Retailing By Walking Around

Posted on Jul 30, 2009 by Ted Hurlbut

Over the years, I’ve encountered many independent retailers who were uncomfortable with reports and numbers and quantitative analysis, and resisted my efforts to help them become more comfortable. Often I would hear something like, “I can tell best what’s happening by being out on the floor with my customers.”

There’s no question that staying close to what’s happening on the sales floor is an essential part of managing a successful independent retailer. Engaging customers directly not only helps to stay in touch with what they’re thinking but also continually builds the one-on-one customer relationships that are essential to building genuine loyalty.

Retailing by walking around extends beyond the sales floor and direct interactions with customers. Retailers who are regularly in the backrooms and receiving areas can quickly spot issues with shipments and product quality, and keep track that the appropriate processes are being followed. Retailers who regularly spend time on the sales floor with merchandise and merchandise displays can see how assortments fit together, how displays are executed, and visualize the choices that their customers make day in and day out.

But retailing by walking around can’t deliver a number. At the end of the day, the most successful independent retailers excel at delivering a bottom line number. Only rarely does it happen by accident. The most successful independent retailers turn out to be highly skilled in gathering information both from what they see and hear and from what they read in their reports.

Retailing by walking around, then, is not a substitute for managing to deliver a number, it’s a complement to it. The very best retailers read their reports and identify issues that they want to learn more about by walking around, and walk around to identify issues that they want to learn more about through quantitative analysis.

If you’re quantitatively oriented, this is all probably very understandable to you. Many of my clients have practically leaped at me when I suggested they needed to spend more time analyzing their data. They just wanted help knowing exactly what to analyze and what to be looking for!

But if quantitative analysis isn’t your strong suit, and it’s not why you got into retail in the first place, it’s essential that you recognize that it’s still critical to your success. If you don’t have the skill, you need to acquire or hire it, and use the information that comes to you from it to validate and extend what your eyes and ears are telling you.