10 Activities to Drive Retail Revenue

Here are 10 quick activities that you can implement to increase sales in your retail store!

1. Give fast feedback – When you see someone doing something right (closing a sale, adding-on, solving problems) let them know you appreciate it immediately.  If you see someone doing something wrong, let them know right away in a respectful manner while showing them the right way.

2. Conduct weekly sales meetings – Conduct the meetings on your biggest sales days.  Start off by praising your sales leaders and then move into 20-minutes of product training.  Finish up by having team members make commitments for that day’s sales!

3. Conduct remedial sales training every month – Spend 30 minutes a month helping your team members hone their skills.  This could include closing techniques, how to handle sales objections or how to add-on related products.  And, since even your tenured sales reps can get stuck in a rut you can energize them by having them conduct the training!

4. Remerchandise and rotate your displays – Your store likely has repeat customers.  Give them something to look forward to my resetting end caps, window displays, and impulse displays with new and exciting merchandise!

5. Invest in developing your team members – No one wants to get stuck in a dead-end job.  Help your people grow into better and more productive team members by investing in retail training programs that will help them grow personally while growing your company!

5. Make selling fun – Selling the same products to the same customers each and every day can get mundane.  Get your people energized by giving them short term goals, contests, or playing selling games!

 6. Hire the right people – Retail consultants talk a lot about establishing hiring profiles and writing job descriptions.  Those are important and should be used, but the simplest way to ensure you are hiring well is to simply hire people who look and act like your top performers.

8. Measure and react – Many retailer look at this as an activity to mitigate risk when they should be thinking about measuring results to identify new opportunities.  Forecast your business’ revenue, inventory, payroll and other key areas each month – or even better…each week.  Then make adjustments to your plan based on actual results!

9. Manage by walking around – Virtually every important asset is on the sales floor of your stores.  This includes your customers, your people, and your inventory…So where should you be?  On the floor interacting with all of your assets and learning about what is working and not working!

 10. Promote your business daily – Marketing does not have to cost a lot of money, but it does have to be done, and the best programs are viral.  Make some follow-up and referral calls, set up a twitter campaign to announce new merchandise, send out a monthly newsletter, send out thank you cards, or develop a birthday club loyalty program.

Let the teams from Retail Advocacy Group and Retail Training Services help you build your business. Contact us today for a free one-hour consultation!

–          David Goodwin is the Principal of the Retail Advocacy Group.  As a 30 year veteran of the retail industry he has directed the activities of hundreds of retail locations and thousands of retail sales representatives and store managers.  RAG offers consulting services, retail sales training and management training programs.   You can learn more at www.retailertrainingservices.com.