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While sales in the convenience retail channel are growing, this is more due to more outlets opening than same store year on year growth. Convenience businesses, like other retail channels, are doing it tough in today’s retail marketplace.
Using better business management techniques and smart convenience store software, convenience store owners and managers are able to drive better business. More sales from each customers and more additional customers coming through the doors.
Here are some practical tips for growing convenience store sales based on years of experience helping c-store owners:
Track your retail business performance. Rely on accurate business data for better quality business decisions. This means using convenience store software to monitor and rive the business. Understand how many items, on average, each customer purchases as well as the average purchase value. These two metrics report on the efficiency of sales in your business
Promote to every customer. Use coupons on POS software receipts or separate coupons to provide every customer presenting to the sales counter with an offer to come back for a deal within a certain period of time. This passive approach to offering a deal can often work better than a more forceful upsell approach.
Make counter offers clear. Too often, convenience store counters are cluttered and the offers confusing. Make sure that your counter offers are clear, compelling and easy to select. This can mean that you have fewer offers. Less is more as they say.
Track your traffic. Watch where customers walk from when they enter the store. Place dump bins or promotional bins along the way of the most popular route and place in these bins special offers designed to add to sales. Make the offers compelling. Change them each week.
Sell added value services. Cell phone top up and phone cards for calling overseas are good value opportunities in any convenience store. They often do not require any stock and can be sold through your convenience store software.
Use high volume software. Place logical impulse purchases next to your top selling lines. This means that more eyeballs will see items you wish to promote. Tactical product placement like this can drive excellent business outcomes for you, helping to turn single item sales into multiple item sales.
Embrace change. Change is vital in any c-store seeing regular customers. You need to work hard to combat store blindness by employees as well as customers.
Good convenience store software will help you make better decisions in your business. Use this to measure performance and to track the success or otherwise of tactical moves you make. Once you find an approach works, look for ways to leverage that to achieve more for the business.
The harder you work your high traffic areas and your most popular lines and the cleaner your sales counter, the better the performance you should achieve from your business. The key is to make changes, monitor the results and do more of what works for you.
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