Failures of Retail
Every Retail Chain looking for success and with every new opening or expansion of stores, retailer try its level best to meet more sales and customers. But in reality Success percentage is not upto their expectations all the time. Why few stores or few regions won’t work?

Some Reasons for your study:
Property
In today’s time every co. is looking to meet more numbers of stores in particular region to get his cost of region under control which sometime ends in wrong selection of property. If store location is not customer oriented then it wont work despite you put all efforts in it. If a store rent on higher side then you can't expect wonders from Grocery Sales.

Product Assortment and Effective Price/Schemes
If a customer comes to a store then it is a opportunity for a retailer to do sales. But if one doesn't have good assortment of products to offer then it won’t impress customer and in result that opportunity got wasted.

Staff

Another factor is staff and their training. If hiring is done on quantity bases instead of quality factor then again there would be a problem for a store. Secondly TRAINING is must at the beginning before their joining and its continuing process which should be managed and supervised by experienced team of trainers only.

Store Display
"Jo Deekhta Hai Vo Bikta Hai" that’s the line every retailer knows. Visual Merchandising plays a vital role in today’s show business. If a store is not looking impressive then efforts done above goes wasted. Store plannogram should be designed as per location or locality study. It should also be revised if sales or customers numbers won’t meet targets.

Impulse Items
Not all customers check every corner or every shelf of store. So placing impulse items and hangs certain items along with cash tills or prominent places in store make a big difference in basket value.

Product Knowledge
If an associate knows nothing or less about various departments or its product mix along with offers running in store then again it confuses or irritates customer who is expecting all answers from every associate standing.

Customer Service
Customer Service always a worry factor for every big or small company as in today’s time Customer Rules Retail. Every single failure in CS creates problems for the store and even for the whole brand in particular region. There are not any specific techniques to handle tough customers as every customer is having its own tendency to react. Only skilled staff should handle tough customers so every angry customer who entered the store with lots of anger should leave store with great level of satisfaction along with a Thanks Note from store staff.

Feel free to email me to discuss more........
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Cheers!
All views are welcome LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS.
Vikas...

Today is 62nd Independence Day of India.
Sing "National Anthem of India" with your family and friends. Spend Time with your family/children and discuss how we gained this Independence.

National Anthem of India

Jaana Gaana Maana Adhinayaka Jayehe
Bharata bhagya vidhata;
Punjaba Sindhu Gujarata Maratha,
Dravida Utkala Banga,
Vindhya, Himachala, Jamuna, Ganga,
Ucchhala Jaladhitaranga;
Taba Shubha Naame Jaage
Taba Shubha Ashish Maage
Gaye taba jaya gaatha.
Jaana Gaana Maana Adhinayaka Jayahe
Bharata bhagya vidhata;
Jaya he Jaye he
Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya he.

Happy Independence Day
Jai Hind!

Vikas KumRai

How To Increase Sales?

This is the same question most of the retailers are asking on day to day bases and putting pressure on their teams to get it done. But putting pressure on team is not the way to get it happen. So what to do....how to do.....how long it would take to get profits by doing more sale in your existing business model.

You may find your Answer by doing the following steps:

1. Customer Service:
Check whether your team is equipped with good knowledge and techniques to serve your Customer up to their satisfaction. If not then hire a trainer or put your training team at store level to correct the errors going on. After training associates should be a different person, his/her approach towards customer should become exclusive which is rarely available in competition. Practice as much as they can before putting them into store. As confidence / smiling faces one of the key factors behind a good customer service.

2. Merchandise :
Check your Average Bill Value, check is the number of x customers are coming to your store but their average bill value is coming very less. Then ask what is the reason. Reason might be your stock is lacking in Good - Quality - Assortment - Competitive Prices. Best way to get this correct is Collect as Many FEEDBACK from your existing customers. Draft an exclusive questioner to know the weakness in your merchandise.

3. Increase Customer's Traffic:
If your walk-ins are less then expected, then you need to work on advertisement model. Study the market before launching your campaign and promote more your running offers to your existing customers first.

4. Pricing and Offers:
Examine your pricing / costing then introduce exciting / mouth watering offers that brings more customers. Study the need first then accordingly plans the offers. After running the offers do detail study like how much benefit your store had received. If there is no big difference then you need to run something more sensible backed with good advertisement.

5. Product Knowledge:
Customers are coming in good numbers, customer service is going good, assortment is available, prices/offers are there BUT lack of product knowledge among your associates creates big problems and this would give poor results and name to the store/brand.

6. Targets:
Setting sales targets in front of stores is not enough. We need to guide our each and every associate to achieve their respective targets. Give them targets to sell Running Offers, Dead Stock, Impulse items etc by doing suggestive selling, cross merchandising, exclusive displays etc. If something is not able to perform better then we should take necessary actions to correct his/her approach in beginning only. MOTIVATE the team by offering awards not only for the highest sales but also for Good learner etc.

