The StoreFront Machine Model - Don t Work So Hard!
Your StoreFront is a machine.
Your Mission Statement defines your purpose for being in business. The Marketing Plan details actions to achieve the mission and drives your StoreFront Machine. Your StoreFront Machine is the vehicle. A vehicle comprised of five wheels or gears through which your Customer flows and achieves fulfillment or disappointment. The wheels move in concert with each other and move as fast as the slowest wheel.
The five wheels represent the five major functions of your StoreFront whether it's a brick and mortar site, a website, or both:
- 1. Product
- 2. Pricing
- 3. Promotion
- 4. Presentation
- 5. People
Let's call these functions the "5 P's."
Your challenge is to maintain this machine at peak performance by ensuring your Customer is consistently satisfied. Your marketing plan defines what Customer base you're trying to reach. Your StoreFront machine gets you there.
1. Product
This is the first wheel of your StoreFront machine. It reflects your informed opinion of what your Customer base needs and wants. Having the right stuff at the right price in the right place at the right time for the right Customer is a tremendous challenge: A challenge that must be shared with your Team. All policies and procedures from purchase order to point of sale are detailed here.
Policy and procedural manuals are not enough to assure you smooth product flow through your StoreFront. Insist on a clear understanding of the mission statement from your staff. It is the thread that binds and creates urgency: Urgency that increases productivity; Productivity that increases sales and profits.
2. Pricing
The second wheel is again a function of your mission statement. Your statement defines your perception of what value your Customers are willing to place on your offer before they buy. Customers measure value on these expectations: Quality, Service, and Price.
The more Customers pay for product, the more quality and service they'll expect. Quality is limited to your resources and you price accordingly. Where you can dramatically increase your perception of value to the Customer is in service. You must under promise and over deliver. This is called value. Value is giving more than what the Customer expects. Exceptional value as perceived by your Customers is what will keep them away from the competition.
3. Presentation
Presentation is EVERYTHING:
- Does your StoreFront's presentation reflect your mission statement?
- Are you projecting an image or an identity?
- Is your layout conducive to free flowing traffic?
- Are displays complete and changed frequently?
- Is your signing (or web images) accurate and fresh?
- Does your Team dress professionally according to the standards you've established?
- Do you answer the phones or emails promptly and courteously?
- Do you make an effort to identify your Customers and yourselves
Too often product is ordered, received, and put out on the sales floor without purpose. Online products or content is ignored and out of date. Again, Presentation Is Everything. Don't lower your standards. Insist that product space is properly allocated and presented. To measure the impact of proper presentation, constantly review your Return On Investment. You'll see that small changes in presentation can have huge impact on your bottom line.
Good presentation can be your most valuable "employee" by making Customer Service more efficient and "self service." When was the last time you were asked if you needed help at a major grocery store? Yet, you found everything. The grocery stores are the masters at self service; yet make minimal negative impact on the consumer.
4. Promotion
If any one wheel of your machine can be planned, measured, and modified quickly, it is this one. Yet I constantly see a terrible waste of time, energy, and money in this function.
Promotion is how we communicate with our Customers. If you aren't clear about how you deliver your message, how can you expect your Clients to understand it? Impossible.
Begin work on a Sales Calendar. The Sales Calendar will lay out a schedule of advertising and promotion that covers all forms of media and projected budgets. You want people to see, hear, taste, touch, and smell who and what your business is.
The purpose of promotion is to provoke a response. This response can then be measured, accumulated, and used to give you predictable desirable results that put money in your till.
5. People
If there is any one part of your StoreFront machine that could cause the collapse of the rest it, it is this fifth wheel. The amount of investment (time, energy, money) in you, your Team, and them in themselves will determine your success. You and your staff must share a commitment to excellence. It's not enough for one or several to be excellent. Everyone must be.
We're in business to create relationships. The one that matters most is the relationship between your StoreFront and its Customers. You've identified your market. You know who they are, what they do, how much they make, how they live, and what it takes to get them into your StoreFront.
You know all this stuff because your Mission Statement identifies you and your passion, your Marketing Plan projects that identity, and your Sales Calendar tracks Customers needs and wants. You're ready to give your Customer what they want, when they want it.
You might say that your mission statement, marketing plan, and sales calendar create a job description for the type of Customer you want. As long as they keep responding to your message, you'll do them a "favor" and stay in business and you won't "fire" them. That's how you will hold them accountable. As long as they provide you with adequate bottom line, you'll stay in business for them.
How about you? Have you done the same? How do you hold yourself accountable? Does your Team have a job description? How do you measure productivity? How do you reward responsible behavior? How do you alter or remove unacceptable behavior? A job description for you and your Team will define your vision and everyone's place in the mission statement.
How's YOUR machine? Is it holding it's own in the My StoreFront Annual 365? Whether you're a rookie, seasoned veteran, or TEAM owner looking for an edge, make your machine work harder for you so you don't have to work so hard for it.
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