 |
|||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
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.
The ideal candidate will have skills in all areas of retail, including
buying, product development, visual merchandising, operations, staff
management, and training, budgeting, P&L management, and experience
running an institution’s store consistent with the Museum Store
Association Code of Ethics. Experience with
e-commerce and possibly wholesaling will help provide a national presence
for your institution as well as additional revenue sources.
Our institution needs a new retail manager, but
we do not have the time or resources needed to conduct the search.
How can we attract and identify the best candidates?
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.
Assisting with a typical selection process would include drafting the
job description, helping post the position by recommending the best resources
for a national or regional search, such as posting the position with
the Museum Store Association, and researching and recommending compensation
and benefits. The consultant would then review all incoming resumes,
screen candidates through telephone interviews, conduct in-person interviews
with initial candidates, submit recommendations, and facilitate your
interviews with the finalists.
Back
to top
We have an online store, but it doesn’t generate the revenue we expected. How can we improve our online sales?
It’s time to do a thorough evaluation of your online offerings in several key areas:
•
•
•
•
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?
Merchandise – Will the merchandise you selected appeal both to
customers who are familiar with your institution as well as a national
audience, which are simply searching for unique gifts? Are the price
points right and are you encouraging cross-category sales? Are you updating
the selection to keep it fresh and encouraging frequent visits?
Marketing – Are you taking advantage of every opportunity within
your institution to promote your web site address? Have you optimized
your web site’s ability to appear on frequently used search engines?
Are you proactively communicating with current and potential customers
to let them know about featured products and special promotions?
Operations – Are you meeting your customers’ expectations
for prompt communication and timely delivery? Do you have the staff and
internal procedures in place to process orders efficiently?
Back
to top
Self-operation
vs. Outsourcing
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.
Once your institution has clearly identified its retail goals and mission,
a list of experienced prospective operators who have the financial and
operational resources to achieve these goals is developed. These prospective
operators are asked to submit, in a uniform and comparable format, comprehensive
proposals for managing the gift shops. Proposals are received, reviewed,
evaluated and compared. References are checked and a short-list of operators
that come closest to meeting your financial and operational goals is
identified. A presentation and negotiating meetings are held with the
final operators. Possible visits are arranged to institutions already
engaging these operators to observe their retail operations. A selection
is made, letter of intent issued and contract negotiated, finalized and
executed.
Back
to top
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.
Back
to top
Evaluation,
Needs Assessment and
How To Increase Earned Income
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.
Back
to top
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.
 |
 |
 |
