Education

Selling vs Clerking

March 5, 2003 | By: deaneparkes

I have a simple mind and the simpler the concept the easier for me to understand. The challenge is to take a simple concept and put in words…

While preparing a talk recently for a group of health food retailers I had the thought, do you, as a retailer, sell products or do you just clerk them?

What this means:

Do you  interact with the customer recommending a specific product [sell the product] or does the customer just walk in, pick up the product[s] and pay for the product and leave [clerk the product]?

From my experience most health food retailers are specialty retailers and do not have the luxury of carrying every brand available. Unlike conventional mass, drug and grocery outlets that can run their businesses with little customer interaction and ‘clerk’ their products, I believe the specialty health retailer needs to put focus on ‘selling’ not ‘clerking’ products.

I understand there are challenges finding staff who can ‘sell’ and not just ‘clerk’ products. Even so I think to continually improve your store’s profit and build customer loyalty you will need to focus on ways to improve your ‘selling’ not just ‘clerking’ technique.

Over the past 20 years I spent many years working with great people at Flora and Purity attempting to help specific products sell through retail stores to the consumers. The key here is ‘selling through your store’ not just ‘to your store’. The current challenge for suppliers is the overabundance of me too type products everyone is selling. There was a time, not really that long ago [about 8 years] when most companies had their ‘niche’ of products and the retailers chose accordingly. Now I am not saying that I would want to go back to those days as the industry has really grown and become far better at bringing health and well-being to the community. What I think may need some consideration is that ‘selling’ specific products and ‘clerking’ other products may be in the best interest of your stores long term success.

I still speak to retailers concerned with seeing many popular products being sold outside the ‘health food store only’ scenario. I also hear retailers commenting on just how many glucosamines, echinaceas, vitamin brands, soy milks, energy bars, etc, does the consumer need and should they carry?

[about 30,000 new products are introduced each year for consumers to choose in all consumer goods categories…….90% fail].

As a retailer I realize it must be overwhelming as your suppliers come out with more and more products, you have less and less shelf space and trying to keep up with all the product information becomes an almost impossible task.

This is where ‘selling’ vs ‘clerking’ may help clear up how you look at the products you carry.

I suggest you carry products you feel satisfy your customer’s needs. I have never thought it a wise idea to get rid of a product just because it begins to sell in ‘mass’. This could end up sending your customer and their business to another retailer.

So what do you clerk?: Clerk products that result in low profit dollars, products that can be bought anywhere and you sell for convenience, products where your supplier gives you little support to help promote/educate/merchandise, products that are commodities [bread, milk].

What products to sell?

• Sell products that bring a good profit margin,
• Products the supplier helps you promote/educate/merchandise,
• Products from companies that help educate your community through media, lectures, seminars,
• Products that are exclusive to your store
• Products you personally believe in or use,
• Products that truly benefit the customer,
• Unique products that compliment a ‘clerk’ product [example if they buy bread ask to try your organic fruit spreads].

I am sure you can easily identify the suppliers with products you should sell vs clerk.

Once you identify the products you are going to focus on ‘selling’ let your supplier know and work together to grow their brand to long term profitable sales.

Current information from conventional retailing says one future trend for retailers will be creating close relationships with key suppliers and building strong mutual loyalty. I think this is wise and I know there are many suppliers who are very dedicated to your store.

The bottom line is to ‘sell’ products that bring customers back to your store and contribute to the profit of your store and ‘clerk’ everything else.

The golden rule of sales is to only sell products that you would buy if in the customer’s shoes.