Responsibilities of the Retail Manager

An individual responsible for managing the overall functioning of the store is called a retail manager. A retail manager is responsible for the day-to-day running of a retail store. The focus of the work would be to improve the commercial performance of the store by increasing its turnover and maximising sales.

The Retail Manager has the holistic responsibility to oversee the total operations in ensuring effective retailing.

ONE: Manage Business Targets

Ensure That Goals Are Set And Achieved

Only two things set apart those who live by goals and those who do not. Salespeople who live by goals know where they’re headed and commit to a goals routine.

How to achieve these goals with your team?

Step 1: Review your sales goals first thing in the morning every day. Say your big picture goal aloud (yes, seriously), then go scan your plan for the week and review goals and actions for the day. At the end of each day, review how the day went, and set goals and actions for the next day.

Step 2: On Friday or Saturday, review the week and set goals and actions for the next week.

Step 3: Once per week, (this can be at your Friday or Saturday review session), review your goals with a goals partner. Your goals partner can be a peer, a mentor, a coach, or a friend, but it is someone you explicitly work with each week to make sure you are on top of your goals, staying committed, and pushing yourself. Along with goals, milestones, and progress, you should discuss any hassles or potholes that are holding you back so you can fight your way through them.

Step 4: Once per month, meet with a small group of people you trust to review what you’re doing, where you’re headed, what you’ll do in the next month, and get ideas for how you can achieve more and shake off any nagging hassles that are holding you back.

Step 5: Once per quarter, review your progress toward your annual goal. Set no more than 3 quarterly priorities that you’ll direct all your passion, energy, and intensity toward so you can stay on track to meet your annual targets. During the quarterly meeting, step back and ask yourself, “What do I absolutely, positively need to get done over the next three months to achieve my annual goals?” Define it, commit to it, and set your monthly targets and actions for the next three months.

Step 6: Once per year, set your targets for the next year. Make sure you ask yourself, “What do I need to do to get to my big picture goal?” When you are done with your goals and plan, ask yourself, “If I get done what I am about to do, will it help me get to my big-picture goal?”

Click here to view a video that explains how to reach your sales goals.

TWO: Manage Staff

Recruit

Recruiting employees for the store is the store manager’s prime responsibility. He not only has to hire the right candidates for the store but also train them for their overall development. He must ensure that all the employees (floor manager, department manager, cashier and so on) contribute to their level best for the effective functioning of the store. He must act as a strong pillar of support and stand by his team at the hour of crisis. It is his duty to acquaint his team members with the latest trends in fashion or any other newly launched retail software. It is his responsibility to delegate responsibilities to his subordinates according to their specializations and extract the best out of them. The retail manager must motivate his team members from time to time.

Coach

No matter how you judge performance, sales, productivity or efficiency, you must inspire employees to do better. The great store manager encourages employees to set high goals. Each employee should continually establish specific, achievable goals and draw up an action plan for meeting them.

Tip: Ask employees what they need from you in order to meet their goals, and follow up with encouragement

Motivated workers are great, but even the most enthusiastic sometimes encounter performance problems. That is when the great store manager starts coaching. Coaching encourages employees to generate creative solutions to performance problems. Because coaching emphasizes collaboration rather than confrontation, these efforts improve workplace effectiveness while avoiding the costly stress generated by disciplinary sessions.

Tip: When coaching, stay focused on identifying solutions to problems and giving employees the tools they need to implement those solutions.

Training Program

The store manager must conduct frequent training programs for the sales representatives, cashier and other team members to motivate them from time to time.

It is the store manager’s responsibility to update his subordinates with the latest software in retail or any other developments in the industry.

It is the store manager’s responsibility to collate necessary reports (sales as well as inventory) and send to the head office on a daily basis.

Encourage To Contribute And Take Ownership

Employees who contribute ideas feel invested in your store’s success. The manager must encourage employees to speak up and then listen to what they have to say.

