If you want to know How To Sell in retail this book is for you

“To really excite and delight customers there has to be something unique and special about what you deliver,” writes John Hoerner at the end of How To Sell: Recipes For Retail, his brilliant book on everything he has learned in a stellar 50 year retail career. Put this book on your Christmas list.

Hired from the US in 1987 to run Debenhams Hoerner was so successful he ended up running the Arcadia group until he retired in 2000. A year later Tesco recruited him to develop its clothing business. This book is organised as a series of recipes for success. He argues that his lessons will work for any retail business and I think he is correct.

While convenience stores are not in the business of markdowns or as exposed to not buying the latest fashion must-haves, they still have to get the basics right and then find the magic ingredient that makes their shop special.

“When you get it right for customers, almost EVERYTHING ELSE works…when you don’t get it right for customers, almost NOTHING else works!” is his first sentence in huge print taking up the first page.

There are around 1.4 billion people in this world who survive on £1 a day, he explains. “What this means is that in the normal context of retailing as we know it customers don’t really NEED anything that they buy from you.

“They only buy what they think they need or want. This means emotion and personality enter into the transaction – both theirs and yours.

“The second thing to remember is that not only do they not NEED anything they are buying from you, even if the WANT is strong, there are lots of other places they can get it.”

The book then speeds off with lots of ideas and supporting evidence on subjects like customer loyalty (which does not exist), how to “squeeze” your range, that you must make sure you never sell bad quality goods, and 10 basic principles of how to make customers want to buy from you.

Investing in people is vital, he says. Too many companies get their sums wrong. Most big retailers underestimate what a big factor store staff can be in their success. In making this point he also recommends that you measure selling cost by calculating sales per hour worked by day and time. “This will result in the lowest cost!”

Most of the benefit of refitting a store comes from remixing the business – not from the cosmetic appearance, he advises. Plan for this.

While some of the book is filled with dense tables that you can copy and think about, the real excitement comes in short bursts like this:

“Be the first, be the best or be the cheapest is an old retailing adage. I say: Be second, be really good and be the best value.”

And like this: “Poor buyers don’t plan. Average buyers plan carefully what they are going to buy. Good buyers plan carefully what they’re going to sell, when and at what price, and then buy what is necessary to support their sales plan. Great buyers add in sales promotional plans, visual presentation and sales associate training, and negotiate to ensure the profitability.

“Genius buyers do all the above except they start with what they want to achieve in the store and work backwards. Which are you?”

Read and absorb How To Sell: Recipes For Retail before your competition does. There are even some free recipes in the appendix so you can cook up a storm to celebrate your success. Tried and tested!

Digital disruption in the UK wholesale space

“Twenty years ago I was driving boxes to the post office in my Chevy Blazer and dreaming of a forklift,” says Jeff Bezos in his most recent letter to shareholders. A blink later and he points out that the company has grown from 30,000 employees in 2010 to 230,000 now. But his ambition is the same. “We want to be a large company that’s also an invention machine. We want to combine the extraordinary customer-serving capabilities that are enabled by size with the speed of movement, nimbleness and risk-acceptance mentality that is normally associated with entrepreneurial start-ups.” Amazon is great at disruption because of its customers focus and the fact that the internet means it needs none (or very few) people between its warehouses and the shopper. The threat of Prime, its membership service, is the biggest challenge facing the UK retail market and the wholesale market by extension. It is both a direct threat and an indirect threat in that is inspiring countless numbers of othe...

Five things to learn from Waitrose

Interim results from Waitrose this week confirm the industry figures that show the upmarket supermarkets and convenience stores are leading the market (albeit from a 4.2% share according to Kantar Worldpanel). Charlie Mayfield, the chairman, highlights many reasons for its success and here are five that local retailers should consider. Marketing works. Waitrose claims that more than 370,000 extra customer transactions resulted from its spring tie-up with Delia Smith and Heston Blumenthal in the first eight weeks. This autumn, it launches a cookery school. Engaged shoppers are more profitable shoppers! You need a value offering. 17 per cent of Waitrose sales are from its value range, called essentials. Momentum works. Its strategy is to bring Waitrose to more people in more places. It invested in 75,000 square feet of extra selling space in the first half of this year, including three convenience stores. In the second half of the year, it is adding eight convenience stores. Str...

The secrets of persuasion: No short cuts.

The best moment in my interview with Terri Sjodin, who teaches many of the world’s top corporations how to sell persuasively, is when she smiles at me and asks to hear my “elevator speech". My mind literally goes blank. The author of Small Message, Big Impact , her new book on how to craft powerful messages that persuade people to listen to you, has thrown the gauntlet at me. There was nowhere to hide. I had just told her how I had used her book to write out my three minute speech to open the Local Shop Summit. She listened patiently to my pitch, thought for a moment, and said: “I bet you had an illustration in your mind of an independent who really capitalised on your ideas and has taken them to the bank.” I could swear she was reading my mind. I blushed and nodded. “So you should open with this story,” she said. “Start out by saying: ‘Let me open the conference by telling you a great story with a happy ending.’ So the audience will say to themselves: ‘He is goi...

nickshanagher

Search This Blog