Traditional Brick & Mortar retailers are dying more quickly than expected because, despite all the talk, they just can't deliver consistently perfect shopping experiences. If anything, the in-store shopping experiences are getting worse; and this failure is in stark contrast to the constantly improving on-line shopping experience. Every failure at the shelf, every indifferent or rude sales associate, and every failed attempt at customer service drives consumers out of stores and into their phone for their next purchase.
Traditional retail will either live or die by the experience provided to shoppers, and the speed at which the growth of online buying is taking of the shopper wallet paints a bleak report card.
For over a decade the Industry has chanted "Get Closer to the Consumer," and "Shopper Experience," yet the dismal experience in the stores spirals downhill.
If the answer is known so clearly, why is Brick and Mortar Retail failing so badly, and why does it continue to fail?
The answer is found in corporate leadership. Not that these companies are unaware of the need for a clear culture, strategy, communication, accountability, and follow-up; but rather, in the geographically spread out universe of stores these leaders lack the tools necessary to execute on these well-known keys to organizational health.
Without tools to make changes, test their success, communicate standards, and ensure consistent execution against those standards, retail leaders have no choice but to depend on a team of store managers (already overworked) to create individual armies of retail sales associates capable of delivering the exact same, consistently perfect job of executing the seven steps of the retail sale in a way that delights customers in such a way as to increase traffic, basket size, and margin.
And all the shelf holes; the rude, indifferent, un-product-knowledgeable associates, and store closing headlines prove that model is completely broken.
But what if there were a way that headquarters could rally around crystal clarity regarding creating a culture of perfect shopping experiences that's designed to maximize traffic, basket, and margin? What if that culture could be taught to every retail associate, from the corporate store to the most remote store? What if all aspects of the seven steps to the retail sale, merchandising excellence, customer service, and a fool-proof, step-by-step approach to delighting every customer who walks though the door could be implanted in the hearts and minds of every retail associate?
What if it were possible to leverage the great shopper interactions describe above to learn at a very deep level, what else would delight the customers in that store (and therefore the stores that share its traits)? And what if that store and shelf-level information could be forwarded back to headquarters in real time?
What if further, headquarters had a way to audit and measure every store -- from the state of its retail execution and on-shelf availability to the quality of shopping experience offered, and feed that information back to HQ which could automatically assign more training to stores that are failing in any area?
And what if all of the Retail Greatness described above were to be driven into the hearts and minds of every associate -- such that the culture attracted more like minded people who coached each other, and helped those who don't fit to self-select out?
That reality can and does exist for retailers who combine state of the art, cloud-based training with state-of-the-art, cloud-based retail execution software.
This book spells out, in great detail, with a large number of concrete examples and strategies, exactly how to create the Retail Greatness above happen for any traditional retailer, and how it can for you too.
