This blog will discuss possible types for your retail operation and then guide you on how to build a successful retail management strategy.
Various Types of Retail Operation
The most common one covers the day-to-day operations and responsibilities of your entire store.
Depending on the size of your retail store, you may not have some, all of these, or additional types listed.
Visual Merchandising
Visual merchandising covers the aesthetic aspects of the stores. The designers on this part of your team get a chance to make a great first impression on new customers who enter your store.
The visual design and environment include everything your store has control over, inside and out. These tasks include:
- Personal store layout
- Store Department and Product Organization
- Signage and Display
- Product sales
- Music playing on in-store speakers
- Light control throughout the store
Customer service
Customer service operations cover interactions with the customers in your store. It’s not just relevant to the people who sell merchandise. What’s more, each department may have sales representatives, cashiers, dedicated customer service representatives for returns and exchanges, and janitor staff to keep everything clean inside and out.
To keep customers returning again and again, retailers must provide excellent customer service and an overall positive customer experience. It’d also be best to invest in the best sales training for your team because customer service is an essential part of everyone’s job.
The performance of your employees will directly affect your bottom line and the reputation of your store as customers can leave public reviews on Google, Facebook, and other local networks.
Cash handling
Cash handling operations are responsible for incoming payments from customers. A mix of cashiers, supervisors, and managers is part of your store’s cash handling operation to limit returns and fraud.
In most cases, cashiers handle cash coming from sales, while supervisors handle customer refunds and exchanges.
Managers or shift lead cash register setup, safe deposits, balance the register at the end of the day and ensure bank deposits are accurate.
Store security
Store security operations ensure that your retail store is safe for customers and employees alike. Moreover, team members responsible for store safety will regularly inspect store inventory, merchandising setup, and displays to make any changes necessary to prevent injuries.
This sector of retail operation faced unprecedented challenges in 2020 when safety shifted from accidents (a focus) to the health of both employees and customers with extra cleanliness and safety measures.
Loss prevention
Loss prevention is an essential part of the retail operation because it drives profits. The National Retail Federation (NRF) released data on retail shrinkage. Employee theft and losses due to shoplifting.
Between 2018 and 2019, retail shrank from $50.6 to $61.7 billion. 49% of retail businesses surveyed said the most significant increase in fraudulent activity occurred in stores.
Loss-preventing workers do more than just keep track of suspicious activity by customers. They have to investigate in-store theft and implement strategies to prevent the loss as much as possible.
This includes everything from evaluating store merchandising to profiling employees for security camera blind spots.
Product list
Product Inventory Operations Manages incoming merchandise into the store. Warehouse receivers take in shipments from vendors, scan the items into inventory, and prepare it to go to the retail floor.
For retailers that sell products online, this part of the operation will package outgoing shipments to customers.
If your retail store offers curbside pickup, your customer service should complete the transaction by taking the purchased products to their car and following up.
Administration
The Large Retail Operation Administration handles office work behind the scenes at a retail store. They will regularly contact the owner or home office to coordinate marketing and sales efforts across multiple locations.
The procurement office and marketing department are parts of this team.
Retail managers sometimes provide basic human resource services for their employees. They also process payroll details for your home office or payroll service.
Store management
Retail managers handle the day-to-day operations that keep the store running in the best condition. They also handle serious customer service issues and are responsible for hiring and training new team members.
They also handle the cash register at the end of the day, and the reconciliation of any bank deposits made the next day.
Create an Standard for your Retail Operation
Do you have a standard of teaching the operations verbally from the most senior member of a specific team or department? This allows each employee to work differently.
Creating integrated, standardized processes for all areas of your retail operation will make it easier to train new employees consistently that match your brand across the entire chain of stores.
Integrated standard operating procedures should improve efficiency throughout the store, from administration to store security. Employees should move from one of your stores to another without feeling like they have to be retrained to do the same job.
Choose Your Employees Carefully
In the hiring process, try to get the right team members on board. You should review each resume with the utmost care. Take into account what questions you want to ask and what the ideal candidate would give as their answer.
You can also go beyond the cliche of multiple interviews and complete various assessments for employees. That helps to test their knowledge, skills, integrity, and security awareness.
There are also lists of services like Gallup that allow you to learn more about the strengths of your employees and management teams.
Ongoing training can also play an important role in reviving retail stores hit by the pandemic. Sharpening the sales skills of your employees will help your store generate revenue again at pre-pandemic levels.
Enhance communication
The absence of clear communication in any organization can lead to confusion, frustration, and potential chaos.
Administration and management must work together to ensure that a transparent, timely, and accurate message is sent from the Home Office to all who need to know. This is often done through mobile texting and even We Chat.
Although it may sound awkward, management should always be on the same page. Employees should never get confused as they get conflicting instructions from supervisors and management.
Always ask someone who doesn’t know a new process to read anything you send in for clarity.
Digitize repetitive internal tasks
From bookkeeping to payroll, most manual office processes can be handled digitally or outsourced to reputable services.
By freeing your employees from repetitive internal tasks and endless paperwork, those employees have more time to serve your customers at the sales level better.
One example is digitizing the hiring process. It’s still common to see in-person hiring prompts. But your best bet is to invest in job networks like LinkedIn that let applicants send their resumes online.
Resume applications and cover letters are now instantly accessible to all of your store’s management team. But you’ll need to process **** through them, as they can fill up your inbox by hundreds.
Automate core business processes
Business automation software exists for most business tasks.
There’s various software out there to automate your social media, add email subscribers to a list and CRM, send repeat invoices for permanent orders, and shipping labels for online orders being shipped from your store. Can print packing lists.
Are you trying to find out the best way to use your time? Ask for your employees’ input. Encourage associates to enhance customer service strategy. Reward those whose initiatives have led to major improvements.
Have global cloud storage for all locations
Nothing builds brand consistency in your store better than sharing resources for advertising and marketing. Even if you run only one store in each state, you still want the same experience for store-to-store travelers. All the way down to signage and local newsletters.
Moreover, cloud storage means you won’t have to wait from the home office to email someone or other documents you needed five minutes ago.
Takeaway
1- Integrated standard operating procedures ensure efficient operation throughout your store. As you learn what works better in one place, you can clone the same formula elsewhere.
2- Hiring the right staff makes a considerable difference. Get their feedback and help them with their training process.
3- Automate and digitize as much as you can. You don’t want customers to wait longer than they should in line because the retail operation is busy with mundane tasks.
Running many retail locations smoothly and effectively does not happen by accident.
Let’s say you don’t have a system that trains your team members to run your store operations like a well-oiled machine. In that case, you will run into unnecessary complications that negatively affect your profits.
The right retail sales training provides your team with a proven structure to follow, ultimately creating a comfortable and relaxing shopping environment for your buyers.