The Retail Doctor Blog

Shaking Off the Retail Apocalypse With Hope and Real Data

This is a lengthy article to lay out the details of the retail apocalypse, a claim of massive store closures, shipageddon, and other claims. I hope...

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8 Benefits of Online Retail Sales Training

I used to think online retail sales training would be impossible to deliver in a new way. But I was wrong. The Internet is changing not only the way...

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Visual Merchandising: 12 Insights How To Merchandise Your Store

Retail merchandising is such an important topic - especially during Covid-19. Most of the time smart retailers call it visual merchandising and are...

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30 Tips On How to Deal With Anxiety About Your Store’s Future

It started with a simple question to me, “How do I overcome anxiety?” It came from a retailer dealing with all the stresses of reopening, cleaning,...

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Recent Articles

Patric Richardson the Laundry Guy Shares Retailing Success Story

In this podcast I get to talk with Patric Richardson, author of Laundry Love and host of a new series on Discovery+ and HGTV about his background in...

How To Make Your Retail Jewelry Store More Profitable: 7 Tips

I’ve spoken to several pawnbrokers and jewelry retailers lately and I’ve also been commenting about luxury sales and how things need to change for...

How to Find Strength In Being A Brick and Mortar Retail Store

This is a post for retailers with physical stores competing with online shopping and technology that threatens their sales. We all cope with a...

How To Increase Retail Sales KPIs: Ditch Being Passive

A quick walk through the mall shows retailers are trying to increase revenues with some fairly dramatic sales. But sales can hide the cause of death...

3 Do's and Don'ts For Empowering Your Retail Employees

How you treat your retail employees can have a huge impact on your company. A quick search of YouTube reveals videos of employees doing disgusting...

Retail Customer Experience That Works: Connecting With Shoppers

The day I started to actually wash and condition my face was the day a spa esthetician made it clear that for a guy in my line of work... where my...

Sales Training: Letting Customers Wait Will Cost You Money

Retail sales training is necessary to encourage your customer to purchase now, not later. Do you sell one of the products customers can "wait" on? ...

associate trying to win incentive like a carrot

How To Use Incentives With Retail Employees The Right Way

There are pros and cons to using incentives to grow your retail sales. You may remember when Wells Fargo fired 5,300 employees after admitting those...

Closing The Sale Techniques for Luxury Retail

Scarcity is one of the closing techniques rotten salespeople have used for years to try to make customers buy. It goes something like this, “We can...

Why Closing The Sale Techniques Are Dead For Retailers

I was talking to a potential client about her needs for retail sales training. She had read some of my blogs. She had watched my videos. “What I’m...

Are Employees Building up Online Stores and Sabotaging Profit Margins?

Wondering how to increase profit margins? A lot of attention is being given to online retail growth during the pandemic. But what if that growth...

How To Engage Retail Customers Begins With A Wow Moment

For retail customers to let down their guard, share their desires, and get over their fears of purchasing, you must get them involved... I was at...

8 Ways To Have More Confidence Selling Retail

This post is for the retail salesperson who isn't making his/her goals, the manager who is struggling with employee training, the newbie who is...

Retail Customer Service: Greeting a Customer

One day I walked into a Walgreens in Minneapolis. A pleasant young woman behind the counter looked over at me and said, “Welcome to...

The New Frugality: How to Reach Out to Retail Consumers Who Buy Less

Buying less is a concept that seemed out of style for consumers beginning with the go-go 80’s until a few years ago. During those thirty years,...

4 Ways To Improve Your Retail Customer Experience and Sales

How to improve customer service experience? Concentrate on your employees and engage their hearts, not just their minds. Many retail stores offer the...

Retailers: Why you Keep Picking the Wrong Employee Time after Time

As a retail consultant, one of the most valuable pieces of retail advice I'm asked about from an owner or manager is how to select employees that are...

Retail Store Tour - Showing Customers All You Sell

So many retailers assume customers know everything about their luxury brand. But most are missing the easiest way to grow their sales with a store...

Retail Shoppers' 50 Pet Peeves About Retail Employees

In the past few weeks I’ve received two pleas from retailers about to close. They want to know how to attract customers. One seemed to think it was...

7 Incredibly Easy Ways To Attract Customers

Any retail consultant knows that more traffic to your brick and mortar retail store means more sales. But when people ask me as a retail expert how...

7 Eye-Openers For How To Hire Great Retail Employees

Prior to its opening, I was asked to visit a franchise to evaluate the new crew. I discovered the team members were bland, boring and shy. None of...

How Resilience of Retailers Shines Through on The Covid Anniversary

I still remember the day President John Kennedy was assassinated. I was home with my mom and the door-to-door Fuller brush man rang the bell as...

