When you’re managing your business, there are a number of different areas to which you must allocate your resources. Essential retail management operations include staffing, resource allocation, hospitality, promotions, and marketing. Each of these areas is equally important; however, you must decide how to manage each one. One highly effective way to determine how to manage these critical areas is to base your resource allocation on customer traffic and sales.
Staffing
You probably already have a good idea of your store’s busiest times and when there aren’t as many people around. Obviously, you need more staff to handle peak times and fewer staff members to handle the times when there aren’t as many customers in the store; but it may surprise you to learn exactly when those down times really are. By carefully observing customer traffic over a period of several weeks or months, you can help cut down on staff standing around and shift their hours so that they’re there when you need them most.
Resource Allocation
Your store has a limited number of resources: money; space; funds for promotions and other events. By observing customer traffic trends, you can easily determine where to focus these resources for the best possible results.
Hospitality
Customers who enter a store that they like want to keep coming back–and a huge part of that is hospitality. Whether that’s a greeter at the door, a customer service desk where they can ask any questions that they have about your products, or simply a warm, welcoming environment, hospitality goes a long way toward bringing people back into your business again and again.
Promotions
Promotions aren’t created just because you thought it would be fun. The purpose of a promotion is to bring in new business, to bring old customers back into the store, or to increase your sales. By tracking both sales and customer traffic within your store, you can determine which promotions are working effectively and how to allocate your promotion resources in the future.
Marketing
Sometimes, it’s hard to determine how effective your marketing really is. Obviously, some marketing plans are more efficient than others. Marketing is designed to help bring people into the store, so by observing customer traffic following a marketing campaign, you can measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.
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