When you manage a gift or toy store, you have to get strategic to meet your sales goals. While it’s important to create a marketing and financial plan, there are also little things you should be doing to increase revenues and sales. In this article, we’ve created a list of 12 actionable tips that can help you multiply your profits, simplify your life, and make your store a success.
Assign the Job to the Right Person
As a business owner, you have to wear many different hats. You’re in charge of finances, marketing, administration, and managing your personnel. Most people aren’t equally good at each of those tasks. It makes sense to focus on the things you’re good at and hire someone else to do the rest. For example, if marketing is fun but numbers aren’t your strong suit, let an accountant do the books and focus on what you do best.
Always Plan Ahead
It’s a good idea to plan for the future, but it’s even more important when you’re running a store. From ordering new products to planning seasonal marketing campaigns, you should always be a few weeks or months ahead of the calendar. That way, you can take advantage of the best pricing and maximize your sales each week.
Know Your Customer
You can’t run a successful store without knowing and understanding what your customers want. You can talk to every person who shops in your store, distribute surveys, or do your market research, but it’s important that you know what your customers are looking for when they visit your store.
Track the Numbers
Is your store successful? The only way to know for sure is to keep track of the numbers. Whether you’re doing the books yourself or hire a bookkeeper, you should understand if your marketing efforts pay off, how much revenue each customer brings in, and when sales spike.
Watch Your Cash Flow
Most retail stores have to deal with seasonal fluctuations. For example, a typical store may generate a huge amount of sales in December but see hardly any customers in January. If you want your business to stay afloat, you must manage your cash flow during lean times by budgeting for an entire year.
Treat Your Employees Right
Whether you have one full-time employee or a huge staff of part-time sales associates, you must treat your personnel right if you want to see results. Your employees are the ones who interact with your customers. If they don’t agree with company policies or feel treated unfairly, it will show through in their interactions with the people who buy from you.
Build an Image
What is your store known for? Do you pride yourself on selling the best toys for school kids? Do parents come to you for finding the best infant and toddler toys? It’s important to build an image of what your store is all about and communicate that image in all your messages and interactions with customers. It’s not just about your products, pricing, and layout of your store, but it’s also about how your staff interacts with each customer who comes in.
Manage Your Inventory
Your business doesn’t make any money with products that sit on the shelf forever. That being said, toy and retail stores must have a good selection of products, and not every item will be a bestseller. To understand the flow of inventory and identify the items that don’t appeal to your customers, you must manage your inventory carefully.
Buy & Price Your Merchandise Correctly
Your pricing strategy must make sense for your customers and for your business. If you’re competing with other retail stores on price, you might find yourself in a race to the bottom. Nevertheless, it’s important to maximize the profit you receive from your merchandise by buying low and pricing right. At License 2 Play, we offer a large collection of licensed wholesale merchandise to choose from.
Keep Learning
It often takes time and effort to get good at something. Retail sales are no exception. If you want to improve your sales, increase your bottom line, and get customers to talk about you, you must keep learning. You can do that by seeking out advice from business experts and pursuing educational opportunities in the form of seminars and lectures. Lastly, keep reading up on your industry to stay ahead of the curve.
Stock Top Sellers
Every store has inventory that moves quickly. You should always stock the items that are flying off the shelves, even if they’re not the products with the highest profit margin. Your customers are coming to your store to find those top sellers, which is why you should have them.
Invest in Facebook Marketing
You may not be social media savvy, but Facebook marketing can be a great way to drive more traffic to your website and to your store. For example, a Facebook boost can help you spread the word to a large number of people for $40 if done correctly. This works especially well when it revolves around an event.