Articles and News
Head On #2: Sales Team’s ‘Plus’ Traffic Should Build Overall Store Visitor Count | February 22, 2017 (2 comments)
Merrick, NY—If you are a better independent jeweler lamenting that there aren’t enough people coming into the store, you’re not alone.
Retail in general is losing traffic of late, especially in malls, where mall developers are often looking to close unproductive venues and concentrate on their successes to grow. But freestanding stores are not immune either.
All of retail needs to create new ways to get customers excited to come in. Some call one of the most recent focal points “Retailtainment,” as it appears that sales and trunk shows and co-branding with good lines may not always be enough to keep traffic levels from falling. You can read the Wikipedia definition of Retailtainment here. We are excited to discuss Retailtainment, but will cover it in future HEAD-ON.
For this week’s column, let’s look at the “Plus” traffic your sales team can bring to the table to build overall store traffic.
To start, this is all about a mind-set. We need to remember that consumers are human beings and not machines and that they appreciate welcomed human interaction. A great jewelry store sales associate or sales manager will build store traffic by looking at the store as her beautiful showroom and headquarters, but she is no longer just waiting her turn to serve those consumers who walk in the store because of store marketing and reputation.
She is all about building her network throughout the market area and constantly reaching out and setting up appointments to work with clients and future clients. In fact, when she is not with a customer, she is working quickly to develop more and more “Plus” traffic to build her’s and the store’s business.
Image: Groupon Merchant
This encompasses the use of all personal interactions throughout the market area, plus calls, texts, emails and use of the store’s CRM system.
But as Shane Decker likes to say, store owners and managers need to “inspect what they expect.”
So if you’d like to get a lot more “Plus” traffic from these kind of personal efforts on the part of your sales team, it may be time to also quantify how much “Plus” traffic each sales team member is bringing to the store, rewarding them for doing a great job attracting “Plus” traffic; and training them and reinforcing the steps they must take to succeed in this kind of work.
There is no question this the development of “Plus” traffic by the sales team is good, solid, tactical work that every store can use to move forward, as long as the sales team sees this as their responsibility and the store gives them the tools and guidance to make it happen.
All for now…Look forward to visiting with you next week!