Roger had spent the last 40 years building his pharmacy and retail business. He retailed high end supplements. The margins were impressive but suddenly his growth rate had slowed down and he was running in the red.
Roger asked us to figure out what was causing it.
On investigating we found a whole list of reasons that were causing the slump in his business but we want to talk about one phenomenon here. We immersed ourselves in his store environment and conducted some observational studies.
- We discovered that many people would walk in to the store attracted by signage or having heard of the store from somewhere.
- They would even spend a good 10 – 15 minutes in the store looking at things on display but would walk out without buying anything.
The reason was Roger’s products had a built-in education factor and his store customers were looking to him and his staff for that education but Roger provided none.
Roger’s staff stayed behind the counter and only responded to the questions that the customers asked of them. There was a disconnect between what the customers needed, wanted and what Roger offered them.
We created a cross-sell / up-sell training program that included training the staff on a few things: product knowledge, how to interact with the customers in the store, how to provide assistance to the buyers in a non-intrusive way and how to educate different types of customers on the store’s products and services.
Within 3-6 months of implementing the program sales improved dramatically and Roger’s retail business was on its way to restored health. Roger’s business returned to black and grew 30% over the previous year and maintained that growth rate. Roger began to sleep well again and everyone remarked that he was looking his healthy and cheerful self again!