How Associates Selling With Their Own Wallets Are Killing Your Retail Sales

Let’s be honest, a lot of people are afraid of retail salespeople. For that matter, they are afraid of anyone who says they sell something. Most...

How To Spring Clean Your Retail Store With This Checklist

My first job was as a janitor in a dry-cleaning store. One rainy Thursday I had cleaned up the break room like I usually did and returned to get...

9 Fresh Ideas In Retail Merchandising

Retail merchandising is how you attract customers away from mindlessly strolling by your store, driving past in their cars, or keeping their eyes on...

8 Reasons Why Customers Don’t Buy From You

No matter what you sell, there is nothing more frustrating than trying to figure out why a shopper didn’t buy from you. Or another way to put it is ...

Are you Blaming the Customer or Selling the Experience?

I love checking out art museums on vacation. I usually meet the docent because I stand too close to the artwork and get an occasional, “Step back...

Customers Come to Buy. Don’t Let Them Leave Disappointed

Imagine cooking a recipe and then leaving the food in the pan without serving it. That would have wasted your time… Lazy or untrained employees do a...

7 Questions That Must Get a 'Yes' to Close More Retail Sales

If you work in retail sales, you have to care more about the customer than you care about yourself. Yes, you might be getting a commission, a bonus,...

How To Avoid Hearing A Customer’s “No, I’m Just Looking” Ever Again

Were you ever picked by a teacher to come up in front of class when you weren’t prepared to speak? It felt like hell, I bet. There’s an area of your...

What 10 Creative Retailers Are Doing Now to Attract Customers Back to Stores

Attracting customers is a never-ending process for any business. Retailers in particular are anxious to look for new local store marketing ideas...

James Rhee podcast with Bob Phibbs the Retail Doctor

James Rhee: Stories of Kindness, Math, Mindset and Trust

James Rhee is an impact entrepreneur, author, investor, lecturer, founder and president of FirePine Group, and former chairman and CEO of Ashley...

being wrong on something important to retail

Shaking Off the Retail Apocalypse With Hope and Real Data

This is a lengthy article to lay out the details of the retail apocalypse, a claim of massive store closures, shipageddon, and other claims. I hope...

Are You Guilty of These 10 Shocking Best Practices Blunders?

What is the current state of the retail industry? To no one’s surprise, most retailers see customer service as their most important challenge. ...

5 Best Management Practices For A Customer First Focus

When I was selling cowboy clothes in the Santa Monica Place mall back in 1982, I received a call. “I’m Kris Kristofferson’s manager, do you have a...

Martin Lindstrom: Branding, Tribes and the Dissolution of Empathy

Martin Lindstrom is the world's leader in branding and marketing. Having started when he was a child presenting a marketing plan to Lego, developing...

How to Conquer Your Selling Fears

I was talking to a pool builder who had just put in a new pool. His client lived in a very expensive neighborhood, drove a Bentley; you get the...

3 Steps For How To Motivate Yourself And Increase Retail Sales When It’s Slow

When business slows down, as it always does this time of year, it is easy to become despondent or lazy. Whether you had a great year or...

Balancing Inventory: Making Friends With Retail Clearance Sales

What is the difference between clearance and a sale? A sale is often a promotion of a specific brand or even a store-wide discount. Why do stores...

4 Tips How To Avoid Overbuying Merchandise For Your Retail Store

This post is for retail buyers but here's a question for you: Do you know what makes a Rolls Royce a Rolls Royce? Yes they are a totally custom built...

Why and How To Do A Physical Inventory On A Shoestring Budget

Merchandise on the sales floor can look pretty but it is your money sitting there. While you can do an inventory of your store any time,...

Retailers - 5 Cash Flow Tips For January

Retailers! January is the time to get your financial house in order to have the most profitable retail sales and stress-free year possible! Here are...

fighting online retailers with fitting rooms

How Stores Can Use Their Fitting Rooms To Fight Online Retailers

While the pandemic can make some retailers leery of fitting rooms remember no sale is made until it is actually on someone's body. When I was in high...

Retail Consultant Tip: 4 Stages of A Customer's Buying Cycle

As a retail consultant, I've examined how your customer's buying cycle is predictable. As the economy has gotten stronger, I've been called on to...

Employee Training Is Broken - You Can Blame Google or You Can Fix It

Employee training has devolved because of the always-on Google or Siri solution to all inquiries. Unless employees are learning and holding onto...

Retail Selling Tip: What If Home Depot Had A Dressing Room?

What if Home Depot had A dressing room? Can you picture it? A guy picks up several chain saws and heads off to a room to “try them out.” After a...

Why And How to do an Employee Review

Employee reviews are one of the most neglected tools a retailer can use to increase their retail sales. By using regular employee reviews, you can...