The best store managers include employees in decision-making by encouraging them to suggest ways to do things better. Rather than be your store’s problem solver, encourage a team effort. Ask stimulating questions such as, "Here is our problem. How do we solve it?"

Tip: Rather than dismissing ideas that have been tried before, ask how the idea can be modified in the face of experience.

Click here to download The “Great Store Manager” Quiz

THREE: Manage Customer Service

What is the most important thing you can do to improve relationships with your customers? The answer is as obvious as it is overlooked: improve customer service. No matter how great your product is or how talented your staff is, one of the things that customers are most likely to remember is the direct interaction they have with your company.

Bottom line - your customer service team is often the face of your company, and customers’ experiences will be defined by the skill and quality of the support they receive.

A strong company will already have great customer relationships. However, a smart company will always be asking, “What is good customer service?” If you are not constantly on the lookout for opportunities to improve your customer service, then your relationships will stagnate. Here are a few customer service tips for identifying ways to better serve customers.

Click here to view a video that explains how to understand my customer's experiences with a product? 

Touch Point

A bad customer experience at any point in the customer lifecycle can ruin your relationship. In addition to making sure the right skills are demonstrated, you need to be sure they are being demonstrated consistently. Pay the most attention to key touch points, but make sure you have a full view of the customer experience, or you risk lapses in service that can really hurt business.

Customer Service

• Customers are assets of the retail business and the retailer can’t afford to lose even a single customer.
• Greet customers with a smile.
• Assist them in their shopping.
• The sales representatives should help the individuals buy merchandise as per their need and pocket.
• The retailer must not oversell his products to the customers. Let them decide on their own.
• Give the individual an honest and correct feedback. If any particular outfit is not looking good on anyone, tell him the truth and suggest him some better options.
• Never compromise on quality of products. Remember one satisfied customer brings five more individuals to the store. Word of mouth plays an important role in Brand Promotion.

FIVE: Create a Positive Shopping Experience

Image Of Store

Your image is important and is a function of your marketing efforts and materials. Customers create their perceptions of your business from your name, web site appearance, store location, products, prices, visual merchandising, signs, displays, business cards, newsletters, advertising material, customer service and anything else that relates to your business.

The retail manager is responsible for maintaining the overall image of the store. It is his duty to sensibly display the merchandise so that it immediately catches the attention of the customers. The store manager must ensure that his store meets the expectations of the customers and lives up to its predefined brand image.

He must ensure:

• The store is kept clean.
• Shelves and racks are properly stocked and products do not fall off the shelves.
• Mannequins are kept at the right place to attract the customers into the store and rotated frequently.
• The merchandise should be according to the season as well as the latest trends.
• The store is well lit, ventilated and offers a positive ambience to the customers.
• The signage displaying the name and logo of the store is installed at the right place and viewable to all.

Store Atmosphere

• The store must offer a positive ambience to the customers for them to enjoy their shopping and leave with a smile.
• The store should not give a cluttered look.
• The products should be properly arranged on the shelves according to their sizes and patterns. Make sure products do not fall off the shelves.
• There should be no foul smell in the store as it irritates the customers.
• The floor, ceiling, carpet, walls and even the mannequins should not have unwanted spots.
• Never dump unnecessary packing boxes, hangers or clothes in the dressing room. Keep it clean.
• Make sure the customers are well attended.
• Don’t allow customers to carry eatables inside the store.

Visual Merchandising

• The position of dummies should be changed frequently.
• There should be adequate light in the store. Change the burned-out lights immediately.
• Don’t stock unnecessary furniture at the store.
• Choose light and subtle colours for the walls to set the mood of the walk-ins.
• Make sure the signage displays all the necessary information about the store and is installed at the right place visible to all.
• The customers should be able to move and shop freely in the store.
• The retail store should be well ventilated.

SIX: Manage Finance and Infrastructure

Profit And Loss

The managers, along with subordinates, are responsible for planning, managing profit and loss, handling cash at the store as well as collating daily sales as well as other necessary reports.

They must ensure that the store is free from pilferage.

