Retail Success: Increase Sales, Maximize Profits, and Wow Your Customers in the Most Competitive Marketplace in History

by George Whalin, Terri Pilot (Editor)

Your Retail Resource

Nearly every day during the past decade, consultant George Whalin--author of RETAIL SUCCESS!--has visited retail stores across the United States. There, he has met store managers and sales associates, CEOs and district managers, retail trainers and retail market researchers, and the all important customers who only buy from the retailers who serve them best.

Packing his book RETAIL SUCCESS! with retail muscle, author George Whalin relies on his more than 35 years of experience as manager, owner, author, consultant and networker to offer retailers nationwide 24 chapters of the industry's most practical tools for on-the-job retail success.

Whether the problem is building sales, keeping inventory fresh and exciting, bringing the customer back into the store, making the most of marketing research techniques and Web sites, or enhancing advertising to increase customer traffic and sales, George Whalin provides easy-to-implement solutions within the pages of RETAIL SUCCESS!

Retailers, managers, sales associates and all leaders in the industry of retail: Open this book and walk into an incredible retail world dominated by customer-driven service and successful sales environments. Through the eyes of retail expert George Whalin, you will see which techniques enhance sales and why.

Most important, you'll learn how to envision success within your own retail operation--and how to shape your retail business for maximum sales and customer satisfaction--as you achieve RETAIL SUCCESS!

About the Author

Working his way up the retail ladder from salesman to manager to owner to senior executive, George Whalin spent 25 years as a retailer prior to founding his own retail consulting firm in 1987. Today, author and consultant George Whalin is president and CEO of Retail Management Consultants.

A national authority on retailing, Whalin is widely quoted in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and in several industry-leading retail trade journals. Whalin's retail philosophy and insights also have appeared in prominent daily newspapers and on such respected television programs as "The CBS Evening News."

Whalin frequently addresses leading retail companies, consumer products manufacturers, suppliers, and retail trade associations throughout the United States and around the world providing audiences with hard-hitting strategies and no-nonsense tools that build businesses, sell more merchandise, and enhance service to savvy consumers nationwide.

Genres: Business

226 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2001

Reviews

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an ok book, a little too shallow, a little outdated, a little too glib, a little too repetitive. It's a pity that Whalin did not provide more case studies which is where his strengths seem to lie. Some of his recommendations still sound relevant and fresh, for example carrying out shopper entry and exit interviews:

For entry interviews, you may want to know what customers are looking for or thinking about buying when they come into your store. You may want to know if yours is the first, second, or third store they've visited: whether this is their first time in your store; or if they are regular customers.

For exit interviews you may want to know whether the customers found what they came in to buy; whether they bought it; what they bought if they didn't find what they were looking for, and how the sales associates served them. You may want to find out how long the customers where in the store, what they liked, and what they disliked. You may want to know if they plan to visit one of your competitor's store, if they didn't find what they were looking for in yours.

Key chapters include Maximizing customer selling opportunities, the hardly earthshaking ten customer service rules included in the chapter on What ever happened to great customer service?:

1. Warmly greet and welcome every customer into the store.
2. Associates should always be friendly and smile.
3. When a customer asks for something, associates always take them directly to the merchandise.
4. Train associates so that they have the knowledge and ability to help customers make an informed buying decision.
5. Focus the store's policies, procedures, and systems on enhancing customer experiences.
6. Make it easy to buy.
7. Willingly take back merchandise customers don't like or want.
8. Quickly repair or replace broken merchandise.
9. Provide a pleasant shopping experience to every customer.
10. Thank customers for their business and invite them back

and the red flags to look out for in Is salesmanship a vanishing skill?.

All in all, a very introductory book on retail salesmanship. Be warned, even if the book has a foreword by Paco Underhill, this book is very far from being comparable to Underhill's best writings...