How To Make 2021 A Year You're Proud Of And Grow Your Retail Sales

Goal setting is so misunderstood. We think we should save it all up for the end of the year and then come up with gigantic goals which are actually...

Motivation Beyond Paying Retail Sales Commission: 3 Ways To Get Employees To Sell

Motivating employees. It’s always tough in a retail store. You want to be as successful a retailer as Apple, as Nordstrom, as Lululemon, but you...

Excellent Customer Service Starts With A Positive Attitude

I'd been with my dad at the Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte for several days. The first day I walked in, I noticed this mat in the elevator. It...

7 Ways How To Grow Your Retail Sales The Week After Christmas

After-Christmas retail can be fun - even with a pandemic - as long as you stay focused on making money instead of just giving it away through...

5 Pitfalls of DIY Retail Sales Training in Your Store

While I love speaking to retailers and providing retail sales training for how to sell better in their stores, I have another passion: fixing up old...

How To Motivate A Retail Employee

I was doing a keynote speech when a retailer asked, “How can I motivate an employee?” I replied, “The short answer is you don’t.” I know that might...

How To Successfully Conquer Goal Setting For Your Retail Store

Effective goal setting is the key to driving sales and self-discipline. To set a meaningful goal, you should start with the why. I used to...

Retail Holiday Sales: How To Sell To Men and Help Them Buy Like A Hero

As a retailer, I loved the day before Christmas Eve. All the planners had purchased and the after-Christmas sales had begun. The guys were now...

How To Choose The Right Online Sales Training Courses For Your Store

Congratulations for reading this – it means you understand retail sales training is important. But which online sales training courses are right for...

Is An Online Retail Sales Training Program For You? It's the Only Sensible Option.

When you started your brick-and-mortar store, you probably did everything yourself. You answered the phone, took orders, greeted customers, worked...

How To Improve Your Store's Conversion Rate Training

Retailers have tried everything it seems to get employees to sell more. So many try to hire the natural born salesperson. That doesn’t really work...

Greeting a Customer: Do You Say Merry Christmas in Your Retail Store?

Retailers, it's the most wonderful time of the year. Or at least the holiday season should be...so why is there an ongoing debate on whether...

Online retail sales training for remote employees

How Online Retail Sales Training Can Be Available to Remote Employees

Here's how you can deliver retail sales training to remote employees effectively... When you have just one brick and mortar store, it can be easy to...

5 Ways How Any Small Business or Retail Shop Can Maximize Cash Flow

Cash flow (maintaining a sufficient amount of available cash) for small retailers is one of the least sexy topics I'm asked about and one of the most...

How to Sell Based On Emotion And Not Logic

So many retailers try to sell on logic when shoppers buy based on emotion. But you can't feel a fact. And yet many retailers feel product knowledge is...

How Your Retail Employees can Create Exceptional Customer Experiences

I was consulting with a new luxury client. I was going to be working on their sales floor and they told me I would have to wear the old school...

8 Benefits of Online Retail Sales Training

I used to think online retail sales training would be impossible to deliver in a new way. But I was wrong. The Internet is changing not only the way...

9 Benefits of Using Online Retail Sales Training

The Internet is changing not only the way retailers interact with customers, but also the ways in which they can prepare their sales staff for...

How To Calculate The ROI Of Online Retail Sales Training Programs

Most businesses see a sales training program as a cost when it should be seen as an investment. This post is about ROI calculation and advantages of...

proof online retail sales training works

Here’s Proof My Online Retail Sales Training Program Works

I‘ve been an in-person retail sales trainer for upscale retail brands and I’ve helped them achieve extraordinary gains over the last 20-some years.

How The Best Training Solution Should Be More Than Retail Sales Academy

In-house training solutions are time consuming to create and usually get so diluted by internal bureaucracy and corrupted by people who have never...

Retail Sales Training Will Never Be The Same

While working for some great retailers, I found I was naturally good at selling merchandise and retail sales training. Little did I know that during...

Proof Online Sales Training Is Worth The Cost For Employee Development

I received a tweet from Susanne Wolf accompanied by the photo above. It read, “Thanks to you Bob: reaching our goal and going shopping in Paris next...

Is SalesRX Online Retail Sales Training Right For My Stores?

If you're at that point when you know something must change in your retail operation and overall strategy... And now you’re looking for a way to...

How to get started with online retail sales training

Online Retail Sales Training: How to Get Started and What to Expect

Imagine being in an airplane and overhearing a voice from the cockpit saying, “Just keep the nose in the air and if the warning lights don’t go off,...

8 Ways To Increase Employee Retention In Your Retail Store

When employees leave – either because you fired them or they quit by choice, their absence leaves a hole. Retailers hate holes… in merchandise, in...