Cash Handling

One of the most important aspects of retailing is cash handling.

It is essential for the retailer to track the daily cash flow to calculate the profit and loss of the store.

Cash registers, electronic cash management system or an elaborate computerized point of sale (POS) system help the retailer to manage the daily sales and the revenue generated.

Refunds And Returns

Formulate a concrete refund policy for your store.

The store should have fixed timings for exchange of merchandise.

Never exchange products in lieu of cash.

Never be rude to the customer, instead help him to find something else.

Manage Your Cash

It does not matter how unique and wonderful your store is, your business can't survive without cash flow. Money coming into your store is the vital component that keeps your business financially healthy. If you budget wisely and know the interval of your monthly income and expenses, you will not have to worry about running out of money.

SEVEN: Managing Inventory

Effective Inventory

Inventory management is determining when to order products, how much to order, and the most effective source of supply for each item in each warehouse. That is, ensuring that you have the right quantity of the right item in the right location at the right time. Inventory management includes all of the activities of forecasting and replenishment.

Inventory management sounds simple in theory: Knowing how much stock you have on hand, when to order more, and how to keep it all in balance. In reality, as any inventory manager knows too well, inventory control is a much more complicated set of systems, processes, and procedures to maintain that delicate balance.

In fact, effective inventory management is the foundation of any product-driven business, and even many businesses that aren’t based on a constant flow of product in and out of the organization. When inventory management is out of control, the core functions of your business can falter as supply shortages bring workflows to a virtual standstill. But there’s a fine line between stock shortages and oversupply, thus the tightrope inventory control managers balance daily. The following eight metrics are the key factors in a sound inventory control program

Inventory Usage

How much inventory is used in a given period? Proper inventory control requires an analysis of actual usage over time. An asset tracking system lays the foundation for gathering this data, aiding employees in quickly documenting inventory as it moves through the organization. Combined with an inventory control software application, asset tracking facilitates the rapid generation of reports for in-depth analysis of inventory usage.

Projected Usage

Having a clear picture of actual inventory usage over time enables businesses to make more accurate projections of future usage. For example, certain products and supplies are used more often during seasonal periods or leading up to certain events or holidays throughout the year. Arming yourself with historical data allows you to accurately calculate projected usage, so you can better manage inventory and reduce unexpected supply shortages or overstock.

Inventory Value

What is the value of your company’s current inventory? Do certain products or supplies produce more revenue for the company? Sophisticated inventory control processes use this data to allocate storage space and utilization to boost company revenue by allocating more resources to the inventory with the greatest return. Additionally, the value of your inventory comes into play for tax and regulatory reporting.

Price Forecasting

Price forecasting comes into play in a variety of ways in inventory management. Supply and demand impacts the price of goods and services, for both inbound and outbound inventory. Higher supply costs may mean a company must raise end-consumer prices for final products. End-of-season leftover stock is often sold at markdown prices. The value of available and committed inventory, future inventory price forecasting, and other variables are critical for broader revenue calculations and are essential for accurate planning and inventory control.

Available Physical Space

Of course, an inventory manager can’t just arbitrarily re-order stock that’s running low; there must be adequate physical space in which to store it. This is where overstock becomes an issue, taking up valuable storage space that is needed for in-season product. When these variables are out of balance, companies are faced with finding ways to move unneeded inventory fast to make room for the products they need to continue the flow of business.

Inventory Depletion

Inventory depletion is the process of physically removing product from stock in order to fulfil orders, generally until no stock remains. In businesses in which the age of stock is a consideration, inventory depletion may involve specifying which products should be moved first.

Economies Of Scale

Economies of scale is the calculation of price-per-unit based on production volume. If more product is produced using the same raw materials, the price-per-unit is lower than production runs of less volume.

Order Cycle Time

What is the typical length of time between one order and the next? This defines order cycle time, also sometimes called order lead time. This metric is important for inventory planning purposes to ensure order fulfilment.

Click here to view a video that explains the best practices for inventory management.