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Customers And Loyalty Come With Devoted and Enthusiastic Retailing-Part II

Guest post by: Richard Gordon

Article Overview: Are you going through the motions as you show up at your store each morning. Devotion and enthusiastic retailing involves you the owner and your own enthusiastic devotion to your business and what you want to do that is truly special and unique with your business. Your enthusiasm should be helping you create a business with a soul. If your business has a soul, it affects your entire purpose for existing and your mission as well. A business with a soul effects the kinds of employees, customers and the relationships you want with each. This means developing a mission statement that is filled with more than meaningless but impressive sounding statements. Historically, meaningless mission statements have been a joke and most of them never see the light of day, much less being read.

Customers And Loyalty Come With Devoted and Enthusiastic Retailing-Part II

Are You Devoted & Enthusiastic?

Are you going through the motions as you show up at your store each morning. Devotion and enthusiastic retailing involves you the owner and your own enthusiastic devotion to your business and what you want to do that is truly special and unique with your business. Your enthusiasm should be helping you create a business with a soul. If your business has a soul, it affects your entire purpose for existing and your mission as well. A business with a soul effects the kinds of employees, customers and the relationships you want with each. This means developing a mission statement that is filled with more than meaningless but impressive sounding statements. Historically, meaningless mission statements have been a joke and most of them never see the light of day, much less being read. If you can become devoted and enthusiastic about developing a mission statement that states, inspires and helps insure how your store will be special, unique and relevant to your customers, you will be miles ahead of the average retailer. To do this, you will need to know and be able to verbalize what will make your store compelling and important in your customers and employees lives. Use your mission statement to help inspire your employees and make them feel special about what you and your store are truly all about and how you’ll make the world around your store better.

If you can stay devoted and convey the enthusiasm to your employees a by making them feel they have a special role and mission, you are well on your way to truly having a special store and business. If you can devote you and your people to this with real focus and enthusiasm and then live the mission in your day-to-day activities, you will be well on your way with a business culture that delivers customers and profits.

The Reality of Employees & Sales Skills

I realize all of this sounds well and good, but then there’s your staff. . . This isn’t their business, it’s yours. They’re not going to get excited about anything if the mission is making your store better so that you can make more money! That’s not a mission statement with a soul. If they are truly the right people, they will be able to get excited about a unique or special mission.

I also realize the problems of retailers when it comes to finding people with really great selling skills. Of the few people that do have sales skills, many of them cannot or do not want to even be in retail. I also understand that even if you had the time, it’s extremely hard to train someone to be a great salesperson, maybe even impossible. While there are many good habits and skills that can be taught to improve a good salesperson. I do realize that for the most part, salespeople are either born with the personality and some easily absorbed skills or their not!

When you couple this hurdle with the fact that your business is more dependent on your employees to help create that critical link between your business and your customers, it becomes even more important that you hire the right people from the beginning. You can teach the knowledge and some basic skill sets, but the people you hire must not only be dependable and honest, they must be personable and enthusiastic about their job. The devotion part of this comes from the right people feeling good and special about your mission statement and what you’re trying to create as a business.

I honestly believe that having someone who is personable and enthusiastic or passionate about what they’re doing is the key factor when it comes to retail employees. I don’t care what kind of training they get or don’t get, if they can be genuine and learn customers names and preferences and then work to satisfy those preferences they are miles ahead of almost anyone else. This is good news for those who can’t afford sophisticated sales training programs or owners who really can’t train someone in sales techniques. This means that if you focus on having the right personalities to begin with, you are most of the way there. The bad new is that you can’t just throw bodies at the situation when it comes to covering your sales floor. Hopefully you never were doing that anyway.

Having someone who has a great personality and loves what they’re doing and what they’re selling, coupled with a little intuitive ability is the beginning to a healthy long-term bottom line. Why? Because, with enthusiasm and some devotion, your people create real connections and relationships between your customers and your business. These kinds of employees are the ones who will bring customers to your store again and again. This is where it’s at! In fact, this is the way you want to bring customers to your store.

The future for small specialty store operators is about finding and keeping enthusiastic and devoted, personality driven salespeople and putting them in a store that is focused on the customer from the interior, atmosphere, music and yes uniquely tailored merchandise assortments. This should be the new goal for any specialty store operation from here on. Working to build a more connected and loyal customer base is where your efforts should be as opposed to advertising and promoting lower sales prices. Why pay via advertising for the privilege of constantly reducing your profit margins? The future is in taking care of customers and building their loyalty by having a special mission and some enthusiasm to carry out the mission.

Customer Loyalty Is The Ultimate Goal

When we begin talking about customer loyalty we begin talking about marketing to your customers by knowing their needs and wants. We are also talking about making things convenient and comfortable for your customers. That means better merchandising, floor plans, better customer service, smoother and faster checkouts at your sales counter. It all comes down to connecting with customers on an emotional and personal basis and how they feel while in your store. Have I said the words “connection” and “emotion” enough?

You’re not going to connect with anyone if your employees are indifferent or your checkout counter is ground zero for irritating customers and making it a bigger deal than it needs to be. Instead of wasting money on heavy print advertising programs, now we’re talking about customer loyalty programs, referral programs and invitation only special events designed to go after your own customer base. This means collecting information and e-mail addresses. By collecting information on buyer purchases and preferences, your buying and merchandising decisions will be guided more by focusing on the image you want for these customers and how you can market to their needs and wants. When you really are tapped into your customers, the shopping experience will be less about price and more about unexpected finds, captivating surprises and interesting and enticing displays all for your customers.

Some professionals may call this a “customer centric approach,” for your business, but I call it enthusiastic and devoted retailing. Regardless of what it’s called, it is about building and reinforcing a connection and a bond between your store and your customers. Once you adapt your thinking and become more successful at this approach, you have engendered a form of customer loyalty and advocacy that few retailers understand or even attempt. This is the type of relationships that folks like Apple, Zappos, and Nordstrom doggedly pursue with their customers. This is the type of relationship that neutralizes the importance of price in the customers mind and allows companies like Apple and Nordstrom to command top dollar at their stores. When you think about it, this is a much warmer and friendly approach to doing business, especially when compared with constant bold and crazy promotions that are totally based on price with not an ounce of loyalty. Bold and crazy promotions are fine, but they don’t build loyalty. Loyalty comes from people and connections which comes from devotion and enthusiasm in serving those people and constantly working to give the customer a better experience.

©2011 Retail Redefined and retailrichez.com. All rights reserved.

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Article Tags: customer loyalty, developing a mission statement, employee sales, retail management, sales increase



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