An Education from the Observation

One of my favorite parts of my job is spending time with owners and executives in their stores observing how the staff goes about their business.  Sometimes improving some of the smallest details can pay some of the biggest dividends.  I decided today to share with you some of my observations from a recent store visit. 

* One employee always positioned herself in approximately the middle of the store so she could greet and engage customers from where she was standing.  Another staff member stayed closer to the counter that was in the back of the store.  To greet and engage the customer she had to walk towards them.  It was interesting to see that customers were more open and friendly to the staff member who didn't have to physically move towards them.  I'm not sure I ever noticed the difference before but you could see how much more defensive the customer became when an employee walked towards them.

* The owner had coached the team to focus on making multi-unit sales. One thing we observed is that about half of the team would tell the customer about an additional product while walking towards the counter.  The other half transitioned to an additional product in the same spot or led the customer to a different place in the store.  When we looked at the historical units per transaction averages for the staff it wasn't surprising to see that most of those who tried to talk about a second product while going to the counter had the lowest average.

* I've talked about this one a lot but it was fun to see in person. The best salesperson always got the product into the customer's hand.  It was obviously second nature to her because I'm not sure I ever saw her hold a product except for the brief moment it took to pick it up and hand it to the customer. We observed that the less productive salespeople had a tendency to point at products or just stand in front of them but rarely got them into the customer's hands.

* I was really impressed with one woman's ability to engage customers who said they were just looking. She would welcome and engage a person and whenever they said they were just looking she responded by thanking them for coming in and giving them a 10-second overview of what made the store unique. What made this woman's approach stand out is that she never took it personally or became defensive when the customer said they were just looking.  As a matter of fact her enthusiasm level was where it would be if the customer had just said he would take one of everything in the store. We compared that to other employees, whose energy level dropped and approach changed if the customer said they were just looking.

* One thing the entire team did well was to reinforce the customer's purchase during the checkout. This is a skill that the owner had clearly spent time teaching her staff.  Every single customer walked out of the store not just believing but knowing that they had made a good purchase.  I really liked when they linked it back to something they had learned from the customer when asking questions.  Not surprisingly, this store's return rate is extremely low.

I think the owner was quite surprised what we could learn in just a few hours. It's not that these things are terribly hard to see but you have to look for them and then put what you've learned into improving your team.

So let me ask, when did your team last spend time observing the fine details of each other’s sales and experience approach?  I think you'll be amazed at what you can learn that will improve your store and your overall sales.

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An Education From the Observation in Your Store

Send us an email with “Tell me more” and I’ll share how you can receive your own education from the observations in your store with our Store Visit service.

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