Is Amazon Killing In-Person Grocery Shopping to Make Us Buy Online?

Amazon customer service is legendary. Buy something if you're a Prime member and return it for free, immediate credit in many instances, enviable...

How Should You Handle Bad Customer Behavior With Bratty Kids In Tow?

Brick and mortar retailers have to put up with a lot of bad customer behavior. But how should you deal with difficult consumer behavior when they are...

Mission Possible – Train Your Retail Sales Team On How To Sell

A lot has been written about the gamification of employee training. The idea is the short-wins you get from a game keep you hooked on moving through...

8 Questions To Be Answered When Considering Retail Sales Training

Whether the retail sales training is delivered in person by a sales trainer like myself, online through a program like my SalesRX.com, or an...

Still Not Convinced You Need Retail Sales Training? Think Again!

You’ve searched online trying to find some answers to increase your retail sales. You’ve been trying to attract more customers, but nothing seems to...

7 Holiday Marketing Tips For Higher Retail Sales

The three weeks prior to Christmas are when all hands are on deck preparing for the holiday shopping season in a retail store. Even with lower...

Retail Success: How To Keep Your Store From Being Your Ball And Chain

In 2001, Tim & Cynthia Holliday took a gamble: They purchased Children's World, a struggling children’s uniform, clothing, and toy store in...

What Makes a Good Retail Sales Training Program?

Retailers, especially those who have a large number of employees, often wonder what makes a good retail sales training program and what they should...

Considering Retail Sales Training Courses? Here Are The Essentials

I had a shocking call with the North American CEO of a luxury brand recently. They had a bad fourth quarter and were having a sales management...

9 Best Practices To Encourage Impulse Buying

The holidays are a great time to entice shoppers with unplanned purchases. The grocery industry has mastered the art of getting a shopper who just...

Preparing For Christmas: How To Unclutter Your Retail Store

Merchandise ... like food ... like alcohol ... like a lot of things ... can be good. Until you have too much. Too much merchandise is what I’m...

How Retail Employees Can Maintain Their Sanity During The Holidays

The first week of December can be the calm before the storm.Your seasoned retail employees know what is in store, your newbies have no idea. There...

How To Convert Holiday Shoppers Into Loyal Year Round Customers

It is so important to convert holiday shoppers into loyal customers because you have so many more bodies walking through your doors after Black...

14 Small Business Saturday Marketing Ideas For Retailers

Looking for ideas to help your small business and community thrive this Small Business Saturday, November 28? When Small Business Saturday (SBS)...

Stop Selling, Start Listening To Your Retail Customers. 5 Ways How

I walked into a men’s boutique one day and a young woman lurched out from a four-way rack with a small flier telling me how the whole store was now...

What Does a Biden Presidency Mean For U.S. Retailers?

Now that the U.S. presidential election is seemingly over (who knows at this point?), what does a Joe Biden presidency mean for retailers? I've...

How To Leverage The Weather To Market Your Store And Grow Your Retail Holiday Sales

We know how weather can affect retail sales, but what can we do about it? A long time ago, in a mall far far away, I was running a flagship retail...

How To Overcome These 5 Shopper Objections And Get The Sale

As I walked past a Brookstone in an airport one Sunday afternoon several years ago, a guy was clearly teaching his associates how to sell their...

Email Marketing To Increase Retail Sales In December

Are you looking for how to use email marketing in December to lure holiday shoppers back to your store again and again? You've come to the right...

Here's The Employee Scheduling Secret To Building Your Retail Sales

You are probably looking for places to cut costs before the holidays. If you adjust staff to meet sales you could be ramping your retail business...

10 Tips for Holiday Merchandising in December

Holiday merchandising is always hard. During a pandemic with shorter hours, curbside pickup and threatened shutdowns, it can feel irrelevant. It...

How To Deal With The Retail Holiday Headlines Designed To Scare You

Retail is predictable in many ways. The same predictable, negative, retail holiday sales stories pop up about bricks and mortar retailers every year.

Stand Out Marketing - Find A Way To Reach Your Goal

If you want to get something, you need to go after it; same with marketing your business. The goal of any campaign is to make the recipient take...

If Retail Sucks, Why Do You Work Here?

Recently I received a comment on my blog totally unrelated to that blog. It read, “No offense but your other blog about what employees should never do...

Why Personality Styles Are Crucial To Making More Retail Sales

Personality styles can make or break your retail sales training... Imagine you were just plopped into a car parked on the side of a road, you don’t...

Levi’s vs Gap: A Tale of Two Titans' Retail Branding During COVID-19

Branding is so important when it comes to retail. But during this time of Covid-19, what are smart retail brands doing? “It was the best of times,...

