Recently I spoke about competitive surveys. They’re a great exercise that your staff can conduct out in the field to see how you stack up against those you compete with for market share.
Once you’ve got your competitive surveys, what do you do next? You can take the data and compare your strengths and weaknesses to the competition. Strategically, you should address your weaknesses but more important than that, develop and strengthen your competitive edge. In other words, what do you offer that your competition doesn’t? Consider these situations when you develop your competitive edge:
· Your competition may be in a better location than you, but you offer better shopping hours.
· Their store is newer than yours but you offer better selection.
· They advertise more than you do, but your store is better staffed.
· They offer a lot of the same merchandise as you have, but your pricing is a better value statement.
Get the idea? If you take inventory of your store against the competitive survey, you can develop A COMPETITIVE EDGE to close more sales. Here are some other factors that may help you build your competitive edge:
1. More locations and more buying power mean better pricing.
2. More liberal refund policies enable customers to buy with confidence.
3. Faster special order systems get products to the customer in days and not weeks.
4. Wide size selection or overall store selection.
5. More knowledgeable staff.
6. Private label brands.
7. Better customer staffing and service.
8. Better store design, ambiance and signage.
9. More convenient shopping with easy to navigate merchandise plans.
10. Special events and training seminars that help educate customers.
You can likely generate a dozen or more advantages for your store(s) through a team brainstorming session.
After you’ve developed YOUR COMPETITIVE EDGE, make a poster with all of them documented and share it with everyone in the store or chain.
If everyone on the floor understands what makes you better than your competition, they can now use these factors as closing tools. Better selection creates better customer choices and higher buyer confidence. Special events build superior relationships with customers and loyalty. Multiple locations enable you to find specific items in other stores and transfer them in to your store for your customer’s convenience.
All of these components of YOUR COMPETITIVE EDGE helps your team close sales and build loyalty!
TAKE ACTION TODAY:
Complete your competitive surveys.
Determine what factors are superior in your store compared to the competition. What is better about your store and what do you do better?
Connect your COMPETITIVE EDGE with actions on the sales floor that will close customers.
Train and share YOUR COMPETITIVE EDGE with all your staff and help staff use the COMPETITIVE EDGE to close sales.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/rss.jpg "XML Feed For RSS")