They say the early bird gets the worm, and that means the best time to start planning for your new retail year is now. Get a leg up and leagues ahead of your retail competitors with these tips for boosting your revenue, closing more deals, and creating stronger customer relationships. In doing so, you’ll set your business up for success not just in the new year, but for years to come.
Stay Ahead of the Curve
What does your business’s technology stack look like? If that stack is more like a stack of papers or floppy disks and less like a suite of software solutions and hardware that fits you and your customers’ needs, then it’s time for an upgrade. Perform a thorough review of your technology to ensure that you have what you need to stay ahead of the competition, bearing in mind that the goal is not parity; it’s superiority.
Beyond tech, look at your marketing practice, your Search Engine Optimization (SEO), even the verbiage on your marketing materials and in-store posters and documents. If there’s an area you can upgrade to get ahead of the curve, you need to take advantage of it. Don’t be afraid to send a mystery shopper or two over to your competitors to see what they are up to. Figure out their status, and then make sure you are a step or two ahead in every area, from your hardware and software to your marketing copywriting and visual design.
Remember, you don’t want to just follow trends; you want to set some trends of your own. Read voraciously and stay up to date on what is happening in your industry. Look for inspiration beyond your local geography and grab whatever works from businesses nationwide. The best often take from the best.
Invest in Employee Training
Even top-tier employees need a little upskilling from time to time. Whether it’s training to remedy a problem or prevent a problem, you should invest some serious time and thought into employee training.
This does a few things. One, it helps out with that staying ahead of the curve thing we mentioned above. Two, it lets employees know you have high expectations and creates an ambitious standard. And three, it keeps things fresh. No one likes doing the same old thing every day at work. A strong employee training program can help mix things up.
Upgrade Your Consumer Finance Program
To beat the competition soundly, you need to find a niche to dominate them in, and consumer finance is one niche where many businesses are lagging behind. Deliver a solid blow to your competitors by taking advantage of FormPiper, a complete solution for streamlining and automating your consumer financing process.
FormPiper makes it easy to make the most of your consumer finance program with a convenient reporting dashboard, a robust lending network, a faster application process when applying to multiple lender, customer-facing applications from in-store or at-home devices of the customer’s choice, and more.
With so much to offer to take your consumer finance program to the next level, FormPiper could be just what you need to beat your competition to the punch next year, and the year after, and the year after that. So, why wait around? Schedule a demo today.
