Chapter Four. Rolling those snowballs
You’ll get fed up of reading me declare that there are no secrets to retail, so I thought I ought to chuck at least one sort-of-secret into the pot early doors: It’s the one about change. Rather than having to unlock some massive total change to improve your business, the secret is to recognize that lots of small changes are just as useful. Retail is about trying things: constantly adapting, nudging, and improving parts of the store. Sometimes you will do that all at once, when creating a new format, but most of the time it’s small changes strung together that result in big improvements.
One thing changed can be the start of something big. Change one detail noticed by one customer, who mentions it to five others, who each tell five more, and you can see that one change can make a big impact. Your team too begins to see things starting to happen, just from one idea. Employee attitudes begin to improve. Baby steps: Do one thing brilliantly today, another tomorrow, and maybe change the world next week. Remember rolling snowballs as a kid? It’s like that; you start small and with a bit of effort you soon have something big going on.
Reading stores the practical way
Regularly run this assessment of your own store but also of competitors and non-competitors alike—you’ll uncover loads of ideas and possibilities each time you do. There are three areas to observe:
A—The store
B—Its staff
C—Its customers
A—Store
I’ll bet good money that you already do this when you walk into a shop: you look around. You look at the fixtures, the offers, the dirt on the carpet, and you spot the display gaps. You might even see those gaps and suck your teeth a bit and feel relieved that some other manager is under pressure for once.
Start outside the store—over the road if possible:
• How many glance at the window?
• How do they react if they do?
• How do they move if they then come into the store?
Now find a place inside to stand still and observe:
• Watch where customers are going.
• Which part of each section do they enter first?
• Look at people’s eyes.
• What do they see?
• What do they miss?
• What things do they touch?
• Which items do they pick up and from where?
• How long do customers linger over each display fixture?
• How many lookers at each display take something to the counter, or to the changing room?
• What sorts of people are shopping the store? Moms with strollers, office workers, or mechanics? (This profile will be different at different times of the day.)
• Pay special regard to what happens in the transition zone, that area near the door that transfers customers from the outside and then into the store—how do people move through this area?
Most of us make a really basic mistake when we shop our own store. We tend to look at it from back to front. We usually see the store from the back staff area or warehouse through the shopfloor and out of the front doors. It’s a natural mistake but incredibly unhelpful. We just aren’t seeing the store in the way our customers do.
Then take a look at the basic store components, including:
• Window displays
• Promotions
• Range
• Fixtures and fittings
• Lighting layouts
• Added-value ideas
Make a special note of the bits of the store in which a lot of customers seem to be picking stuff up—that physical interaction is one of your best starts to converting a browse into a sale. What is it that you’ve done in these areas that customers seem to be reacting to?
Go through this in your competitors’ stores and in other stores that interest you too. I believe firms should not only encourage you to go out reading your competitors’ stores but they should even give you a paid session, every week, to go off and do so. In fact, they should even give you a fiver to go get a latte to slurp while you walk around improving your business through learning from your competitors and other retailers.
B—Staff
Talk to staff every time you go into a shop. An easy icebreaker is to ask “What’s it like working here?” You will usually get a plain answer along the lines of “It’s not too bad,” which doesn’t tell you much but does give you a chance to then ask “What do you like about it?” Nearly every time you ask that, the assistant will let slip a nugget of useful information:
• “There’s a nice team spirit.”
• “The pay is good.”
• “It’s a laugh.”
• “We’re treated with a bit of respect.”
• “Every day is different.”
• “I like customers.”
Each of those answers allows you to unobtrusively ask further questions that help to get to specific employment practices in play at that store. Try to chat with the store manager too. Tell them what you do. Share some thoughts and ideas with them and they often will with you.
C—Customers
Listen:
• What do customers say to each other?
• What do they say to assistants?
• How are customers being approached?
Talking to customers in your own store is easy: You’ve got a badge on that says you are okay to talk to. Talking to customers elsewhere is a bit harder to do. We tend to be a little wary of strangers asking questions but it can be done without you appearing to be a crazy person. Most people do love to share their opinions—turn that to your advantage.
In your own store, you can ask lots of open questions such as:
• “How well have we looked after you today?”
• “What do you think about how we’ve changed our displays?”
• “How easy was it to find what you were looking for?”
• “What do you think of these new products?”
• “How easy is it to shop in my store?”
• “What was the first thing you noticed when you came in today?”
• “What’s your opinion on how I’ve set up my register area?”
• “What am I missing in my store, do you think?”
• “What sort of things do other shops like mine do that you really like?”
When I’m in my plainclothes and out in somebody else’s store, I find the most successful question tends to be “I run a store like this one; what do you like about this shop?” and I’ll be asking that usually while waiting in a line at the checkout. Lots of other opportunities to open up a conversation usually present themselves while wandering around the store too.
If the customer starts to chat happily, be conversational and don’t try to sound like you’re doing a survey. People tend to respond along the lines of “Oh, I like the way they do X but I really wish they would sort out that damn Y.” Maybe we just like complaining but I have found over and over again that these little chats can uncover a glaring problem for you to look out for in your own store. Of course, some customers will also happily give you a rundown of what it is that attracts them to the particular store you are in, and that’s extra useful.
Street Time
As a consultancy we do a cracking version of exactly this process: We send teams of senior retailers, each clutching a twenty, out into shops. We call this program “Street Time” and those retailers are targeted with visiting a selected set of stores and reporting back on them. They talk to staff (we’ve had at least a dozen staff hired by our clients after having had great in-store conversations), they talk to customers, and occasionally they get escorted out by over-zealous security guards. The most useful part is always, they tell us, the standing back and watching customers bit—we give ourselves that essential time too infrequently.
You’ll find the very simple notes for our Street Time exercise in Appendix III—read the sections on Big Idea, Discovery, and Mission before taking a crack at it.
Turning the things we see into things we do
Reading stores is powerful only if you do it with a purpose. That purpose is to find one thing to change in your own store or business today. Write down your notes as soon as you can and then do a bit of simple analysis: set up three headings “benefit,” “effort” and “cost.” Mark each idea out of ten for each of those headings and then pick out the ones that look most attractive and get on with them!
All of these you would consider doing:
• Lots of benefit, easy to do, no cost
• Useful benefit, easy to do, no cost
• Lots of benefit, bit of effort required, some cost
• Useful benefit, bit of effort required, some cost
• Some benefit, easy to do, lots of cost
• Little benefit, hard to do, lots of cost