Reachable Add-On Sales
Have you scrutinized the potential of your checkouts lately? The checkout aisle is the last chance you have to create a lasting impression and encourage add-on sales at your store. Looking customers in the eye and treating them with friendliness and respect before they leave is just part of the equation; these last few minutes of personal contact provide you with the opportunity to not only maximize sales, but help your customers leave with the right tools to succeed with their plants.
If you aren’t doing it already, you’ve likely heard that reminding customers of fertilizer needs or suggesting the right fertilizer to use in accordance with their particular plant purchase can help move more product. But how do you execute this? When facing a line of eight customers on a Saturday afternoon, does your staff hold up the line by abandoning their post and running over to the fertilizer department to fetch the suggested product themselves? Perhaps they enlist the help of available coworkers by calling them on the intercom system and having them do the footwork? While this system may help you increase one sale, you risk losing the other customers to frazzled nerves and tried patience.
Calloways, an upscale garden center in Santa Rosa, Calif., has engineered a product display that both solves the problem of out-of-reach fertilizers and acts as a “silent seller” for those waiting in line. Behind this retailer’s single checkout is an eye-level display containing all of the store’s fertilizer products. Owner Christa Christ says they created this set-up to make fertilizers accessible to employees while at the checkout. For those standing in line and “spacing out” while they wait, this display also provides a focal point and a silent reminder to customers of one last thing they need to buy–in the same way that batteries, lip balm, aspirin and chewing gum function in the checkout lanes at a grocery store.
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