Traditional Brick & Mortar retailers are dying more quickly than expected because, despite all the talk, they just can’t deliver consistently perfect shopping experiences. If anything, the in-store shopping experiences are getting worse; and this failure is in stark contrast to the constantly improving on-line shopping experience. Every failure at the shelf, every indifferent or rude sales associate, and every failed attempt at customer service drives consumers out of stores and into their phone for their next purchase. Traditional retail will either live or die by the experience provided to shoppers, and the speed at which the growth of online buying is taking of the shopper wallet paints a bleak report card. For over a decade the Industry has chanted “Get Closer to the Consumer,” and “Shopper Experience,” yet the dismal experience in the stores spirals downhill. If the answer is known so clearly, why is Brick and Mortar Retail failing so badly, and why does it continue to fail? The answer is found in corporate leadership. Not that these companies are unaware of the need for a clear culture, strategy, communication, task assignment, accountability, and follow-up; but rather, in the geographically spread out universe of stores these leaders lack the tools necessary to execute on these well-known keys to organizational health. Without tools to make changes, test their success, communicate standards, and ensure consistent execution against those standards, retail leaders have no choice but to depend on a team of store managers (already overworked) to create individual armies of retail sales associates capable of delivering the exact same, consistently perfect job of executing the seven steps of the retail sale in a way that delights customers in such a way as to increase traffic, basket size, and margin.
