"Retail Sales" an overview,

The very word retail pops up another word in mind "Shopping". Shopping is many things for many different people it may be a necessity it may be a therapy Shopping is an integral part of our lives. But for this shopping to happen a set of people need to engage in an act called retail selling.

Retail sales is the act of selling goods or commodities directly to the end user/final customer. Retail sales is exciting, its intense, its demanding its where the action is. Retail is the front line for a specific manufacturer or for a group of manufacturers. Retail is reaching to the final customer.

An entity may get involved in the producing a certain set of goods say for example canned food, being a manufacturer it is understandable that the core business is to manufacture, but the question arises why manufacture the obvious answer is to sell (yes its can be for many more other reasons but the main reason is to market a product) the next question arises where to sell this is where the decision arises whether to sell directly to the final customer or to whole sellers. Now since the example in hand is of canned foods, the logical decision is to go via the whole sellers, and now whole seller need to sell it to the retailer and the retailer will sell it to the final customer. we are here talking about the supply chain from manufacturer to the final customer.

There are many different types of retail outlets, these can be based on the type of products. For example FMCG goods and Food products are generally found in convinience stores, supermarkets or hypermarkets. Similarly there are other types like department store, discount stores, boutique, specialty store etc. We will not go into details of these for now but it is to give an idea about  various forms that retail takes.

When it comes to retail, as it may seem to be simple, it is a complex business, it involves all aspects of business from choosing a location to decoration of the shop to stocking of goods to merchandising, to staffing to managing the operations to managing the customers to finally selling.

As you must have heard that in retailing its all about Location, Location, Location, this is just to put an emphasis that its important to open a retail outlet in an optimal location which mainly has the potential to fulfill customer foot falls, there are other many factors to consider in choosing a location these include availability of infrastructure suiting your requirements, Cultural implications, demographics, parking space etc. and all this must fall into the limited budget that one has, however to get all desired factors accomplished in a limited budget can be very difficult to impossible and hence the goal must be to find an optimal mix of these while choosing a location, its indeed an important decision because it is the main factor that will fuel the foot falls in your retail store who can become customers.

Now once the location is in place, its important to have the shop decorated according the image that one wants to display to the targeted audience, ideally the decoration must be inline with the targeted audience as subconsciously it plays a role in the minds of people and may result in desired behavior from them.

Once the decor is in place, its important to source in the goods that are to be sold in the shop, a decision has to be made on how much quantity must be displayed on shelf and how much to stock in the back room or store room. Such a decision can be made by forecasting and trend analysis, etc.

Once the sourcing is done, merchandising of the good in a manner that makes it easy for the customer to browse the goods and also influence an impulse buy is an important aspect to keep in mind. Another important factor is to check is the flow of customers inside the store, if your store is expecting a lot of traffic/foot falls, it is important to ensure a smooth flow of them in order to avoid congestion way blocks etc.

Finally when the above is taken care of, the job of the floor sales persons starts and that is where the action is, its the salesman who is the face of the company who will interact with a customer and its s/he who will be responsible for a closed sale. In simple words, the sales team on the shop are stars. There job extends from opening the shop to maintaining it to keeping it clean to interacting with the customer to closing a sale to inventory checks , reordering, closing the cash register and depositing the money at the bank at the end of the day. They are the driving engine of the shop. Without their dedicated efforts the shop will not function properly and will never be a success.

With the above said it is important to ensure that the selection of the sales team is done very smartly where in the person has the right attitude. After such a person is selected, its critically important to extensively train him/her as its the sales person who is on the front line interacting with the customer.

"You walk into a retail store, whatever it is, and if there's a sense of entertainment and excitement and electricity, you wanna be there."
     -Howard Schultz
The entertainment the excitement and electricity all can be brought in by developing dynamic retail sales persons.

Every product is different, even if its of the same category its sold with a different image, customers walk in to the store with an intention to buy may be not today may be tomorrow, its the job of the sales person to ensure that the sale is done every time the customer walks in because the only reason a person really walks in the shop is to buy something.

Retail selling can be broken down into multiple small little steps which I like to call the process of selling below figure is a flow representation of how to sell in retail scenario.

Retail Selling

We will be discussing each step in detail in the next few post but just to brief for now, one should be prepared to do a salesman job, you need to be prepared as in know the product price etc and should be well groomed. Once a customer walks in the least one should do is greet the customer open a conversation, try to find out what the customer is looking for why did the customer come in? Once its know what the customer needs, show him the product, try to close the sale by using various techniques if customer is willing to buy then close the sale directly is not it mean the customer has an objection which needs to be managed manage the objection and close the sale. Assure the customer that the purchase a fine choice and ask them to visit again.


I hope the above post was insightful and of value to you. Please post your comments below.

"Retailing is a major economic responsibility to fulfill demand of tangible needs and wants by making it available as per the buyers convenience for a price"
     - Farhan Sikander



Photo Credit John Fraissinet /Flickr