Retailers Chop Wood To Survive
A guy chops wood daylight to dark seven days a week just to survive. One day a neighbor says
“Why don’t you sharpen your axe mate, you will be able to chop more wood in less time and have more fun”. The wood chopper replies “Haven’t got time to sharpen the axe.”
Hmmm, wood chopper or axe sharpener that’s the question!
This could be the Retail Store Owner anthem, and it could even be funny if it wasn’t so true. So often in any shopping expedition you can come across way too many stores who unfortunately live the above mantra. Chopping wood is great, it makes you feel busy and useful. It saves your wages bill because hey, no one will work cheaper than you for the business. But chopping wood makes you tired and those day to day tasks just keep piling up. But it feels so busy and valuable!
Then again, I could always sharpen my axe by using all 4 buying/selling opportunities in any store visit by a potential customer?
The pre-sell, the sell, the upsell and the post-sell. There are super simple strategies and systems to use every one of those 4 profit powerhouses.And it’s so simple to train staff to do it to. It can be almost automatic. Every time someone walks in there are 4 opportunities to get them to buy!
How many bites at the cherry could I actually get?
But there’s so much wood to chop!
Or I could always sharpen my axe, and get a people counter which is the most efficient weapon a retailer can have, link it to a P.O.S. system and theres an arsenal so powerful you can live the pulse of your business and use it to make more money than a bull can crap!
But a people counter costs a few hundred bucks and maybe takes a couple of hours to set up. And then of course manage a few reports each week and month and that takes an hour or two. But the knowledge and power I would gain is almost immeasurable!
I could compare time periods for traffic flow and adjust staffing to suit saving and making money. Understanding the sales conversion rate is gold and using it to train staff and motivate them is so easy! Knowing the average sale size would motivate me to use all 4 sales opportunities and even a dollar or two increase over a year can mean a new car, no problem.
But hey, there’s all that wood to chop!
I could always sharpen my axe by collecting a databse of customer details on the P.O.S. This is dynamite and makes marketing to my customers as simple as ABC. Sure it takes an extra minute or two at the time of sale but suddenly I know who bought purple extra small widgets in July and when I have a special on purple extra small widgets who am I gunna call? But before I know it thousands of people have all supplied me with the shopping data you need to be a marketing wizard.
Then again that wood pile needs chopping!
I could Sharpen that axe by making sure all the fast movers are in stock at all times, creating a buying system to make sure the stock is counted and merchandised regularly. Drawing up checklists so it’s easy to remember and easy to allocate to staff on a daily/weekly basis.But it will take a bit of effort and time away from the woodpile
And there’s so much wood to chop!
Creating a buying plan saves money, makes money and increases customer satisfaction, but know what? It takes time researching what the best sellers areformulating stock models and forecasting using past history….
And that woodpile just doesn’t seem to be getting smaller.
The woodpile will never get smaller until I decide to do something about it and do the fabled “work ON the business”
It takes a decision and an act of will to take that step to get out the back
and do some real axe sharpening, but thats where the payoff is.
Try this, monitor what you do instore for a week and give yourself a title: Woodchopper or Axe sharpener?
If you want to sharpen your own or your staff selling skills check out This
