- Stay current. Keep up with local trends. Visiting your nearest retail store would help you know what’s currently being promoted in the market. This might help you set up your store accordingly and create a theme based on the season or festive trends. You would want to be a secret shopper and understand that 3 P’s– products, placement and pricing Ask questions like will this product sell in your store? Which aisle would you place this product in? Will the customer notice this in 1st look? Is it priced rightly? Also, while doing this make sure to stay within your budget and not overdo anything since it is in trend. Your customers are your barometer to understand how effectively you can manage your store items. Listen to your customers. They will provide you with honest and accurate feedback but only if you ask. Know your regular visitors and ask them questions about how they like the store, were all the items they were looking for available.
- Loss prevention. Soft theft at retail stores is unavoidable and mostly ignored. The most effective and trusted way to learn whether you are losing money because of this is by keeping a check on your inventory. Most POS [point-of-sale] system have inventory management feature which keeps track of your real-time inventory. Knowing your real-time sales report vs inventory consumed can be a good way to manage your store operations. It is a known practice to trust your store employees when they are handling your cash register. Have your store camera at right places and do a periodic check of its functionality so that you don’t lose on bottom-line profits. Store cameras help keep an eye on shop-lifting which is common for many retail stores. If your POS system supports sending alerts on your mobile phone when the suspicious transaction happens, it can help you save a lot of money.
- Everything on Sale! Prompt customers to visit your store frequently by having regular discounted sale. Many POS [point-of-sale] system offer built in marketing or loyalty programs to create multiple promotions to attract foot traffic to your store and increase sales. You might want to test multiple promotions to know what would work best for your store. Example – some customers prefer getting $ discount vs % discount. Many prefer collecting points and redeeming it later. Some like to opt for coupons and buy X, get Y free. Another important aspect for promoting offers is placement of such merchandise. It can help you increase you overall store sales and keep your store poplar in your neighborhood. The key is for the customers to distinguish between the discounted item and regular item. Keeping the discounted items at the end of your store makes the customer walk through the entire store thus exploring other items available at the store. Marking your discounted item with differentiating color or tag makes is