Retail Consulting has been the emerging arm of the Performance Partners business over the past few years, with great success in all areas of retail, both in Australia and overseas.
Our Methodology
Our Retail Consulting approach is about creating world’s best practice for our retailers and identifying the gap between a retailer’s current reality and future vision and then helping them get there.
It begins with a series of high-level conversations with key stakeholders on the vision of the organisation, the structure, strategy, culture, leadership, financials and brand for the company.
We then undertake a thorough analysis of the retail environment, focusing on four major areas; People, Product, Sales & Service and Retail Operations and the interrelationships between each of these areas and the enablers of Communication, Technology, Measurement and Process.
And then finally, we provide a comprehensive report, outlining strategic recommendations and ‘quick wins’. From here, we can be part of the implementation rollout or we can simply leave that to the retailer.
Review Your Business
To identify whether your organisation could benefit from retail consulting with Performance Partners, review your business against the following 25-questions:
- Is your organisation regularly out-of-stock of best sellers?
- Do you have excessive levels of slow moving merchandise?
- Is it difficult for your organisation to predict the correct levels of demand and therefore find it difficult to respond to key market trends?
- Does your organisation have an adhoc approach to replenishment?
- Are there poor merchandise planning disciplines in your organisation, with symptoms being low stock productivity, margin erosion and a reactive culture where people deal with issues and problems that have already occurred rather than manage risk?
- Is there a lack of synergy between buyers, planners and sellers?
- Are there significant inconsistencies between stores when it comes to the retail metrics of average sale, items per sale and customer conversion rates?
- Are you finding it difficult to attract top talent?
- Do you lack clarity on the profiles of top talent for each role across the business, and therefore hire the best available candidate for the role rather than the best candidate?
- Are your managers leaving new hires to sink or swim through the induction program?
- Do Store Managers lack the proper information to run their stores or, at the very least, lack the skills to leverage this information for improved results?
- Is your culture weak on planning and execution; everything seems reactive or everything seems to be of equal importance and the critical goals don’t get completed on time.
- Are you finding it difficult to measure the return on investment on your key training initiatives? Training appears adhoc and lacks true alignment.
- Are you missing out on your mystery shop results at both ends of the sale; the customer approach and adding on/closing the sale?
- Is there a big gap between the leaders of the executive team and all other leaders across the organisation?
- Are people at shopfloor level not getting heard? Not having a voice?
- Do people lack the proper understanding of the organisations customer? Alternatively, does the organisation understand the customer but fail to leverage these insights for improved performance?
- Do your KPI’s and incentives disadvantage some or de-motivate others?
- Do your people lack the product knowledge to provide exceptional customer service?
- Do people think visual merchandising is about keeping the store neat and tidy [as opposed to merchandising for profitability]?
- Do the procedures in store mean that team members focus far too much on tasks rather than the customer?
- Is the communication from Head Office bombarding stores or does it have a negative tone with ‘sell sell sell’.
- Are you way behind the times when it comes to technology and communicating to team members and customers?
- Are there missed sales from poor rostering processes?
- Are managers unskilled at coaching their people or poor at prioritising coaching above other less valued responsibilities?