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Exit Points: The Key to
Surviving the Holidaze : by Richard Fenton
Here they come again...
the holidays! Or as it often feels during the first week
of January, the holidaze! It's the annual forty-five day
"sell-fest" where three things are guaranteed to happen:
There will be (at least for certain crazy periods) more
customers than you can handle, you'll wish you were
better prepared, and the year will be made or lost in
terms of sales and profits.
To make sure that this
becomes a holiday season to remember (compared to some
of the ones you're still trying to forget) here is a key
concept to keep in mind so you don't lose your mind (or
sales!):
The holidays are just
like the rest of the year, only busier.
"No duh!" you're
probably thinking, "that's obvious!" Here's the point:
To be successful at the holidays (or anytime it's
super-busy) it's important to do all the things you do
year round with every customer, but simply to do them
faster. Don't eliminate steps just because it's busy.
You still need to ask questions to determine needs. You
still need to trade up customers to better merchandise.
You still need to open charge accounts! But how can you
get all this done when it's so hectic? The answer is in
the effective use of "exit points."
Multi-Serving Via Exit Points
A successful holiday
season doesn't simply require that you handle customers
faster, but that you help more customers (2, 3 or even 4
or more) at the same time. This requires the expert use
of exit points. A classic example of an exit point is
when a customer goes to the dressing room to try
something on. It's your job to be on the constant
lookout (especially during the holidays) for those
moments when you can exit for brief periods to assist
other customers.
Making Sure
Everyone Gets Greeted and Approached
Exit points are
critical for excusing yourself from your current
customer to greet and approach another customer to get
them started. Research shows that customers who are
greeted by a salesperson stay in a store three times
longer than customers who are not greeted. During the
holidays you need to maximize every single second to
make every customer feel as welcome as they might on the
slowest day in the middle of the summer.
The Two
Worst Exit Points
**Unfortunately many
retail salespeople use the wrong exit points, the most
common of which is when the customers says they are
"just looking." It seems like a natural place to exit
because the customer is giving us permission to leave
them, but if we exit at that moment what we're really
doing is giving them permission to look and leave, often
empty handed. We must connect with the customer to make
sure they are actively shopping, not "just looking"
before we can exit.
**The second most
common and most abused exit point is, believe it or not,
the cash register! It's easy, especially during the
holidays, to rush a customer to the register in order to
ring ?em up and get ?em out, so we can move on to other
customers. This is a mistake! We must maximize the sales
potential of every customer to the fullest extent before
we walk them to the register, even when it's busy.
What are your EXIT POINTS?
The key to being busy
during the holidaze is to look for those exit points
when they present them-selves and use them!
So, where are the exit
points in your business? Here's an analogy for thinking
about the EXIT POINTS in your store:
Think of a waitperson
at a restaurant. What is the process? They give you
menus. Leave. Check back. Take the drink order. Leave.
Check back. Take the food order. Leave. Check back.
Deliver food. Leave. Check back. Then they usually check
back every so often, don't they?
It can be the same way
in a retail store. Timing is important and so is being
aware. If everyone in the store works as a team and can
identify who is working with who the system of using
exit points can work smooth and easy.
For more articles by
retail experts Richard Fenton & Andrea Waltz you may go
to
www.fentonwaltz.com .
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