How to open an effective store of shoes and accessories. Success formula

The language of the musician is notes, the language of the poet is words, and the language of the entrepreneur is numbers! But most small retail stores in Russia do not consider performance indicators, the only indicator that is taken into account by owners and managers is revenue. In the best case, sales in units are still estimated. Business coach and consultant Maria Gerasimenko talks about what makes up the retail store success formula.

Maria Gerasimenko -

CEO of Fashion Advisers and the first online school for fashion business Fashion Advisers School, expert in business management and development, business coach. Fashion business management experience - more than 12 years. Successfully defended 2 MBA dissertations (Mirbi International Higher School of Economics, Russia, Moscow, 2013) and London Metropolitan University (Great Britain, London, 2017)

Main areas of activity: strategic and anti-crisis management of the shoe business, assortment matrix management, development of motivation programs, conducting trainings in the field of management, service and sales. Clients include: Unichel, Tamaris, s'Oliver, Kotofey, Rieker, Sinta Gamma, Helly Hansen, Rusocks and others.

For several years now, we have been forced to conduct business in an unstable market. In other words, the exchange rate is constantly changing, and not in favor of the ruble, as a result, the purchase price rises, the retail price rises ... For this reason, it may seem that the revenue is growing and the business is doing well. However, the strange feeling of lack of funds, as a rule, does not leave such entrepreneurs.

Considering sales only in units, you can step on another rake: “sales have fallen,” “there are no people,” “an unsuccessful period,” and everything is bad.

There are other performance indicators that tell the truth about your business: conversion and average bill. They are not new, many stores have been using this tool for several decades. It is time for you to take them into service and use in your work.

Buyer Traffic

About 10% of the traffic of the shopping center will pass by your store (the exception is the stores located on the ground floor or at the entrance to the shopping center). About 1-2% of the shopping center traffic will go to your store (this will be the traffic of your store).

What does store traffic depend on?

• Location of the store in the shopping center
• Shopping center navigation
• Window dressing
• Store lighting, merchandising
• Shares
• Coalition Loyalty Programs

Conversion

The average conversion of a store located in a shopping center should be not lower than 10%. You cannot consider conversion in isolation from the complexity of the check.

$$ \ text {Conversion} = {\ text {Number of buyers} \ over \ text {Number of visitors}} * 100 \% $$

What does store conversion depend on?

• Effective work of sellers
• Purchase quality
• Merchandising
• Shares

Check Complexity

The average complexity of a store check should be not lower than 1,8 units / person You cannot consider the complexity of the check in isolation from the conversion.

$$ \ text {CK} = {\ text {Number of purchases} \ over \ text {Number of buyers}} $$

What determines the complexity of the check?

• Effective work of sellers
• Availability of assortment
• Cross selling
• Merchandising
• Shares

How to increase the complexity of the check?

1. We remember and explain to the staff: To sell is always easier than to sell again! We sell in one hand the maximum possible amount of goods. “You have great taste! You have chosen stunning high heel shoes! Sometimes the legs need a rest, and I think you will also like these stylish ballet shoes. ”
2. We add related products to the assortment: sponges, sprays, creams, insoles.
3. We hold promotions: “10% 20% 30%”, “Buy two pairs, the third as a gift”, “Buy one pair, get a discount of 15% for the second”.
4. Exceptional service. When the buying process is pleasant to the buyer, he is more willing to part with the money and with greater pleasure will buy additional and related products from you, than go in search of them to another store. Moreover, as soon as the rumor starts that in your store attentive and communicative sellers who know how to greet, keep a conversation friendly and not just “cheer”, but be a friend, a stylist, and a consultant, a string of customers will reach you to with your own eyes to see and feel it.

How to calculate the attractiveness of a retail space using performance indicators and some patterns?

You have found the perfect mall for your store. There is a great place there, and in your dreams you already imagine how you make repairs, purchase equipment, and sellers only manage to get checks and pack purchases ...

STOP!

$$ \ text {Revenue min} = {\ text {Rent * 4} $$

Example:

1. Rent a store = 1 000 000 rubles / month, this means that the minimum revenue of the store = 4 000 000 rubles / month.
2. In order to calculate how many units of goods we must sell in order to achieve minimum revenue, we divide the revenue by the average retail value of a commodity unit.

4 000 000p: 4000p = 1000 units - they must sell a month to understand how much it is possible to “pump” the minimum volume of sales, it is important for us to know what traffic is in the shopping center. For example, a shopping center claims that its traffic is 1 710 000 people / month. Feel free to reduce it by 30% (shopping centers often overstate data) and calculate the potential traffic of your store:

$$ \ text {(The official traffic of the shopping center is 30 \%) * 1 \%} = {\ text {Store traffic} $$

Example:

The official attendance of the mall is 1 710 000 people / month.

