The StoreForce Growth and Profitability Formula 

As retailers, our primary goal is for our customers to consistently have the best brand experience. An amazing brand experience is the foundation for growing top-line sales, both in-store and across all channels.

At StoreForce, we want retailers to build their businesses, even during these expensive times. Here are three ways you can continue to grow the top-line while driving bottom-line profitability for your business. We call this the Retail Growth and Profitability Formula. 

1) Create Great Schedules 

Optimized scheduling is a core value at StoreForce. To ensure your budget is being allocated correctly to the right days of the week and the right hours in the day, you need to evaluate the areas of opportunity and capitalize on them with your key players.

Situation:

It’s March Break, and students will visit your stores during their time off. Customer sales and traffic patterns will be different during March Break. Your store’s sales targets are higher. How do you schedule and plan for this opportunity? What do you do? 

Answer:

To meet your sales targets, you must prioritize your best store associates! By knowing the days of the week, and the hours of the day where you expect high traffic, retailers should schedule their top associates on the shop floor for the most success. Remember to review your KPIs like Conversion and Average Basket while in the moment to keep the team on track!

2) Pivot Actions In The Moment

Retail changes quickly, and new priorities emerge multiple times throughout the workday. With that said, your store associates need to pivot tasks when necessary.  Store associates should be able to distinguish what needs their attention next. 

Situation:  

There are 4 hours left in the workday. Store traffic is high, and your conversion rate is on target. Although, you are still short of hitting your sales numbers. How are you going to meet this goal? 

Answer:

The two metrics you must look at are your Unit Per Transaction (UPT) and your Average Transaction Value (ATV). If both KPIs are low, it’s time to coach your store associates on the selling behaviors to get these KPIs back on track. 

Coach associates to bundle products, highlight promotions, and suggest add-ons to increase the number of items sold. You can rally your associates and provide them with real-time coaching that delivers the selling behaviors necessary to sell more products. 

3) Drive Workforce Efficiency

Any work can be engaging if it’s clearly communicated, supported, measured, and acknowledged. Engaged and motivated store associates are what propels your business to success. If your staff aren’t efficient with their daily tasks, your operations will lack productivity. 

Situation:  

You have two associates working on the shop floor. During their shift, they have selling duties and non-selling tasks to complete. They must finish these by the end of the day to meet the business’s goals and have a great impact on their customers. You have tools to measure sales, but how would you make sure the tasks that support those sales get done?

Answer:  

Plan tasks to ensure stores aren’t overloaded on specific days. Complete tasks when you have the available capacity in your schedule – and don’t pull associates away from serving customers. During the week, view the status of your task completion while also being able to communicate effectively and share best practices with your associates. Make sure this new process allows you to clearly communicate tasks, support the associate with the right tools to complete the task, measure completion, take feedback, and always acknowledge a job well done. Balance selling and non-selling activities!

Creating Great Schedules + Pivoting Actions In The Moment + Driving Workforce Efficiency  = An Excellent Customer Experience.