Bike trade sales tips #5: Arrivals – how to make your customers’ journey easy

To help your sales take flight, it’s worth considering the ‘Runway Strip’ in your retail environment. John Styles, continuing his series on optimising sales opportunities in bike shops, presents a checklist for shop owners and managers to consider when tweaking shop layouts to help sales soar…

So, last time around, I mentioned several books which can help you develop your selling skills. One of those especially, Paco Underhill’s Why We Buy, is about so much more than that. Paco Underhill was the founder of Envirosell, Inc., a global research and consulting firm. His clients include more than a third of the Fortune 100 list, and he has worked on supermarket, convenience store, food, beverage and restaurant issues in 50 countries.

One of the ideas he puts forward is the ‘Runway Strip’. It suggests you think about your consumer arriving at your store like a plane coming into land. As a plane comes into land, the pilot has a lot on their mind, and as they touchdown they have a certain momentum and keep on rolling, coming to a halt at the end of the Runway Strip.

The same sort of thing can be true for consumers – here I’ve applied the concept to a typical bike shop layout. They make a journey, touch down and then taxi in and come to a halt (X marks the spot in the image below). Then they usually decide how to navigate to the ‘Landing Gate’ they want – whether that’s bikes, servicing or P&A.

In the store, you’ll observe this as the consumer coming in, through the front door and reaching a point where they pause, look around and then either set off to a specific part of your store, or talk to you. That “X” spot where everybody “lands” is the end of the Runway Strip. You probably know right away where that spot is in your store, in fact the wear and tear pattern on your floor will show it too! Why is it important to know this? For several reasons:

1. Till Location (should be at the front)

Yes, your till (or one of them, if you have several) needs to be located at the front of the store. Not necessarily right at the front of the store. Because people like to come to a halt a fair distance inside the store – before they are ready to be greeted. If you’ve inherited a store which only has one till and it’s right at the back then yes, it is worth changing that if you can. Because with a till at the back of the store, not only is it hard to offer a spontaneous/immediate greeting, it creates a few other problems as well.

Consumers don’t like to walk a long distance down the store while being observed. It’s psychologically uncomfortable. Also, as they march down the store, they pass right by the merchandising. Often this results in a single purchase transaction at the back of the store and then heading straight on out.

Back-of-store till locations are a throwback to older era of retailing, where the storekeeper could keep an eye on the whole shop, primarily to reduce theft. If you’re new to retailing, but you’ve inherited an old store layout, it’s probably a good idea to bring that up to date.

2. Navigation and Signage (impacts consumers more than you may think)

Every time a consumer makes a decision about where to go next, and how to get there, it reduces their mental and physical battery. And every time that happens, they have less energy to think about purchasing decisions. So, the easier their journey, the more they buy.

We all think our stores are clearly and logically laid out and that everything is easy to find. But of course, if you spend all day in your environment, it soon becomes familiar. And that means you can start to miss what isn’t obvious to your consumers.

From the end of the Runway Strip, you can often see blocks of similar type bikes, more than one till point, and of course plenty of P&A. But from that vantage point you’re not seeing the P&A ‘square on’ to the wall, you’re seeing it as an angle – so it’s not clear ‘what’s what’ at a distance. With bikes, although they’re in logical organised blocks – you can’t see the differences from afar. And when there’s more than one till, sometimes one of those tills might be the dedicated booking in area for workshop, and again that’s not always signposted.

For most consumers, it becomes obvious after a few visits. But signposting and clear navigation reduces cognitive load for everyone; new consumers, existing consumers and sometimes – most importantly – for people who are dropping off bikes or buying things on behalf of family members.

Take a picture to give yourself a fresh look at your store

So, if you’ve been in your environment for a long time and perhaps wonder how this looks to an unfamiliar customer, there’s an easy way to test that out. Stand at the end of your Runway Strip and take a picture (or several in different directions). Take those away and show them to somebody who doesn’t regularly visit your store. Ask them what they can see? What’s clear and obvious and what isn’t? Where you book in a bike, where the track-pumps are hiding, or where the mountain bikes finish and the hybrids begin? If it’s not clear, you can use that digital image to map out where some signage could help the consumer in their journey.

How would they navigate? What signposts would help them? What wouldn’t they see? After all, everything is clearly sign-posted in your website, so why wouldn’t things be equally well sign-posted in your store?

3. Merchandising Layout (affects your incremental purchases)

As the consumer taxis in from their journey, they tend not to notice anything behind them or their right or left. So, products you may have placed in these ‘Blind Spot’ areas are often over-looked. How many times have you thought to yourself something like “the track-pumps are right there… why do people keep asking where they are?”

How to spot the Blind Spots

So, here’s a bit of fun…. stand at the end of Runway Strip and put on a full-face helmet (no goggles though, that really would be taking things too far…). Now look around. With your peripheral vision limited, and everything below shoulder level hidden, you clearly see the “eye level window” that consumers focus upon. Literally, seeing your store through the consumers eyes. There are your store’s blind spots.

A practical example of a missed sales opportunity in a blind spot might be bulky home-workshop cleaning tubs – merchandised on the floor, just inside the front door. Consumers taxi right past them on the way in. And on the way out, they’ve already concluded their transaction.

Impulse items which generate incremental sales are best placed near the front of the store but may suffer when located behind the Runway Strip (especially when also lower down). It can be challenging to decide what to display in the least observed/productive part of the store, and every store’s answer will be different. The key is maintaining an awareness and probably trying a few different things and see what works best. For example, stacking those workshops tubs high enough to be noticed, or adding a big sign on top of the pile.

4. Arrivals (is the point of peak consumer stress)

When people come to halt at the end of the Runway Strip, their cognitive load is really high. They’re letting go of the thoughts and emotions from their journey. They’re working really hard to remember the reason(s) why they came. And they’re trying to navigate within your store – to find their “Landing Gate”. Which is why when staff say, “Can I help you?” the answer is more often than not – No. Of course, they often do need help, but many don’t have the mental bandwidth to engage at that point in time. There’s another reason why they answer no, and we’ll come onto that in the next edition.

Next time around….

At the beginning I mentioned there’s a lot more to discover in Paco’s best-known book. So, next time we’ll be talking about approaching and greeting consumers. And I’ll give you a clue, you probably won’t choose “Can I help you?” or any kind of “Help” phrase ever again…

John Styles is a veteran of the cycling industry, having worked with leading distributors and brands across the sector. With a well-rounded perspective on the opportunities and challenges facing the sector, backed by a Bachelors Degree in Economics, John Styles is an expert consultant for the bike trade. Get in contact via [email protected]