Do You Have The Personality For Business?

When I was writing my book, The Retail Doctor's Guide to Growing Your Business (Wiley & Sons), I wanted to show how many of the decisions business...

Retail Sales Training: Adjusting Your Driver Personality Style

The Driver personality style is all about power and ego. External validation by applause, commission checks, status or atta-boys drives them to...

9 Tips For Hiring And Training Holiday Retail Sales Employees

Let’s be frank when it comes to hiring and training seasonal retail employees... All you really care about is that they show up when scheduled and...

The 7 Essentials for Memorable Retail Customer Service

To stand out from the competition, you need to focus on creating an exceptional customer experience. And exceptional retail customer service...

How To Avoid The 7 Reasons Small Retail Businesses Fail

There are few things sadder than going by one of your favorite boutique retailers and finding an empty store with a sign For Lease posted in the...

marketing your retail store product reviews

10 Easy Ways to get Customer Reviews that Boost Retail Sales

Customer reviews are very influential and can increase your sales more than marketing with a paid ad but can be hard to get. Here’s 10 proven tips to...

Should You Start A New Business Or Retail Store Now?

One of the most asked questions during my appearances on MSNBC's Your Business revolved around timing a new business. Many people will rightly ask...

Are You Guilty Of Selling With Dollar Signs In Your Eyes?

Selling can be a complex process but the fatal mistake many never address is the attitude of the salesperson looking at how much they can get out of...

Preparing for the Holidays: 11 Things to do at your Retail Store

Wondering how to prepare your store for the holidays during a pandemic? The National Retail Federation reports for 2020 40 percent of shoppers...

putting out holiday merchandise before Halloween

Why Retailers Should Display Christmas Merchandise Before Halloween

Why do retailers put out Christmas merchandise before Halloween? Because customers buy it. It's that time of the year ... Time for the leaves to...

3 Lessons in Leadership During COVID-19 From Ralph Lauren's CEO

Looking for lessons in leadership style during the pandemic? Look no further than Ralph Lauren's Patrice Louvet. There has never been a year quite...

visual merchandising pufferbellies holiday windows

How To Visually Merchandise Your Holiday Store Windows

New York City brick and mortar retailers like Macy's and Saks Fifth Avenue have known the power of visual merchandising Christmas windows. But as a...

using part-time employees bad for your store

Retailers: 5 Reasons Part-Time Employees Could Undermine Your Store

I read a disturbing article in The New York Times about the trend of retailers and restaurants to limit hours of their part-time employees. Are you...

Retail Sales Countdown: Five Tips To Get Ready for the Holidays

Getting ready for the holidays in retail means knowing your countdown to Christmas. Here are Five Tips To Get Your Retail Store Ready for the...

How To Prepare Your Store For Black Friday And Strong Holiday Retail Sales

There will be four Saturdays between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. While many small retailers maintain Black Friday is more for the big...

Do You Have A Bitter Betty Employee Killing Your Retail Sales?

You’ve met her …or him before as a customer …the employee who knows everything. Who condescends to help you if they are so moved. Whose...

12 Secrets of a Successful 2020 Holiday Season for a Retail Manager

Taking on retail manager responsibilities is a big job any time but especially during the holidays. And, if you're starting out during the current...

Retail Jobs: How To Get Promoted From Part-Time To Full-Time

I received a note from a reader wanting retail advice, "I was given a part-time job at a high-end department store in the handbags department, but...

A 30-Minute Pre-check To Prepare Your Store For The Holidays

At this time of year, there are loads of holiday preparation articles about how brick and mortar retailers can have a profitable holiday shopping...

Decorate your store windows for the Holidays

How To Decorate Your Retail Store For The Holidays [Pics]

Decorating a store goes to the heart of what makes great retailing. During this time of a pandemic, it will be the deciding factor to wowing wary...

Neiman Marcus Is Shuttering Its Hudson Yards Store - 3 Leadership Lessons Retailers Can Learn From Their Failure

Imagine a prominent retailer telling employees they must reimburse their company for health insurance premiums paid during furlough . And all while...

Holiday Retail Sales Training: 15 Things To Teach Seasonal Employees

Your full retail sales training is most likely more thorough and involved than for your holiday seasonal employees. But don’t throw up your hands and...

5 Retail Strategies Retailers must Commit to Master

This is a retail strategy post with many items for smaller retailers as well as some for larger retailers... I had just finished one of my...

How to Increase Retail Sales – Three Tips

Looking to increase retail sales during a pandemic? The key is to realize in many ways, brick and mortar retailers have a finite client base. After...

Retail Sales Training To Sell More: Features and Benefits

Looking to understand and learn how to sell more in your retail store? You need to know that features are not benefits and why the difference...