Feel free to email me to discuss more........
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Cheers!
All views are welcome LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS.
Vikas...

Important Terms in Retail

Markup
The amount of money added to the cost of goods to calculate retail price. E.g if cost of goods is Rs 100/- and you add Rs 50/- to this to arrive at the retail price of Rs 150/- then the mark up is Rs 50/-

Markup Percentage
The Rupee mark up expressed as a percentage of the cost price. E.g if cost of goods is Rs 100/- and you add Rs 50/- to this to arrive at the retail price of Rs 150/- then the mark up is Rs 50/- and the mark up percentage is 50%.

Margin
The difference between the cost of an item and its price E.g if cost of goods is Rs 100/- and the retail price of Rs 150/- then the rupee margin is Rs 50/-

Margin percentage
The gross profit or margin expressed as a percentage of the retail price. E.g if cost of goods is Rs 100/- and the retail price of Rs 150/- then the rupee margin is Rs 50/- and the margin percentage is 33.34%.

Feel free to email me to discuss more........
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Cheers!
All views are welcome LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS.
Vikas..
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How Team Members Can do wonders or Can Be disasters SomeTimes.

Feel free to email me to discuss more........

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Cheers!

All views are welcome LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS.

Vikas..

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Why it is IMPORTANT to Know your Customer !!!

IN this case, i would like to share one story that i read over internet from some source......"A disappointed salesman of Coca Cola returns from his Middle East assignment. A friend asked, "Why weren't you successful with the Arabs?" The salesman explained, "When I got posted in the Middle East, I was very confident that I would make a good sales pitch as Cola is virtually unknown there. But, I had a problem I didn't know to speak Arabic. So, I planned to convey the message through three posters...





First poster - A man lying in the hot desert sand...totally exhausted and fainting.
Second poster - man is drinking our Cola.
Third poster- Our man is now totally refreshed. Then these posters were pasted all over the place "That should have worked," said the friend.



The salesman replied "I didn't realize that Arabs go from right to left"
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Feel free to email me to discuss more........
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Cheers!
All views are welcome LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS.
Vikas..
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Retail Changing gears.

Few years’ back one industry RETAIL was hot among all. It was 1st choice of every business expansion plans of almost all business houses. As in India, Retail is not a familiar term. With its entry in India in big way was being accepted by all groups of people.

1st Gear: Enter into business of Retail at the earliest, business houses started hiring of staff in lots. Either experience or fresher all were welcome.

2nd Gear: When retail operations began, then target was to open more and more retail outlets, so their operational expenses can be putted on more number of stores. Example say: if one company has Rs. 10 lac advertisement expenses for 5 number of store, then expense shared by 1 Store is Rs. 10,00,000 divided by 5 stores, then by opening another 15 stores in that territory that particular expense of Rs. 10 lac got shared by 20 stores. This trick helped one particular store to show some good profits by reducing its operational expenses

3rd Gear: In order to open “n” number of stores in order to meet their respective targets, some major mistakes happened like wrong choice of property. Real estate people thinking of their individual targets to find locations for store opening and by this some locations got finalized those were just increasing their numbers but there was no quality in that. They had opened the stores in such locations where Retail couldn’t be flourished.

4th Gear: By opening non-profitable stores or Un-wanted locations, the calculation we did in stage 2 got reversed as under: Say profit from 5 stores was Rs. 5 lac, which is Rs. 1 lac divided by 5. But with opening of another 15 stores, and out of those failure of 10 stores really hampered the profits of other stores. Say profit of 10 stores Rs. 10 Lac against loss of 10 stores say Rs. 30 lacs. The loss due to those 10 stores really took the smile of profitable 10 stores and in result whole group of stores are in loss of Rs. 20 lac.

5th Gear: Now retail owners have realized the mistake and really thinking hard enough to cut down their expenses, which can only be reduced by reducing their number of stores, I meant to say close down all sick units, so the profit of 10 profitable stores pops up again.

6th Gear: When stores were opening, people who got job were happy, people who got stores in their locality were happy, business houses whose retail was in expansion mode was happy. But now with closing down of stores, everything got reversed. There is big panic among all like staff who are loosing their jobs, retail houses who are getting bad names from closing operations. Economy also affected badly as with working stores many people were getting benefits and but with closing stores all in loss.

7th Gear: This is future, it can go in any direction. As when we fall we stand again, we again fall then we again stand. And time comes when we know how we fell earlier and what need to be taken care off to avoid any more falls. Now all are working on this to get more success by reducing all negatives. After all only one thing business houses require from their ventures is “DHANDA” (profits/business). If things are not going good then they are not there to run for charity.

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Feel free to email me to discuss more........

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Cheers!

All views are welcome LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS.

Vikas...

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