Regardless of size or industry, store managers know how it is far from easy to manage retail stores. They are tasked with handling a host of responsibilities – developing their employees, improving customer retention, and maintaining sufficient stocks – all while facing just as many challenges that occur daily. Staying on top of all these duties and succeeding requires having a solid skillset and the right mindset. To help you navigate the issues and challenges part and parcel of retail, here are five actionable tips you can try.

Do not overlook attitude and soft skills when hiring

Although training plays a major role in your team’s success, recruiting good people makes it easier to achieve. Apart from technical skills and experience, managers should also focus on each candidate’s disposition and innate traits and evaluate if they align with the company’s brand. Ensuring that they can fit into the culture is critical to hiring new employees since they will lead to a more effective and motivated team.

Establish repeatable processes

Setting clear expectations for basic regulations and having efficient operation processes makes it easy for employees to keep customers happy while protecting company assets. This all starts with using the company’s retail operations manual and providing the necessary training on how to follow its regulations. 

In other words, make it a priority to set up repeatable processes for your store and ensure that they are well-documented. This makes it simpler for staff to implement the procedures and frees up time that can be better used on other managerial duties. Having proper documented standard operating procedures (SOPs) allows employees to do their jobs without consulting you outside of critical issues.

Invest in the right technology

In today’s modern age, retailers must leverage the right technological solutions that can help simplify their duties and those of their teams. Depending on the store, the best tools to adopt may vary. For some, the best move may be to do a complete overhaul, while others may simply need to adopt POS solutions to meet their business demands and expectations.

All in all, it falls on retail managers to determine the store’s tech needs by pinpointing inefficiencies and their employees’ and customers’ pain points. Encourage the team to offer input on the kinds of tools they would like to have to simplify their jobs and take the necessary steps to guarantee you are investing in the right solutions.

Embrace transparency 

Trust is one of the most fundamental ingredients to attaining success in retail management, and it is best achieved by promoting a culture of openness and transparency. Retail managers have to strive for transparency as much as possible when managing employees, suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders of the company. As a result, they can cultivate a culture of dependability and trust, which ultimately contributes to a more fulfilling and positive work environment. Moreover, transparency earns your employee’s respect, which is one of the necessary foundations for effective leadership.

Closely track data 

One cannot improve or manage what one cannot measure. Thus, keeping a close eye on your retail store’s KPIs is vital. Retail managers should ideally record various metrics, such as employee productivity, overall sales and sales from individual employees, and customer turnaround times. These will provide a better idea of where the store stands. In addition, they can also be used in different comparisons like with other times of the year or other retail branches and help in projecting goals and communicating them with the team.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, managers remain among the most critical personnel in the store’s operations. Given today’s highly competitive landscape, solid managerial skills are the key foundation that makes all the difference in commercial success. If your business is headed by an efficient and well-organised manager or leader, coupled with using a functional retail POS system in Singapore, it will surely succeed and have a lower risk of making mistakes in its operational period.

By going with Edgeworks Solutions’ inventory control system in Singapore, you can look forward to utilising our wide range of essential features, such as low stock alert, list of purchase orders, and sales data, to help you manage your retail business more easily. Contact us here to arrange a demo or find out more about our services.