For many retailers moving into the future will mean taking a step back. It is becoming increasingly apparent that to survive and prosper, retailers are need to change the way they do business. They'll have to go back to the days when the customer was number one, when stores were filled with salespeople ready to help customers, when retailers could count on customer loyalty.

In consulting with retail organizations for the past 30 years, my basic philosophies on sales and management have remained the same. The principles that my programs are based on today haven't changed in the last 30 years. What I'm teaching is not new. The reaction I get from people we work with who have been around for a while is new. As we introduce our programs, more and more often, I hear statements such as "that's the way it used to be," or "we used to focus on the customer" or "we used to care more about our customers."

The Customer Is King

Something is definitely happening out there. Society today is placing much more emphasis on customer service. After years of accepting mediocre, even poor service, today's consumers are becoming much more demanding. Not only is today's consumer much more value conscious, they are much more conscious of their choice of where to shop and spend their hard-earned money. Why would they come to your store to buy something instead of going to a mass merchandiser or the Internet, where they can probably buy it for less? It's time to make the customer king again.

One organization that we recently worked with is a classic example of the changing business philosophy that's starting to emerge in retail. The 145-store organization has gone from full service to self-service and is now trying to get back to full service. They can longer afford to lose customers because there was no one on the sales floor to assist them. Of the many changes they are instituting, one is departmentalizing. Each person will have one clearly defined position. Someone responsible for merchandising will not be responsible for selling. The reasoning is simple whether you have one store or fifty-you need a sales staff whose sole purpose is to be there for the customer at all times.

Managers need to place more emphasis on individual customers. In the past, a manager would want to know what happened with each and every customer. Today's managers seem to be more concerned with making sure their staff knows how to open and close the store and making certain that no one is stealing than with ensuring their customers are taken care of. They seem to have forgotten the real reason for working in a retail store.

Personal Trade

My grandmother used to work in a department store. She was good it, enjoyed it, and more importantly, able to make a living at it. She was an absolute personal trade phenomenon. As her reputation for being courteous and helpful grew, so did the number of customers who came back to her. Her method was simple: she cared about her customers and gave them the best service she knew how. They reciprocated by coming back and sending their friends her way. The need for salespeople to build a strong personal trade is returning Today's customers are searching for salespeople like my grandmother. And when they find someone, you can bet they'll return to them and the store.

You Get What You Pay For

One of the problems with retail today is that the salespeople are not in it for the long haul and, consequently, just don't seem to care as much. Too often, retail doesn't allow people the chance to make a living. Managers hire part-time people who are willing to work for less money but aren't loyal to the store. With few exceptions you get what you pay for. You get less effort than if you paid someone more for working full time. Paying commission allows all of your salespeople the opportunity to earn a living, while increasing profits for your store.

Not long ago, allegations were brought against a large retailer with regard to their commission policies that supposedly influenced how their customers were treated, and in some cases, cheated. It is my firm opinion that management, not the commission structure, deserved the blame. This is a classic case the system suffering abuse because of the management style-period. If your superior tells you that you must sell x number of units or lose your job, you're going to do one of two things: sell those units or start looking. Being paid a commission has nothing to do with this. Whether an employee is paid on straight salary or straight commission should be of no consequence to the customer.

Let's say that you're the owner of a store that does just under a half a million dollars a year. You have three people-one that's good, one that's average and one that's just a warm body. Chances are you pay all of them about the same, maybe give or take 50¢ an hour. On a commission system the person who is good will be able to earn a living wage. The other two will eventually leave if they can't earn enough, affording you the opportunity to replace them with two more people like the one good one.

Prior to gaining the negative publicity, a new trend is companies advertising that their salespeople aren't pushy because they don't make commission. Saturn, a division of General Motors, is one such example. There is no negotiation on the sticker price, just come in and a non-pushy salesperson will be glad to assist you. They may not be working directly on commission, but I find it hard to believe that their pay is not in some way linked to their production. If I sell twice as many cars as you do, and continue to make the same amount of money as you do, how long am I going to want to continue? Ok, so they don't work on commission, but it's possible that a person selling ten cars a month makes more than the person selling five cars. Maybe they earn bonuses based on the number or cars they sell.

There is something seriously wrong if you have to tellthe customer that your salespeople are not going to be pushy because you don't them pay commission. The pushiness of salespeople has little to do with payment structure and everything to do with the store's atmosphere and customer service behaviors. And the store's atmosphere and customer service behaviors are the direct result of management.

As consumers, we trusted each other more 50 years ago. As retailers, we were more service oriented. There was much more emphasis placed on doing what was right for the customer and in their best interest. A segment on the news show 20/20 brought a classic example of this to the public. Eight repairmen were called in to look at a refrigerator that was not working. Each was left alone to find the problem. What none of these repairmen knew was that the only thing wrong with this brand new refrigerator was an unconnected wire. Out of eight repairmen, only one had enough integrity to point out the simplicity of the problem and not charge for the service call. Is it really any wonder that trust is seriously lacking in today's society? It's because of situations like this that John Smith finds it hard to believe John Smith has no reason to believe that Joe Salesman is looking out for any one's interest other than his own, especially when Joe Salesman is sincerely explaining why John would be better off with the more expensive item.

The Beginning of the End for the In-between Store

A polarization is occurring in retail. This is eliminating the in-between stores. Consumers will either be willing to spend the extra money to get the service from a high-end retailer, or they will be satisfied with rock bottom prices and little service. As different people value different things, you'll have to determine where you want to position yourself in the market. Are you going to be the high-end store that can justify your higher prices by the expertise and service you can offer? Or would your customers be better served if you positioned yourself at the other end of the spectrum (assuming of course that you can afford to do so)?

It seems as though people's expectations increase as the amount of money they are going to spend or cost of the item increases. For example, if you were to walk into Tiffany's you would expect salespeople to fall all over you. On the other hand, if you were to walk into Zales looking for the same item you would probably expect a lower level of service. Well, the truth is that the quality of service you should expect to receive at Zales should be no different than what you expect at Tiffany's. Because customers' expectations are lower, many stores only strive to live up to the expectations rather than exceed them. The general consensus is that consumers are just grateful if they can just get someone to wait on them. In high-end stores, they expect service, and if they don't get it they are just as likely to go to a discount store. It may be nothing that anyone at the high-end store did-the shopper's indifference may be the culmination of negative shopping experiences they've received along the way. They just don't have a reason to remain loyal to the specialty or high-end retailer.

You're probably saying to yourself that what I'm saying is nothing new. You may be aware that you need to provide high levels of customer service to really stand above the crowd. You know you need to do something that gets noticed. But did you really take the time and put forth the effort to make certain it gets done? Do you care enough to make sure that every customer receives a thank you card-not just when they buy something expensive?

Maybe grandma and grandpa who ran the corner store 50 years ago weren't so stupid after all. They may not have known anything about advertising, and they didn't have any fancy computer systems, but they sure knew how to treat their customers-they truly cared about their customers. They knew how to build relationships and keep their customers coming back. Maybe the answer to the future can be found by going back to the past.