How To Get Higher Retail Sales: Suggestive Selling

This post is for every retailer looking for how to train their team on suggestive selling techniques. When you’re trying to build your retail sales...

50 Things Retail Employees Can Do When They're Not Busy

What to do when your retail employees are standing around and your store is not busy... You probably don’t mind them taking a well-deserved break...

4 Tips To Train How To Use Suggestive Selling For Add-Ons

The final stage of a sale is used to suggestively sell an add-on to the customer's main purchase. After the customer has made the big decision to buy...

How To Close More Sales With Team Selling

Team selling in retail is something rarely used but sales teams should recognize it for the opportunity it brings - especially during the pandemic. ...

How to get serious about your retail customer service and engagement

Brick and mortar stores have the ability to surprise and delight. So does a downtown shopping area. The sheer serendipity of walking into a store...

How To Attract Customers To Your Retail Store In 9 Easy Steps

As retailers across the country fear a second wave of the coronavirus and lockdowns, it is still important to focus on how to attract customers. And...

11 Retail Selling Tips

While retail selling tips may not seem a priority during Covid-19 with limitations on the number of customers in store and retailers using...

Visual Merchandising: 12 Insights How To Merchandise Your Store

Retail merchandising is such an important topic - especially during Covid-19. Most of the time smart retailers call it visual merchandising and are...

Store appearance is more important than ever

The Impact of Store Appearance During Covid-19

How to drag shoppers away from their phones and make them walk into your store? Bump up your curb appeal to make a big impact with your store...

A Learning Manager is Key to Running Your Online Retail Sales Training

Have you ever gone to a store and purchased paint, only to discover when you got home that you had no paintbrush? That’s kind of what it’s like with...

5 Ways How to Cultivate Your Brick and Mortar Store Culture

While online retail has gone up during Covid-19, many of those DTC retailers are now opening brick and mortar stores. Why are so many online brands...

Retail Consultant Case Study: How to Attract A Customer to Your Store

Retail case studies are great ways to learn how to grow your sales. As a retail consultant, I get a wide variety of challenges to help retailers...

How to Attract Customers and Increase Your Store Foot Traffic

When you are trying to attract customers and get more foot traffic the focus is squarely on your store's appearance. You have to grab passersby...

Open To Buy: Merchandise Doesn't Get Better With Age

Holding on to old merchandise can kill your profit margins. That's why it is so important to learn about open-to-buy when running a retail store. ...

42 Things No One Told You About Starting A Retail Small Business

Owning your own small business or retail store is a goal of many. You can be one of the few small business owners who make the dream a reality. You...

9 Proven Strategies For Retail Success

When you're looking for a Retail Sales Strategy that works, especially during Covid, it's simple: you need to be brilliant on the basics. I had been...

7 Tips For Indie Retailers To Maximize Cash Flow In September

Retail store owners' cash flow has always been at the mercy of the yearly retail calendar. As the seasons change, the climate of the market changes,...

body posture when selling a suit in a store

10 Ways To Sell More and Increase Sales in Retail

Time and time again, retailers return to this blog to learn how to sell more in retail. Yes, I have a lot of tips and tricks to increase sales, but...

Retail Sales Associate Training: 11 Ways To Get Better At Selling

Is the ability to excel at retail selling an instinctive talent that you have to be born with and that can’t be learned? Not at all. Almost anyone...

Bad Customer Service Examples: 50 Things Retail Employees Shouldn't Do

Excellent customer service is dependent on your sales associates. Likewise, a bad customer service experience is dependent on your associates...

Zappos Pays People To Quit - Should you?

I've always said, "The employee should go when their mind has already left." Unfortunately, that often happens quite a while later. Zappos has had a...

Five Retail Sales Training Tips From Selling Shoes

I'll get to my tips for selling shoes but first, a story about how my knowledge of retail sales training began at the feet of others. I put myself...

5 Tips For Battling COVID-19 Through Store Cleaning

This is a sponsored post with P&G Professional Ipsos, a global market research firm, recently used Mystery Shoppers to conduct in-store visits of...

5 Things You Can Do To Not Hate Role Play For Sales Training in Retail

Many sales trainers know they need to use role play to practice their retail sales training but shrink from the opportunity. That’s why I’m sharing...

How 7 Retailers Are Responding To Covid Five Months In

With the prospect of the pandemic continuing for the foreseeable future, many retailers are looking for clues to how other retailers respond to Covid.

Best Suggestive Selling Techniques To Increase Retail Sales

Suggestive selling is the key to building great customer service and hitting sales goals. What is suggestive selling? Suggestive selling is the way...

