How to increase sales in retail; lingerie industry
Did you know, the lingerie industry is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.7% from 2022 to 2030.
This is largely down to a few different factors which are emerging and reshaping the industry; they include,
Growing awareness regarding the best fit of products.
The increasing population of millennials.
The increasing spending power of women.
The rise in the availability of products for different purposes, such as daily wear, fashion statement wear, sportswear, and bridal wear.
Celebrity influence on social media.
The ‘body positive’ movement, which encourages women of all shapes and sizes to celebrate their bodies.
With this in mind, it’s important to stay aware of all the new lingerie brands that will likely be emerging in the market and how competitive the lingerie industry will become.
You have to ask yourself, am I doing enough to increase sales in my lingerie store? If the answer is no, then good news, you’re in the right place.
In this article, we’ll tell you how you can increase sales in your lingerie store with proven techniques that have worked for our clients.
Step 1 - Find out what sales barriers are prevalent in your lingerie store
Just like any great doctor can’t treat a patient without finding out the root cause of their issue. It will be difficult for you to increase sales in your lingerie store if you don’t know what’s preventing them from happening in the first place.
Nobody can continue to grow, improve and expand if they’re not refining their strategies and assessing what’s working and what’s not.
The trouble that brick-and-mortar lingerie stores have is that it’s hard to measure behaviours which are happening on the shop floor. But those behaviours are fundamental to sales success. Your sales associates are the face of your lingerie brand, so if they’re not delivering exceptional customer service and following your ideal customer journey, they could be costing you sales on a daily basis.
What’s the best way to unearth sales barriers in your lingerie store?
The best way to discover what’s holding you back from achieving sales success is to observe what’s happening on the shop floor.
You need to get your store managers to carry out employee observation reports. These reports include desired steps which are mapped to your ideal customer journey to help you improve sales in your lingerie store. For example,
Does the sales associate greet the customer?
Do they ask what they’re looking for?
Do they guide the customer to the right place in the store?
Do they offer a bra fitting?
The point of this observation is to see to what degree your lingerie staff are following your ideal customer journey. If you’ve never done any work to enforce your ideal journey, then the chances are that your employees aren’t following any of your steps and are making up their actions as they go.
This is detrimental to your business because it means they could miss out on many possible sales opportunities. For example, our client, Victoria’s Secret, found that just 86% of their customers were being offered a bra fitting. This was detrimental to their sales because they know that 80% of people that go into our fitting rooms buy a bra, so all customers should be offered an expert fitting.
Why observations are key to sales success
The more reports that your managers fill out, the more chance you have to spot patterns in behaviours which are affecting your sales. For example, maybe in June, you notice that your sales numbers have dropped; you can then look at your observation data and see what was happening on the shop floor at the time.
You might notice that not many sales associates ask customers what they’re looking for. This means people leave empty-handed because they can’t find what they came into the shop for.
We know what you’re thinking; how on earth am I going to manage all the reports, have time to assess the data manually, spot the patterns and actually get my managers to fill them out?
Use a digital observation app
Join the likes of Victoria’s Secret, Virgin Media O2 and Next, who use our digital observation app to increase sales in their retail stores.
They simply upload their questions to the app, which can be used on any tablet or mobile device. The managers can tap, click and swipe their way through the questions when collecting their answers, and they take just minutes to fill out compared to the lengthy process of using pen and paper.
As the manager works through the observation report, they can also set tasks for the employee to complete. This helps to ensure that nothing slips through the net. For example, they may notice that an employee didn’t offer an alternative product; you can set a task to offer three alternative products in that week to ensure they remember. This helps to build a comprehensive action plan which the employee can use to guide their behaviour moving forward.
Once the manager finishes the report, they submit it so it’s instantly accessible for those that have permission to view it. And what’s even better is that they’ll be presented with an action report highlighting areas of strength and weakness, making it clear what actions the employee needs to take moving forward to improve and increase sales.
But that isn’t all; the true value comes when you find training, sales knowledge or journey gaps that are consistently occurring in your lingerie store. Our bird’s-eye view gives you a real-time snapshot of performance.
You see the good, the bad, and the opportunities to increase customer service. The more data you have, the more likely it is that you’ll spot patterns of behaviour which are affecting your sales.
Drill down to the specific stores, teams or associates that need coaching or intervention.
Step 2 - Align your training to your observation findings
All too often, lingerie brands train their sales associates on information they assume will help them make the sale, or even worse, they do no training at all. Training isn’t just fundamental to sales success in the lingerie industry and any retail business.
Just look at these stats if you don’t believe us;
High-growth companies are twice as likely to provide customised training to their employees, depending on their sales roles.
80% of high-performing sales teams say they would rate their training as very good or outstanding.
Continuous training is said to result in 50% higher net sales per sales rep.
Sales training reaps a staggering 353% ROI for the average company.
On an individual level, sales training can boost sales representatives’ performance by an average of 20%.
If you’re training your sales associates on what you think will work to increase sales, you could be wasting your time. To hit your sales targets faster, you need to train them on what you know will work.
For example, suppose you notice that your highest-performing lingerie store in Liverpool offers more bra fittings. In that case, you likely need to do more training around the importance of bra fittings to ensure they are offered to everyone.
Step 3 - Refine your training in line with observation findings
So you’ve aligned your observation findings with your training; that’s great. Now it’s time to get even more refined. Dig deep into the data and look at what your observations are telling you after you’ve published your first round of training. Doing this will allow you to tweak your training even more to ensure it’s the most effective it can be to boost sales.
Let’s look at an example. Let’s say you publish your training around bra fittings, and a month later; you conduct observations across your stores to see if employees are putting their learning into action. The data reveals to you that although the majority of employees are now offering bra fittings, they’re not greeting customers at the door. Because the customers aren’t being made to feel welcome when they enter the store, it means they are more likely to reject the bra fitting.
You can now go back to your training and tweak it to include the importance of making customers feel welcome.
The point now is that all of your training can be measured to see how effective it is, and any external factors which affect sales can be measured, tracked and used to refine your training materials.
Step 4 - Stay consistent with your observations, data analysis and training efforts
Like with most things in life, discipline is the key to success, and if you want to see results, you’ve got to stay consistent with your efforts. A dip in observation data will mean a dip in insights which could unearth your most crucial sales barriers.
The more observations you do, the more data you have to analyse and the more insights you have to inform your lingerie training materials.
It’s a positive cycle which sets your lingerie brand up for sales success today and for years to come.
Do you want to unearth your sales barriers in your lingerie store and create measurable learning?
Stop guessing what’s holding your lingerie business back and start getting tangible proof that can inform your training efforts moving forward.
Discover the benefits of measurable learning and how it can help your business achieve the results you need to outperform your competition and succeed in an increasingly competitive market.
For more information on our sales app for lingerie stores, click the button below.
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