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Store Manager Selection What qualities should we look for in a new manager for our gift shop(s)? A strong retail manager balances creativity with solid business skills.
He or she must be able to draw on both to translate the institution’s
goals into a profitable retail environment that both reflects and supports
the institution’s mission.
A consulting firm such as Manask & Associates can offer a variety
of services to help you select the ideal candidate with a skill set that
will help ensure the profitability of your retail operations. |
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We have an online store, but it doesn’t generate It’s time to do a thorough evaluation of your online offerings in several key areas: |
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Design – Is
it clean, simple and easy to navigate, or is it cluttered and customers
have to click through many layers to get to the products they want to
see? Is the merchandise organized according to how the customers are
really like to shop? Are the product photos clear and enticing, and can
customers enlarge them to get a closer look? |
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Our institution has decided to outsource its retail operations. How can we ensure that the operator we select will provide our visitors with highest quality retail experience and our institution with the most favorable terms? Engaging in a formal Request for Proposal (RFP) process will give your
institution the opportunity to break down the overwhelming amount of
data you need from each potential operator to enable a point-by-point
comparison. In addition, the process can help give you a general sense
of what the operator will be like to work with. |
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Customer Service & Sales Training How do you motivate your team to go the extra mile for guests when you cannot give them the pay raises they want? The champions of guest service use goal setting and training as well as rewards; however, since the reality of using monetary incentives is often limited, you need to be creative in coming up with the incentives as part of the guest service equation. First, you as the leader must be serious about making this a priority. In every store walk-through, meeting, newsletter, performance evaluation, and bulletin board, customer service must be the number one topic. If you stop talking about customer service, your team will stop taking it seriously too. Once you make the personal commitment for the long haul, start an employee based task force to begin writing or reviewing your customer service policies. You will get a leveraged sense of buy-in by your whole team by taking the time for meaningful store supervisor and sales associate involvement in reviewing and setting your policies and goals. Develop a "BHAG" "Big Hairy Audacious Goal" that describes your ideal guest experience end state. Make it fun! Then start thinking about non- monetary rewards that are within your power to make available. Start with tried and true rewards such as: employee of the month, ice cream socials, pizza lunches, employee parking spaces, extra days off, extra discounts, movie coupons, and then enlist your customer service task force to help you come up with what incentives they would value. Then relentlessly keep up the drumbeat for excellent guest service and make sure the rewards are fresh and ever changing. What kind of customer service & sales training does Manask & Associates offer? Manask & Associates’ consultants all have actual retail store
operations and experience on our side. We know customer service and we
know the challenges that employees and shoppers face every day and every
hour. We can design a customer service and sales training program to
help you address your particular situation. The process would start with
an information gathering session either on site or via phone conference
to enable you to articulate your special problems and/or goals. Our team
would then propose a targeted program, which would include: developing
or reviewing customer service policies and procedures, starting a sales
training program, and planning employee involvement strategies and rewards.
We recommend that any customer service and sales training program would
involve your employees, especially in policy development, identifying
appropriate employee rewards and an annual evaluation plan. On-site train-the-trainer
programs would be developed and rolled out to your training team. We
believe investing in your customer service effort is one of the best
ways for you to stand out in the retail crowd and your team will become
more and more invested as they experience their own successes. |
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Evaluation,
Needs Assessment and Our Executive Director wants us to "raise our per caps," how do I go about accomplishing this? Increasing per capita sales requires first and foremost a plan of action. This plan must begin with researching and understanding the historical and current sales performance; gathering data on factors which are influencing these results both positively and negatively including understanding "your customer" and identifying your best customer. The next step in the planning effort is to study store sales performance by looking at the physical layout, studying the best performing sections within the stores, examining the guest traffic patterns in the overall venue, and learning about how guests move through the individual stores. Using these findings, begin to look at your entire guest facing functions: Are your stores located in the best areas? Is the merchandise interesting, priced correctly for your customer and have an excellent perceived value? Is the merchandise something that the customer is really drawn to? Are the products fun or beautiful? Does the merchandise enhance the customer’s environment or enrich their lives? Once you have looked at all of the sales drivers, you can begin to develop a plan of action taking care to place a priority on strategies that build upon your previous successes. Examples of strategies might include: repeat a winning promotion; expand a product line; close a store and put more resources behind a more successful store; increase or decrease operating hours; improve displays; change product lines to be more directed to your best customer