Is your store not working as it should? Could it be better? Since they have put a shopping center next to you no longer have the same customers?
No need to spend excessive money on advertising, you do not know if it will work. So start following these simple steps and we will improve your business together.
1. Identify yourself
- Who you are? (which is not the same as what you were…) How do they know you?
- Who do you want to be?
- Look at yourself honestly. You know your market. Analyze it. What is missing in that market and what is left over in your municipality? Are you within your perfectly defined sector or do you occupy an intermediate space between all those in your field? make
2. Specialize:
- If a specialized shop is established in front of you, what will you do? You have to be prepared. One of the best ways is: specialization.
- If you have a grocery, you can dedicate it to natural or land products; if it is a bookstore, in books or in fashionable backpacks and stationery, if it is a children's clothing store, in casual or formal children's clothing; if it is a herbalist, in body care or natural food or healing…
3. Check your product:
- Do they often demand things you don't have?
- Do you go in and find what you are looking for?
- Would that product fall within the "what you want to become"?
- Are there products that do not come out even if the price cuts or put them on the front line?
- Listen to your client to satisfy their needs
- Can you find the same product in a large supermarket? So you have to specialize and go where they don't.
- Can you find the same product in a nearby specialized store, and with even more assortment and information about its properties? Specialize and be unique in what you offer; at least in a range of what you offer.
4. Check your distribution:
Direct, on request, I make orders over the Internet or telephone, do replenishments serve me on time?
- Do you still buy everything through a distributor - representative? If so, it will be more expensive than your competition.
- To buy more economically, you have to move, constantly look at offers on the Internet or in other media, travel and get the best value for money to be able to offer it to our customers.
- Sitting in an armchair and waiting for the representative to arrive at our home… we will not expect to succeed!
5. Check your price:
- The margins according to products have varied over time: some up and others down. Did you do that?
- A higher price than in other establishments can only be justified (and partially) with an “exclusive” treatment to the client accompanied by professional advice. Otherwise we will be there, only for emergencies.
6. Check your showcase and interior (lighting, cleaning, showcase):
- A dirty or poorly lit storefront (and interior) DOES NOT SELL. A messy window display indicates sloppiness. A showcase without prices is against the law. In this detail it is worth investing. It is not excessively expensive and there are subsidies that we can take advantage of. If you neglect this, forget about the rest.
7. Make your store a meeting point as much as possible and treat each customer as if they were the only one. Loyalty it.
- Create forums
- Spaces for children to play
- Conferences for the elderly to meet or share common interests…
- A personalized service that you can never find in larger establishments
- A commitment
- A product demo
- Have little details from time to time with loyal customers
- Collect their complaints or recommendations and give them out as far as possible
- Make orders and fulfill them
- Advisor
8. Promote local events:
- Join the popular party, that in your establishment they see that you are with everyone, that you are one of celebration.
- Advertise it in your showcase (some reason or detail)
9. Be accessible and helpful:
- Be available for customers and suppliers: for good and bad
- If you sell the same and at similar prices as a bigger and better-known store, but they hardly have customer service, and you do, you have to know that the customer, whenever you let them touch, will feel more comfortable where someone will can advise or where you can go to ask questions, and not in a place where you have to look for a dependent. Our main weapon with respect to department stores is service.
10. Give away what is left over:
- If you don't see yourself able to sell it, as much as it cost you it was a mistake. Get rid of it: give it as a promotion or as a gift, to give to the loyal customer or to cause them to buy you another product through a gift.
11. Get big customers to talk about you:
… and not yours. Make them the competition, because you know more than yours, because you are able to get the best assortment in…, because you know how the market is going to evolve, because you have innovated and done something original…
12. Let yourself be seen, touched and felt:
- Do not start with the fact that you cannot touch anything, because they will go to any other establishment, where if they can touch it without being looked at out of the corner of their eyes, they will make a bad face or they will scold them.
13. Reach agreements:
- With stores in the same branch of other associations, with those of other cities… Try to buy in common so that you can get discounts on purchase and pressure from the supplier.
14. Use the Internet:
- It will keep you in touch with the market, and you will know where it is going
- You will know first-hand subsidies, prices of other establishments, promotions, innovations…
- You will be able to make orders and replenishments easily and find out about the offers of different companies at a given moment when nobody comes to offer them to you
15. If you are going to take a turn, advertise it to your potential customers:
- Locally and showy
- That is not expensive, since you do not know the result
- Short and clear message
