How to Be an Awesome Retail Manager?

Having a mass retail outlet is challenging, but managing a good one is even more difficult. Are you a retail manager looking to take your store to the next level? There are many things to consider when running a retail outlet how to keep the cost low, make more sales, get your customers more attached to your brand, and so on. 

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All these things require a lot of effort by a good retail manager. This blog will discuss how to be an awesome retail manager and manage the retail brand more effectively.

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1. Embrace New Technology

Retail is constantly changing, evolving and introducing new technologies to the industry. It can help managers to be more productive and lead their teams more effectively. Here are some crucial tasks that can be managed effectively by automation and make the job easier for a retail store manager.

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Inventory Management: 67% of retailers implement or consider inventory accuracy to improve operations and efficiencies. Retail managers must ensure that their store has the right products for the customer. 

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The inventory management software lets you know at any time what is happening with your stock. The tool automates inventory and warehouse management aspects, streamlining the tasks required to effectively track inventory and manage to reorder and update accounting data.

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Example: software like ShopKeep.com will automatically send you an alert and automatically order new inventory.

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Order Management System: Tracking massive volume of orders from multiple channels and ensuring their dispatch and receipt by the customer can be a mammoth, never-ending task for any retail manager. 

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An order management system (OMS) is a massive help in this situation. It helps retailers manage orders from multiple channels—including brick-and-mortar stores, eCommerce websites, marketplaces, social media and mobile apps.

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That means a retail manager can have an eagle-eye view of all sorts of orders, like new orders, processing orders, processed orders, and returns, without waiting for manual reports from separate retail departments.

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Read more: Everything about an Order Management System – The Ultimate Guide

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2. Use Solutions to Track Retail Store Traffic

Tracking retail store traffic can help the retail managers better understand customer patterns and gain insights into their behaviour. This information can improve the store's layout, customer service, and overall shopping experience.

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How can retail managers benefit from tracking retail store traffic?

• They can look at the distribution of traffic by hour, day of the week, store location, seasonal periods, promotion periods, and total chain.

• They can also monitor their store's conversion ratio, which is the total sales transactions divided by total traffic.

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Common retail traffic counting systems use sensors to count the number of visitors to the store. The sensors are usually located at the store entrance and use infrared technology to register customers coming in or going out of the store. 

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3. Become a Data-Driven Retail Manager

Only 23% of retailers say they can act on all or some customer data they collect. This is a clear disconnect between what customers want and how retailers deliver that experience. Data-driven retail is key to giving your customers what they want.

Check out these practical steps to become a data-driven retail manager:

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Identify your data collection points: It is highly recommended not to limit data collection to traditional channels like CRM, POS, customer surveys, and email marketing. Valuable customer data can also be sourced from customer conversations, social media interactions, and chat engagements.

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Consolidate the captured data: Data consolidation has no meaning if you face difficulty reading the data. You must break down data silos, work on a common data format, and analyze the data according to channels.

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Create propensity models: Use the analyzed data to create models that can easily predict the customer's next action based on their past actions. 

Propensity models are beneficial to retail managers because 

• They can help to identify potential customers.

• They can help to target marketing efforts. 

• They can help to streamline the decision making process by providing a quantitative assessment of the likelihood of specific outcomes.

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Automate: The most significant benefit of creating a propensity model is that you can automate the following action backed by real-time data. It allows you to deliver personalized recommendations and product selections based on your customers' last actions.

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4. Invest in Staff Training

Investing in your teams is not only the right thing to do but also makes sense from a business point of view. Retail managers are under immense pressure to keep up with the latest trends and technologies. At the same time, they need to ensure that their staff are trained and up-to-date with the latest procedures.

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Here are some strong reasons why retail managers should invest in staff training.

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Get more sales: There can be instances when the hot selling products in the retail store run out of stock. Retail staff can effectively use this situation to turn it into a positive shopping experience for customers by using the latest technology like touch screen kiosks or endless aisle apps on iPad/tablet to help them shop online for stuff that is out of stock in physical stores.

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Manage store shelves easily: AR devices can help retail workers visualize shelves before they are set up. Using a planogram as a base, AR-enabled enterprise devices can display a 3D planogram on the sales floor to guide the setup process. That can make it easier for workers to prioritize the display of best-selling products and correctly set pegs, shelves, and fixtures in their appropriate locations.

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Revive personalized shopping experience: People are 40% more likely to spend more than planned when they identify the shopping experience as highly personalized. 

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The art of personalizing shopping should be made compulsory to be learned by every retail store employee. Customers visiting retail stores crave personal attention, and staff should extend a helping hand to know their shopping desires and assist them in fulfilling them.

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5. Explore Omnichannel Capabilities for Business

A retail manager should explore trending technologies like omnichannel to extend the business capabilities of a retail brand like

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• Real-time cross-channel inventory visibility helps consumers pick the most feasible method for completing their purchase.

• A seamless shopping experience for a customer, whether shopping using a smartphone or in a brick-and-mortar store.

• Access to new fulfillment options like Buy Online, Pick up in Store (BOPIS), Buy In-store and Ship to the customer, online return or exchanges.

• Leveraging online and offline (phygital) channels to meet the customer where they are, whether online, in-store or somewhere in between.

• To get a holistic view of the customer, utilize cross-channel data and turn it into omnichannel customer data.

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Fynd helps transform retail brands with limited visibility into brands with an omnichannel presence, having a seamless and consistent customer experience at every touchpoint or channel. 

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Luxury & premium brands like Ruosh, Spykar, Steve Madden, Hamleys, Raymonds, and Michael Kors have been actively utilizing Fynd Do-It-Yourself (DIY) omnichannel setups to manage their retail stores independently. The omnichannel retailing strategy has helped grow overall sales and easily manage catalogs, inventory, and orders from all channels.

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Conclusion

No matter your level of experience, these tips will help you to become a better retail manager and lead your team and store to success. By implementing these tips, you can ensure that you and your employees are working to the best of your abilities and are leading your team and retail store to success.

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Book a demo with one of our experts to learn more about Fynd Omnichannel solutions and how they can help your retail brand. We are one of the world's most innovative Asia-Pacific companies of 2022 helping retail giants, hungry for business growth since 2012.