Retail Observer

RETAILOBSERVER.COM JUNE 2024 28 O h boy, just what we need, another opinion article on why brick-and-mortar retail stores are failing. In my opinion, a core reason, call it the most realistic heartfelt business reason retailers fail is so simple, yet so hard based on dismal, crestfallen results. Let's focus specifically on brick-and-mortar retailers (of course, 100% of them also have a website emporium of goods and services). Post to the mammoth investments of finding the right retail brick location, building out their store, hiring, and training associates, purchasing goods for their shelves, and ensuring a unique brand experience for those they wish to attract, there is so much more to ensure short and long term success: 1. "My heart and pocketbook are won." A brick retailer, by definition of its physical geo-demographic trading area, must build a smart, effective, and heartfelt relationship with its local community. For all the operational and financial reasons Toys "R" Us failed, perhaps if Geoffrey, its brand mascot, had a heartfelt daily bonded relationship with all schools, school teachers, and children within a 10-mile radius of each store, it would have never failed. 2. "Smile, and the world smiles with you." Retail is detail, especially when it comes to a simple smile. According to a QSR Magazine annual drive-thru report issued in October, among 15 fast food chains, associates of Chick-fil-A were the most likely to say "please" and "thank you" and, most importantly, to smile at their drive-thru customers. Chick-fil-A workers were also among the highest ranked to offer a "pleasant demeanor." Many analysts believe the key to Chick-fil-A's success is superior customer service, which always drives higher "basket" sales per transaction and smartly contributes to the chain's greater revenue generation than chains with twice the amount of U.S. locations such as KFC, Pizza Hut, and Domino's. 3. "Train me, don't drain me through failure." Associate turnover, hiring, and firing is a break in the brick wall. The most successful retailers invest in their associates through not only brand and product training but also sales training, including how to sell, how to upsell, and how to handle objections at the last three feet of the sale. They act as a docent for business judgment as well as critical thinking. Mostly they train on the art of the possible to ensure a customer enjoys, enjoys, enjoys and will boomerang back again and again telling friends, neighbors and family of their heartfelt and highly valued experience. Lack of sales and customer-centric training drains associates as they become beleaguered by customer rejection. Sell more and grow more customers and associates through the dignity of knowledge. 4. "Serve me, don't unnerve me." It truly amazes me. Regional and national brick retailers painfully experience mammoth competitive e-commerce retail engines reaching into their geographic trading areas through search advertising to persuade customers to purchase through e-clouds thousands of miles away from their homes. So what do many local brick retailers do in a fiduciary reaction? Instead of creating a tremendous emotional and effective bond with their local community, they inadvertently lend a helping hand to their e-commerce competitors to ensure their cloud-born success. Instead of answering the store phone with a smiling associate to direct and serve the customer's inquiries, retailers offer an automated 20-button phone system to slow down customer experiences. Instead of smiling and helpful associates at each cash register, many brick retailers install self-service machines expecting customers to check themselves out and bag their purchases. Serving people serves hearts and pocketbooks along with boomerang store traffic. Machines in the cloud recognize me, thank me, reward me, check me out, bag my goods… and even deliver my purchases to my front door. It seems we should all simply purchase in the clouds where rewarding service, support, and smiles are abundant (as opposed to a retail store just ½ mile from me down the road). I recall emphatically suggesting to the executives of a once famous national retailer that all cash register associates be required in their job description to smile and say, "Thank you so much for shopping at _________. I hope you come back again soon." I was laughed at and frankly chastised as someone who does not understand retail. "You can't require or expect store associates to smile and say, 'Thank you' to every customer," I was told. It is a very, very true story, and yes, that retailer shut down all its stores, and thousands of associates lost their jobs. It truly makes a grown man want to cry. It's time for brick and mortar focused retailers to re-focus on refulgent customer centricity within each of their local community trading areas. It's time to stop blaming closures on anything less than a lack of jaunty spirited smiles, viceroy trainings, customer centricity and heralded customer services: the truest, most cost effective core construct and life blood of ensuring profitable boomerang retail traffic beyond products, pricing and services. Retailers fail when customers do not want to have a relationship with them. Very simple, very relevant, very easy to fix all these customer-facing cracks in the wall. Peter Weedfald Retail Trends RO Peter Weedfald is the SVP of Sales and Marketing for SHARP Electronics Marketing Company of America and book author of Green Reign Leadership. BRICK, MORTAR AND CRACKS IN THE WALL

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