5 tips to help retailers remain productive all year round

03/09/2019 | by Proximity

What can sales associates do to remain busy without procrastinating?

If you’ve ever worked in retail, you’re bound to be well versed in the peaks and troughs of busy shopping periods throughout the year. You might have found it hard to remain busy in the quieter periods, succumbing to cleaning the mirrors or tidying the stock room for the 4th time that day. All which needs to be done, but maybe not quite so regularly. So, what can sales associates do to remain busy without procrastinating?

Peak trading preparation

The Autumn/Winter shopping period is quickly impending upon us, keeping retailers busy. Not only are stores attempting to get rid of the last few pieces of summer stock – they are also getting ready for pre-Christmas and post-Christmas sales. This preparation time is vital for stores. Investing in our platform will enable your sales associates to remain extremely productive as well as increase customer loyalty, which is vital in the lead-up to Christmas.

We have established a list of 5 tips to help you with this preparation period

  1. Establish long-term relationships – Clienteling enables you to establish long-term relationships with your customers, increasing their brand loyalty and basket size. With our in-store app, clienteling and relationship-building becomes 2nd nature.
  2. Value the customer journey – Giving each of your customers an unforgettable customer journey ensures that they are likely to return regularly. Install touchpoints, offer them benefits such as personal stylists – let them truly immerse themselves in your brand.
  3. Utilise Downtime for outreach – messaging your customers after they have left the store keeps them interested. Perhaps they were considering a pair of boots but didn’t buy them: send them a message via our app, ensuring they won’t forget about them.
  4. Appointment booking – offer exclusive personalised appointment times to your customers. Appointments mean that sales associates can prepare for when their customers come in – they can set aside products for that particular time, ensuring there are no wait times – it makes the customer journey seamless.
  5. Event planning – plan a Christmas event for your most loyal customers – this enables customers to feel truly valued in your store and increases sales. It could also give customers the opportunity to buy exclusive products.

Changing structure can also work

Another way to keep busy is to shake up the typical structure that is enforced on the shop floor. A 2018 study by Harvard Business Review (HBR) showed that when retail staff have stable, busy schedules, productivity and sales increase. HBR visited 28 retail stores in California and enforced a new structure on the staff. They gave the core retail associates a “soft guarantee” of 20 or more hours a week, established standard start and end shift times, a stable core schedule (meaning their week-to-week routine would be roughly the same), enabled associates to swap shifts without needing their supervisors’ approval and gained additional staff members during exceptionally busy periods. ‘The results were striking.’ For example, sales in stores with more stable scheduling increased by 7%, a huge jump considering the relatively minor adjustments.

Technology is the most effective way of helping sales associates remain productive and boosts sales

However, it’s technology within stores that can really boost sales figures higher than most brands initially think they’re capable of. With the addition of our clienteling programme (implemented on your shop floor within 3 months), associates can be engaging with customers all the time, even if there are no customers in the store. We provide a customer engagement (clienteling) platform to retailers, inspiring and enabling sales associates to build trusting relationships with their customers, ensuring lifelong devotion to the brand. As well as ensuring staff can connect with customers via the platform, it captures data which we gain insights from. It’s then delivered back to the shop-floor, meaning our clients can make informed decisions regarding both their customers and their store staff. Checklists, system reminders, purchase history, wish lists and customer likes/dislikes is just the start of what store associates can view, edit and access on our platform, changing the way people shop, for good. It also ensures that sales associates remain busy whilst being hugely productive, which is essential. At Proximity Insight, we know how vital strong relationships are between customers and sales associates. Strong relationships not only drive sales but ensure that customers choose to be loyal and return to shop with your brand, time and time again. If you get in touch with us now, we could have our platform up-and-running within your stores before peak trading times. The retailing possibilities will be endless when you work with Proximity Insight.

Written by Proximity

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