groups; reduce or raise price points; mount more sales promotions; change displays more frequently; add better sales graphics; install sales and product training programs; start-up sales incentives; or add carts or impulse points of sale. Develop tactics for each sales strategy and remember to assign team leaders and develop a roll-out calendar. Our institution’s attendance has been flat for the last few years, yet I am being pressured to increase our earned income. How do I approach this with our retail store(s)? Without an increasing attendance base to rely upon for growing your business, you need to be attuned more than ever to improving the productivity and honing in on the most profitable strategic direction of all parts of your business. In this scenario, a plan for improving earned income will necessarily require a several-pronged approach. Improving several areas of the business, even if only in small increments will increase the overall earned income. Among the many areas to look at are: inventory management and product category gross margins, material handling and product distribution, marketing and promotions, store visibility and visual merchandising, employee training and incentives, employee morale and work environment, employee time management and productivity, selling, and quality of guest interactions. What is involved in an evaluation and needs assessment? The evaluation and needs assessment (report) begins with an agreed upon
set of project deliverables and goals, and then information and data
collection begins. We will provide you with a list of questions about
your business and request historical financial and operational documentation,
which we will compile and analyze. This data and information gathering
phase is followed by on site meetings to clarify any questions we have
about the information and data, tour the facilities, and meet with and
interview the project stakeholders. Stakeholder interviews are often
enlightening and can encourage and bring out ideas for revenue generation
and insights into cost savings. At the client’s request, a benchmark
study can be generated to document similar organization results and ratios.
Our findings are then documented in a draft written report: including,
but not necessarily limited to, a summary of the current situation (findings),
key business results, data analysis, conclusions, and detailed recommendations
for improvements covering each key business area. We meet with you on
site to discuss and review our findings and revenue generating opportunities.
After you have had a chance to digest and make comments on this draft
report, we will prepare the "final" evaluation and needs assessment
report including any edits or comments you may have. |
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How do I go about setting up a new store? The smartest way to begin planning a new store is to develop a business plan. A business plan can be as simple as identifying goals, costs, benefits, and a payback schedule or, for increased risk avoidance, the business plan can be a more comprehensive document that would include: introduction and background, store description and concept, location, size, and target customers, design theme, merchandise plan, pricing strategies, marketing strategies, competition, industry analysis, products and services, staff development, potential sources, and application of funds. The financial forecasts should include projected income statements, cash-flow statements, capital costs, break-even analysis, margins, sales projections, inventory levels, etc. How do I determine how to organize the merchandise in my store? The merchandise plan section of the business plan will organize the merchandise into categories. The categories will be developed after careful examination of the institution’s mission and market. The merchandise offered in the store should be directly related to the institution’s mission and the assortment should take into consideration each group comprising the institution’s visitor base. The merchandise should be organized into 10-15 distinct categories, any more than that is too hard to track in terms of comparative sales, open-to-buy planning, and inventory analysis. Is it better to hire an interior designer, architect or just work with a fixture manufacturer? The ideal situation would be to work with a store designer or an architect who has significant retail store design experience. Experienced store designers are familiar with critical retail issues such as counter heights, aisle widths, traffic flow, various lighting schemes, fixture accessibility, efficient cash wrap design, Americans with Disabilities Act requirements, etc. Additionally, store designers are knowledgeable about how best to display and feature different types of merchandise. For example, book cases below waist level should be angled back slightly, it is best if jewelry cases pull out for easier access and display and the best showcase lighting is diffused. Working with a store designer will ensure that the sales space will have optimum aesthetic and thematic impact and that it will function efficiently for both shoppers and staff. Do I put my fastest selling merchandise up front or in the back of the store? There is no one magic solution to merchandise placement, except to
set up the store so that your guests move easily through out and
see as much
of your products as possible. The best approach is to lay out your sections
keeping visual impact and logical adjacencies in mind. Generally, smaller
items should be placed at the front of the store, near the cash wrap areas
or jewelry cases. It is easier for sales clerks to keep an eye on smaller
items or to service jewelry cases at the front of the store. Larger items
can be used to transmit size, textures, shape, and color. These elements
catch people’s eyes and pull them into the far reaches of the store.
If your back wall is lined with book shelves, be sure to display books
with dramatic covers face-out and to work in some other interesting items
around key themes in an effort to create visual interest and help to "tell
the story." Once you have tried a set-up, watch how your customers
move through the space, is there an area where they avoid? Make sure the
aisles are wide enough and that it is well illuminated. Make it as easy
as possible for your guests to stay awhile. |
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