1. Know the Buying Preferences of your Target Segment
The
customers are continuously looking at the innovative ways, best suited to them,
for satisfying their needs. The real test lies in finding out what are they
looking for. The next step is to see whether you are already doing it or not.
If you are already following that practice you just need to go deeper into it
to find the new depth of that practice, if this is not already happening in
your organization try conducting a pilot test to learn if it really has the
promise to warrant an organization wide initiative. If the pilot runs well,
this is the time to see if it can either open a new insight for the marketers
or it can be used to strengthen the existing offer to the market.
Let the
customers know what they can expect from your brand. It is not always a good
idea to take competition head on, either in terms of the features or the
pricing. A better option could be to work a little extra to highlight a niche
feature where sufficient market exists for it and price it at a reasonable
level so as to match the buying capacity of the target market, as well as leave
substantial surplus on the table, for the business to fuel its motivation to
carry out the project in the long run.
Where to
locate your retail outlet? This is a very import and complex question. The
answer to this question can be obtained either by finding a location where your
target customers flock in large numbers, numbers large enough to be a true
representative of the sample size capable of replicating the major
characteristics of your target segment or by analyzing the presence of other retail
businesses, focusing on similar target segment, indicative of successfully
verifying the footfall criteria. The latter approach can prove to be a
glittering death trap for your business, if such outlets are struggling to
achieve their vital numbers including requisite footfall & profitability.
Thus conducting first hand primary research, which may seem to be a time
consuming-painstaking affair, is always a better option because it can provide
you the extra dose of much needed confidence, in case the business goes through
a rough patch during the initial phase.
The
customers are actively searching for special deals, promotions, clearance sales
& bundled offers. This aspect of consumer behavior offers a great
opportunity for retail businesses to proactively design promotions, capable of
creating a favorable perception in the minds of the customers, thereby grabbing
the attention of customers with a fair possibility of getting a share of their
wallet.
It is seen
that many a great promotions fail to create the desired customer response due
to the ineffective communication tools deployed by the retailers. It is
important to note that to create a promotion that can work is only one part of
the story whereas to deploy the right communication tools for effectively
delivering the message to the customers is a totally different ball game. For a
promotion to be effective it needs to simultaneously address both these concern
areas.
Customers
are very demanding and they expect correct & timely resolution of their
queries by the attending retail staff. The focus should not be just on closing
the sales but on closing the sales through customer satisfaction because the
statistics reveal that in the long run a satisfied customer would good mouth
your retail business to at least three people whereas a dissatisfied customer
would bad mouth your retail business to at least nine people. So decide for
yourself if you can possibly afford to take the risk of creating dissatisfied
customers by not having adequately trained sales staff.
Most
retail organizations confuse employee training with the tons of organizational
processes & product knowledge provided to their sales staff in the garb of
training, resulting in information overload to which the retail employees are
generally subjected. Whereas training here refers to building the
capability of the retail employees to take informed decisions in the light of
the organizational process & the product manuals, in conjunction with a
judicious mix of correct ettiquettes, respectful communication & customer
friendly attitude ,creating a magnetic effect on the customer, resulting in
repeated purchases & good mouthing to others thereby building healthy brand
perception, customer loyalty & last but not the least ,the long term
profitability of your retail business.
6. Proactively Look for Customer Feedback
Customer
is the most important link in the entire retail chain. If you have any doubts
please review any piece of available marketing literature which keeps referring
that it all starts (with identifying customer needs) and ends (with taking post
consumption/usage customer feedback) with listening to the customer.
The
success of most retail organizations hinges on their capability of engaging
with their customers in the complete decision making cycle of the customers to
foster a greater understanding of the needs and buying preferences of the
customers and to know how well your retail business is succeeding in matching
these needs & preferences. So if you have not yet designed a strong
customer engagement & feedback mechanism , ensure it is up & working at
the lightening speed lest should you lose your hard earned customers to the
other retailers , who have already put their effective customer engagement
& feedback systems in place.
7. Use Cost Effectiveness as a Measure to Evaluate Business Success.
When
looking at their massive advertising spends and the mammoth customer pulls
created by them, it seemed that most businesses were doing exceptionally well.
In the end they came down as huge loss making businesses of all times, the
magnitude of their losses defying all the justifiable proportions. It all
happens when the key decision makers are overtly possessed with only any one
single parameter such as market share, top line growth, geographical presence
or unit sales volume at the cost of considering the whole business as a large
system comprising smaller interdependent subsystems.
Before
your project goes off the mark and even at all times thereafter prudence in
financial management is one of the best ways towards building and sustaining a
robust retail business through the crests & troughs of the business cycle.
For more information please visit our website
www.successnsynergy.com. You may also
contact us at admin@successnsynergy.com. The services
offered by us include entrepreneurship development, project feasibility study,
systems & process design, organization development, investment options and
business partnerships. It shall be our pleasure to be assisting you.
