially important.
Review each week until the post-Christmas period with a daily action checklist, dividing tasks into zones of responsibility. Checklists are always necessary tools, but especially during the Christmas trading season. It is important to put some quick and easy guidelines in place for every store team to follow on a daily basis. This can be as simple as a daily ‘set up’ checklist which covers the most important focus for the type and location of the business.
Measure your promotional impact through this period. There will be a significant increase in the customers walking past or entering your shops. Types of actions around promotional product could include:
- Is the latest promotional material positioned in agreed place?
- Are the promoted product lines in a prominent and agreed position?
- Are all products in stock, faced up and well presented?
- Have all rostered team members been briefed on promoted lines and product benefits?
- Do we have enough stock to exceed sales targets?
Review each week until the post-Christmas period with the following:
- What is the promotional message/campaign on a weekly basis? (Is our point of difference reinforced through this messaging?)
- What are our hero products each week and daily as we approach Christmas Eve?
- How are we promoting and managing these hero products (depth in relevant range)?
- What is our in-store messaging to support these campaigns each week?
- Have we got effective props and in store vibe (including relevant music and fragrance)?
- Are our windows simple, powerful, fresh, and compelling?
- What is our weekly customer value proposition?
Key staff rostered on for high traffic trading times of the week – rosters need to change in the Christmas trading period to correctly reflect the shift in trading hours and customers buying patterns. This is a big one! If your key people are not on when the traffic is at its highest, you will not maximise your potential.
Stock up before and after store trading hours – you want the team to be 100% focused on selling, not task. Have a ‘no cartons rule’ during trading times which keeps the store clean, and team focused on customers.
Organise your storeroom – make it as easy as possible for the shop floor to be restocked and know what to reorder before it runs out. If you don’t have an IT system to handle in store inventory, a simple exercise book listing stock in storage with quantities adjusted when stock removed can do the trick.
Have a feature add on sale product around the register – make it as easy as possible for your team to add on sell. Pick a product that complements the majority of your product range, keep it at a lower price point and make sure you have plenty in stock.
Gift pack products – beautifully packaged multiple products are an easy way to raise your average sale price and make Christmas shopping a little easier for the customer. Have a few different price points for broader appeal.
Call poor performance – it only takes one team member to bring down the morale of a team. Do not accept mediocrity and only keep champion service providers.
Be first to open and last to close, imagining if you opened at 8.30am when all your competitors opened at 9.00am. Be there when the customers are there and adjust your rosters accordingly. There is nothing worse than a roller shutter being pulled down on a customer.
Be on sale even when the store is closed – if you are in a strip site leave the store sparkling and faced up to sell even when you’re not there.
Have fun – Keep the shopping experience fun and keep them coming back. Find a way to bring your store to life in a way that other retailers can’t or aren’t.
Support office need to be on to – for a multi-site retailer, the support office must be available throughout the Christmas trading period to support those serving the customers. This is not the time for HO to take leave.
Simple tool to support the in-store team
For many multi-site retailers spread over a large geographical area, it can be particularly challenging to support the store teams to deliver the agreed offer and level of service to the customer.
A recent experience in a high-profile chain suggested that the message around priorities relating to promotion and presentation had either not been received or had not been implemented. This resulted in the latest catalogue product not clearly on display and with no engagement from the sales team; the chance of securing a sale is significantly reduced. All those resources spent on product sourcing, ranging, and marketing alone will provide no return unless we deliver at store level on a consistent basis.
A good tool, especially but not only through the Christmas trade, is to put some quick and easy guidelines in place for every store team to follow on a daily basis. This can be as simple as a daily ‘set up’ checklist which covers the most important focus for the type and location of the business.
The types of actions around promotional product could include:
- Is the latest promotional material positioned in agreed place?
- Are the promoted product lines in a prominent and agreed position?
- Are all products in stock, faced up and well presented?
- Have all rostered team been briefed on promoted lines and product benefits?
- Do we have enough stock to exceed sales targets?
It may look too simple but during the terribly busy trading times, simple is best and sets the team up to successfully deliver on organisational objectives no matter where they are.
In the run up to Christmas, why not invest in Mystery Shopping? This is a great tool to identify gaps in service delivery and target training to maximise the huge opportunity Christmas foot traffic brings.
Happy Fit Retailing
Interested in lifting your sales and margin by 10-20% and above? Talk to the Deployment team at Retail Doctor Group – (Peter, Josh, David at www.retaildoctor.com.au or check out retailacademy.retaildoctor.com.au)