As stores reopen and struggle to achieve sales that were normal before COVID-19, there are proven success techniques to remember.
Retail consultant Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor, believes many shoppers with safety concerns will be reluctant to revisit stores for a while. In his blog, he lists techniques retailers must remember to avoid becoming discouraged by sales results in the pandemic period.
His advice:
- Examine your company position on selling – not just in your stores but online. If selling isn’t a focus and you continue to shy away from using the word, you’ll never address the struggle to sell.
- Go beyond year over year sales and units per transaction to allocate labor based on traffic, not transactions to avoid unintended selling problems.
- Increase brand loyalty by elevating your associates to sales professionals. Customers who like your company because of your crew’s service skills are more likely to shop with you more often; it will be cheaper to get them back into your store and even easier to get those customers to rave about you.
- Go out of your way to hire people who are trainable and who like your company. Selling is nothing more than a transfer of feeling; because I feel good about the company I work for, I can easily share it with you. Target is working hard on this; so should you.
- Properly train staff on a daily basis to improve customer service. This is one of the most crucial challenges retail industry leaders have to address. Improve every single person’s selling techniques to go beyond trying to close a sale to building customer loyalty through engaging and serving them. Phibbs has a program of more than 100 online lessons to teach your staff how they can easily engage a stranger, enjoy their job more, and become more valuable to you here.
- At every meeting, actively work on how to put the customer at the center of your customer service