5 Ways Retailers Can Embrace The New Consumer Mentality During Covid-19

Retailers woke up to the news Friday that Neiman Marcus will be closing their store in New York at the luxury mall Hudson Yards. It is a store that...

30 Tips On How to Deal With Anxiety About Your Store’s Future

It started with a simple question to me, “How do I overcome anxiety?” It came from a retailer dealing with all the stresses of reopening, cleaning,...

Retail Management Tips: 15 Ways to Increase Profit Margins

Looking for how to grow profit margins in your store? Curbside pickup has been the only way many retailers have been able to sell their goods in...

Correct common mistakes with customer service tips

Sales Training: The 5 Stupidest Questions To Ask Retail Shoppers

People who sell retail have to up their game, or their brick and mortar stores will bleed customers. And don’t blame online sales… In spite of the...

Reasons Retailers Struggle to Sell And How To Rise Triumphant

The Coronavirus has amplified many of the problems that already existed in retail selling. And the pandemic has added more problems on top of those.

South Coast Plaza shoppers June 14, 20202

3 Ways The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Change Retail Forever

Everyone is looking for how the long-term effects of how the pandemic will change retail forever; especially in brick and mortar stores. Not that...

How To Hire People Who Do Not Look Like You

Why should you hire people who do not look like you? Because while it is human to hire people with similar backgrounds, it can be limiting and be...

How to captivate jaded shoppers as they venture out to shop

I made this 15 minute video as a way of bookending the Covid-10 crisis and getting retailers firmly focused on the shopper. Why is it necessary to...

Retail Is Not Dead – Sharing True Stories of Hope For Retail Stores

Looking for how to find hope for your retail business? You’ve come to the right place. Many pundits are predicting the death of many retailers, so...

Reopening Retail Stores - Tell Shoppers What’s Changed Before Arrival

By the end of today, 43 states are expected to be reopening retail stores even if only for curbside pickup. Retailers who were categorized as a ...

It’s Up To Retailers To Destroy The Doom and Gloom Narrative

I'll get to what you can do about gloom and doom retail shortly but I want retailers to understand what is going on... I watched the movie Bombshell...

reopening retail stores and building trust

The Quagmire of Reopening Retail Stores And Rebuilding Trust

While many retailers are focused on just getting their stores open, there is a lot of work that must be done to rebuild shoppers’ trust. Otherwise,...

10 Reasons To Be Optimistic About Retail After COVID-19

When major league baseball players return to their fields, that will be a huge marker of the beginning of the return to normalcy after COVID-19. ...

It’s Time To Embrace The Virtual Retail Salesperson

Retail stores are closed. Employees are being furloughed. And I haven’t seen a roll of toilet paper in my local grocery store for 3 weeks. On top of...

How Will You Embrace The Great Coronavirus Retail Reset?

What we do as retailers now will determine what retail looks like in the future. We as consumers are hitting the pause button because of the...

How to Operate During Coronavirus Retail Challenges

I know I have a range of business owners with their own perspectives about the coronavirus, also known as COVID-19. Some are scoffing at all the fuss...

Retailers: How To Deal With Coronavirus

How to deal with virus outbreak? Most retail store manager training includes have to have sales meetings but when was the last time you talked about...

Retail Trends: 10 Must See Retailers You Must Visit In New York City

When coming to New York, retailers should study what’s new in Manhattan. You can see technology, merchandising, retail trends, and customer...

how to disarm customers and get them to like you

Selling In A Retail Store: How to Disarm Customers in 10 Seconds

In the moment after someone has walked into your store but before the salesperson has spoken to them, anticipation builds. Here’s how to make sure...

Top 10 Technology Innovations For Retailers Of All Sizes As Seen At NRF2020

As brick and mortar retailers continue to look for how to compete with online, many are realizing they have to do more with both fewer stores and...

9 New Visual Merchandising Trends For Your Store

Visual merchandising covers everything from how you visually arrange your merchandise to how you interrupt traffic patterns in your store, to how you...

How to Learn Relationship Selling and Close More Sales

I train a lot of retail stores how to sell using a fairly detailed process. You can’t just wing it. If you're wondering how to get more out of your...

How To Gain A Positive Customer Perception Of Your Brand

What customers think of you decides how much you can charge for your product, what kind of employees you have working for you, and what kind of...

5 Steps to Closing a Retail Sale Quickly

Closing a sale. Why is it so hard to do? Because you are putting yourself on the line. Did you read the situation correctly? If you ask and they...

Bad and Good Customer Service Examples At Saks Fifth Avenue

Longtime readers know I sometimes share both my good and bad retail customer service shopping experiences from across the world. What are three key...

