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The traditional retail performance metric of comp store sales (year over year results for stores open at least one year) may no longer be the best metric to measure store performance. Customers increasingly shop across channels and embrace online shopping. Store closings compress sales into a smaller population of stores. “Comp sales” is, at best, irrelevant and, at worst, completely misleading. It is time to consider a different metric to measure store performance.
For example,
A Store Manager and team may have limited impact on how many potential customers walk through their doors on a given day, but they certainly have a tremendous impact on the shopping experience. Ultimately this experience should convert those shoppers into buyers. We discuss the new realities of the buying cycle at length in our three-part series, but one of the key points is that to maintain performance when store traffic is down, conversion must increase!
Many large-scale retailers don’t consistently track conversion. And if they do, many don’t build performance metrics and strategies for improvement around the findings. I’ve worked with many retailers who say “oh yes, we know what our traffic is…” only to discover they are using transactions and equating that to traffic. Transactions tell the actual number of customers who made a purchase, while traffic presents the total opportunity for converting a shopper into a buyer. Assuming that conversion is irrelevant because you are a “destination shop” is also dangerous. Even a destination shop can “walk” traffic without the right disciplines in place to deliver on the customer experience.
To calculate conversion, you must first capture traffic, and this requires devices. There are many traffic-capturing device options in the market; but for the purpose of this discussion, we will not discuss the pros of cons of each, just that devices are required for determining traffic. Once you have traffic counts, the conversion formula is simple:
Once the baseline conversion rate has been calculated, it is easy to derive the potential sales lift that can be realized by an increase in the conversion rate. For large-scale retailers, even a 1 percentage point increase can translate into hundreds of millions of dollars of top-line impact.
To achieve even a modest sales lift, understanding the levers that impact conversion is imperative. The levers you pull should revolve around the customer value proposition for your stores. Wal-Mart has a very different value prop than Nordstrom, but both should be concerned with converting traffic into sales. Four broad levers that influence turning a shopper into a buyer are:
Is the product the customer wants to purchase available in the store?
Depending on the type of retailer, this means focusing as far down as the size and color level. When an item is not available, the chance of converting that shopper into a buyer significantly decreases. In addition to a lost sale for your store and your associate, the customer has also had a negative shopping experience. Simply having some degree of a given product in the store is not enough. The exact product the customer wants must be available to them. Even having twenty of a SKU in the back may not matter if the shelf is empty. In-store disciplines and processes should ensure that the number of “perceived out-of-stocks” (POOS) are minimized.
Noticeable performance improvement can be realized from even a modest uptick in conversion. For most retailers, a 3-4% improvement in POOS will drive a 1% sales lift.
Offer alternative fulfillment options. If the item a customer wants is not available in the store, what options does a sales associate have?
Best practices would suggest a series of actions. Typically, the first may be to offer an in-store alternative. Do you have the same item in a different color? Is there a similar item you can show to the customer? The goal is the save the sale by selling what is available.
Best-in-class retailers offer omnichannel fulfillment. They can convert the almost-unsatisfied customer to a sale by having the product delivered to their home. Some may be able to have it delivered that same day!
The final step in the “save the sale” process is to offer to find the item in another store. Best practices dictate that your sales associate should have inventory visibility to see which stores have the item and then offer options that best suit the needs of the customer. They could go to another store and purchase the item, another store could send the item to your store or ship the item directly to the customer’s home.
Most retailers have processes like the ones mentioned above, but normally lack visibility to how often those options are being offered to their customers. By measuring the delta in conversion when these actions do and do not occur retailers can better drive behaviors that will ultimately delight the customer and save the sale.
If your retail model is built on differentiating your brand based on service, it is paramount that your sales team effectively engage as many customers as possible.
Many retailers do not track touchpoints across the customer experience. The difference in conversion when some degree of service occurs compared to when it doesn’t is significant. Even a behavior as simple as greeting a customer has proven to impact conversion, yet when metrics like this are measured, most retailers are surprised by how many customers are not even being greeted.
Depending on the type of retailer, studies have shown a dramatic increase in conversion when sales associates can get a customer to interact with the product. This can be as simple as getting the customer into a fitting room or helping them try on a pair of shoes. Why does Costco have so many sampling stations? It’s a simple, yet powerful, process improvement.
To enable the store to execute the behaviors described above you must create effective schedules.
The goal of scheduling is to get the right employee scheduled in the right place at the right time. Among the best practices to follow is leveraging labor management system technology, along with a great process, to create a schedule based on analytics that matches labor to workload in the store. If your store is understaffed during peak selling days or peak times of the day, conversion will be negatively impacted. In addition to poor conversion, you will also be providing a sub-optimal customer experience, which further amplifies conversion issues. Conversely, this often leads to over-staffing during slower periods of the week, thus bleeding payroll.
A final note of caution is that focusing singularly on conversion can have unintended consequences as well. Conversion is the act of turning a shopper into a buyer. Stores must also pay attention to what the customer buys, not just whether they buy. Cross-selling and upselling are crucial aspects of the customer experience as well. Theyre critical to making sure the customer gets the solution they need, not just what they ask for. This ranges anywhere from getting signage and pricing right, to having fully trained specialists available for the customer. Conversion is necessary, but focusing on it is not enough on it’s own to win the retail game in the new reality.
To compete and win in the new retail era, new strategies must be constantly developed, executed and measured.
These strategies need to include:
All the above will ultimately result in improving the success rate of converting your shoppers into satisfied buyers, but an effective performance management program is crucial to driving sustainable results.
