This YouTube video features Sarah from The Boutique Hub addressing small-retailer concerns about prolonged slow sales. She advises retailers to diagnose causes by asking why (the Hub’s practice: ask "why" five times), to review whether the owner/staff presence has declined, to audit inventory (too much or too little and poor rotation), and to interview customers. She emphasizes getting back to basics, simplifying the offering (less is more), walking the store from a customer perspective, and being proactive rather than blaming external factors.
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Hey everybody, it's Sarah. And I'm back from the boutique hub to answer again another one of our frequently asked questions. This question seems to be asked all year round. It depends on who you are, what type of business you're in. But there's always a slow time, right? So we're always asked this question. Where are my customers? Why am I not making sales? How do I get more customers to my site or into my front door? How do I get them to buy more? Guys, we hear this all the time and it happens. Every retailer is going to have a slow time. Now, if it prolongs, that becomes a problem. So here are a couple tips for you today. To get busy, to figure out where the problem is. Now, granted, every store, like I said, is going to have some downtime. Customers are going to go through a transition, right? But when that prolongs and we start to see a trend that certain customers aren't shopping with us anymore, or certain customers that used to spend, you know, $200 at a time are now only spending 50, right? We have to get busy and we have got to be proactive and ask ourselves why? Number one, what is it we are no longer offering that customer? Number two, what problems are they having in their lives that I can't solve? And number three, what have I stopped doing? And this is not just you as the business owner, but maybe it's your staff. A couple things that I know that trend in these three areas are the following. Number one, have you, the business owner, started to take more time off? Are you no longer present or available in the store like you used to be or as the face of your social media? That's a big one. It seems like the more or the bigger you get as a business or the longer you've been in it, the more you tend to take off or you get busy in the back room doing book work or ordering more inventory and you're not as present as you used to be. Your customers notice that they start to feel like you're not available for them. What do they do? They start to find somebody who is the next one. What are you not solving in their life, right? That goes along with the number two, what are you not offering them or what are you offering them? That is too much. A lot of times boutique owners, retailers feel when their sales drop off, it's gotta be because they don't like my inventory. And that's usually not even the problem. Sometimes, sometimes they haven't even seen your inventory. Sometimes you're pushing so much stuff at them. They can't see it all, they can't absorb it all. They get lost in it. They start to feel confused. Nobody goes to a boutique because they want it to feel like a junked up discount store. And this goes for your website as well as your in store experience. They go to discover things, right? They go to be able to see and get the feel for things and be transported into another place, right? To have their problem solved, to be experimental. When you have too much of a lot of the same exact thing, it can become overwhelming. Very first all, a customer might think, wow, she has so much of this stuff. It's pretty much the same style, pretty much the same colors, pretty much the same feel. Why is there so much? Maybe nobody else likes it either. So having a healthy amount of inventory in your store is important. Too much is too overwhelming. Too little is unattractive as well. I'm a big believer in understanding your inventory, and that's a whole nother video. But understanding your inventory, making it turn quickly, right? Constantly rotating things. Because we can't sell inventory, we can only sell cash or buy things with cash, right? We can sell inventory. Sorry, the only thing we can buy things with is cash. We cannot use our inventory to go buy more products or pay our overhead or pay our employees. So too much inventory is a problem. But too little also is a problem. So when you're not making sales, please go back and ask yourself why. We like to ask the word why five times here at the Hub. Anytime we have a situation, we've got to get to the root of the problem. So if you're not making sales, if you're not attracting those customers, you're missing out on customers that used to shop with you but no longer are, or their. Their average order value has drastically decreased. Ask yourself why. Ask yourself or your staff why. Ask your customers why. Customer interviews are a huge thing. But nonetheless, don't just get lazy and don't just blame it on the economy or blame it on taxes or blame it on the weather. Those things can all play a major part. But a lot of it comes back to us as the business owner. What are we no longer doing that we did when we had these sales going? What are we no longer doing personally? Experience wise, resource wise, there's a lot of things. But nonetheless, get busy, Figure it out. Go back to the basics. Less is more. Spreading yourself too wide, too thin attracts absolutely nobody. Are you confusing your customer? Is your staff confused about why you're in this business and your mission? Lots of different things. Can go into the why am I not making the sales? Put yourself in the position, in the shoes of the customer. Walk through your store and ask yourself, honestly, would I shop here? Why or why not? Guys, I hope that gave you some insight. I hope you find a way to get up off your chair in your office, get out on your sales floor, go through your website, go through it with the eyes of a customer, and I guarantee you, you will figure out why you're no longer making the sales that you used to Too much, too little. Something your customers didn't want to begin with. There's so many different reasons, but a lot of it is on us. So be the investigator. Figure it out. You're. It's all part of being an entrepreneur. This is the fun stuff, right? This is the fun stuff. This is where it gets challenging. So that is my tip for you guys today. Understand everybody's gonna have a downtime, but we've got to come back up from it. And a lot of times it's through change. It's going back to what we really started the business for in the beginning because then we are super passionate about it. That was the honeymoon phase. We got to get back to the honeymoon phase. Alright guys, if you like this, let us know. If you have other questions, please continue to email them to us. Drop them in a Facebook message. Drop them below. You can always find us at thebotiquehub. Com. Again, my name is Sarah and I'll be back with you soon.