The Causes And Consequences Of Bad Customer Service

The reason for a bad customer service experience could best be summed up by Lily Tomlin's character Ernestine, "We're the phone company; we don't...

Better Sales through Customer Engagement

How can you determine whether your customer engagement strategy needs improvement? Quite simply, passive shoppers don’t buy. What is customer...

Value Selling: How To Sell Value Over Price In Your Store

Value selling is, at its heart, the moving of more merchandise. No matter how many facts you know about a product, if the consumer doesn't see the...

10 Reasons Working Retail Isn't Bad For Your Health

This post was written pre-COVID-19. Obviously, coming in contact with people from all over the world can raise risks for your personal health. A...

Are You Missing These 4 Key Retail Sales Training Tips?

What are the best retail sales training tips? Those tips that make a shopper feel for a few minutes they are the most important person in the world....

Managing Sales Behaviors to Improve Sales Performance

What are sales behaviors? They are a series of actions comprised in a sales process, the way sales people act and talk with shoppers. It is not as...

10 Of The Retail Doctor’s Best Retail Blogs From 2019

You know you should be searching for the best retail blogs to learn how to do better with your store so I’ve compiled this list to help you build...

How Does Online Retail Sales Training Work?

Retailers, are you meeting your retail employees' training needs? Online retail sales training programs can help you provide better customer service...

How To Get Long Term Retail Employees To Unlearn Bad Selling Habits

There’s an old adage that goes something like you can’t put new ideas into a full bottle; you need to empty it to make way for the new. To do that...

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Top Voices Retail 2019 - What Was Missing

Every year I look forward to the LinkedIn Top Voices Retail to see who I should be following, who I know on the list, and even, last year, thrilled...

How Amazing Customer Moments Help you Survive Working Holiday Retail

I might have been a nut, but I actually liked working retail during the holidays. A lot of retail workers complain they can’t survive working...

SalesRX Online Retail Sales Training Certification Proves Results

An online retail sales training program can be the best way for a retailer to increase their customer experience by turning their staff into sales...

What It Takes to Be an Awesome Assistant Store Manager

If you’re looking for the top skills for how to be a good shop assistant or assistant store manager, you’ve come to the right post. So many retailers...

9 Powerful Tips To Grow Retail Sales With Role Play, Even If You Hate It

If you’re trying to grow your retail sales, role play has to be an essential part of your daily practice. Retailers who are struggling think their...

5 Employee Behaviors Stunting Your Ability To Increase Your Retail Conversion Rate

While a lot of people moan about fewer people going to the mall, what really matters is improving conversion rates of those who just enter your shop...

Barney’s Bankruptcy Shows Limits Of Poor Customer Service

I first stepped into Barney’s in New York City in 1993 because it was one of the only high-end men’s clothing stores that featured exceptional new...

What You As A Retailer Should Do To Deal With Tariffs

I expect it is going to be a great August for retail sales. Not because it’s back-to-school season but because of announced new tariffs. When people...

The Growing Backlash Against Brands Undercutting Their Retail Partners By Going D2C

I used to work under a high-pressure bonus program. It was everything to hit goal for the month. Some guys would do incredible deals with shoppers...

5 Ways How To Develop Top Managers In Your Store

I was talking to a frustrated CEO last week. Their No. 1 store was failing and he felt it was the manager’s fault. I asked, “What were his...

7 Easily Missed Danger Signs Your Retail Business Is Failing

I remember a buddy of mine who went to work for Circuit City. He did a great job and was promoted many times. Because each employee’s paycheck was...

Retailers: Gen Z Values Brick and Mortar Stores More Than You Think

Oracle NetSuite and I partnered on a survey to find out exactly where the disconnect between shoppers and retailers is occurring by generations and...

3 Experiential Retailers Doing Store Design Right

It’s been a tough last few months for brick and mortar retailers as many are reporting lower same-store sales like GAP, Kohl’s and Nordstrom while...

5 Retail Trends Transforming Shopping That Didn’t Exist 25 Years Ago

I am celebrating 25 years as the Retail Doctor and looking at retail trends. I put myself through college working at the Broadway Department Store....

Why Might Your Store Employees Be Ripping You Off Blind?

A friend of mine received a disturbing product recall on his Pacifica van – the ball joint on the front wheel could break with catastrophic results.

Three Things You Must Do that Help Selling to Men

Many retailers are wondering, “How can I get more sales from men in my retail store?” It’s a good question to ask because more data is coming out...

The 5 Shifts Brick-and-Mortar Retailers Are Making to Generate Up to 20% Higher Profits Every Month

Are you a hungry brick-and-mortar store owner who’s ready for a fresh, people-obsessed strategy? This training is for you if you want to grow your business using a powerful customer experience formula proven to make your cash register chirp.

I'm ready to win

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