Advertising

Advertising of Business Global Expo LLC, Taxpayer Identification Number (INN) 7710961530, erid: 2W5zFJRB7Va

1. (1 710 000 people - 30%) * 1% = 11 970 people / month - potential store traffic
2. 11 970 * 10% = 1 197 people / month - potential conversion
3. 1 197 * 1,8 = 2155 units - average number of sales per month

Thus, 2155 * 4000р = 8 620 000р - potential store revenue per month.

RUB 4 <RUB 000

How to choose a suitable supplier of goods?

It is not simple! However, there are some criteria that I recommend to adhere to:

• timely delivery of goods;
• honesty;
• volumes of goods suitable for your store;
• territorial exclusive;
• the presence of the RRP (recommended retail price) and its control, including for online sales;
• territorial exclusive;
• the ratio of quality and price;
• the presence of training materials (or even trainings) that allow sellers to learn about the features of the brand.

Staff recruitment

Now we move on to the most painful item at most retailers - PERSONNEL! Surely you want you to have someone to choose from and not to hire an employee just because “others are worse”? Then look at your vacancy. Does she look like this?

(vacancy of a well-known shoe brand, taken from the open source avito.ru. Spelling and punctuation saved):

This vacancy can be understood literally: it does not matter to you who you are or what you want. You are like everyone, and we are like everyone. Come to regular work as a regular seller. This vacancy fills the sellers who have not yet got a job with sadness ...

Let's try another option:

Now imagine yourself in the place of the seller-applicant. Which job attracts you more? If the seller is a blue stocking and is looking for “just a job as a seller”, he will not call you. Those who are sociable, easy to climb and able to see the unusual in the ordinary will call you. Thus, you will save time and will choose from those candidates that are initially suitable for you.

How to determine the right candidate

1. A potential employee must be competent and confident. Confident people will always surpass those who doubt their potential. Their signs:

• lively manner of speaking;
• a potential employee loves the product you are selling;
• high sales at a previous job.

2. He must be positive. During the interview, you can quickly determine how the candidate is configured. Does he look at life like a glass that is half empty or half full? Do clouds cover the sun for him, or does the sun peek out from behind the clouds?

3. He must enthusiastically listen, learn and grow. To become the best! You make one attempt, five, ten, and only in two cases out of ten will you get at least some kind of response. This may be discouraging. But you need people with enough enthusiasm to continue to learn new things and adapt, despite failures and defeats.

4. Decency. This is the main thing. This is not even a principle, but a key element that permeates the rest and without which all of the above does not make sense. Did the candidate come for an interview on time? Warned about being late in advance? Or, half an hour late, still hoping to get a position?

Intangible staff motivation

In this article we will not touch on the topic of material (monetary) motivation. But a little about the intangible. The seller’s work is incredibly boring. Day after day from 10.00 to 22.00 ... One and the same. Buyers - do not know what they want, without money or in general “there are no people”. Diversify these gray everyday life! And you will see how a positive attitude of sellers will increase sales to 30%!

Intangible Motivation Tools:

1. Moral stimulation.
2. Informing.
3. Labour Organization.
4. Organizational culture.

What to do:

• Come up with an “experiment”
• Enter the competition
• Post Honor / Information Boards
• Have a meeting and set shared goals
• Invent a tradition
• Communicate with employees
• thank
• Take care
• Think about the family life of employees
• Invest in the future
• Surprise!
• Give the opportunity to take the initiative
• Encourage individual achievement immediately
• Involve employees in decision making
• Use a team approach when promoting
• Make fun, not expensive!

In other words: if the seller serves customers the way he was taught in the training, praise! If with you he made a major or unusual sale - praise! If the season is low and there are no sales - please make a small surprise: treat them with cherries, chocolate, ice cream, support morally! Make it a rule to congratulate employees on their birthday.

7 secrets in dealing with customers to increase sales

1. Contact the customer by name. Get to know him at the initial stage of the sale.
2. Spend at least 20 shares per year. Make them interesting and exciting for both the buyer and the seller.
3. Reduce advertising costs. Leave only those channels that most effectively affect the client.
4. Make a coalition loyalty program - leave printed materials in the habitats of your customers (for example, in beauty salons).
5. Do SMS mailing exclusively on your customer base (do not use “cold” databases). Do not distribute more than 1 times in 2 weeks.
6. Develop multi-channel sales: not only offline, but also an online store, a group on social networks.
7. Give customers gifts.