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Are your store operations preventing sales?

June 7, 2011 by Harry Friedman

Have you ever had someone ask you the reason behind one of your policies or procedures, such as not accepting any deliveries on Tuesdays? Or, maybe you've had a new employee question a policy that seemingly made no sense? Did you find yourself saying, "Because we've always done it that way?"

If you've ever uttered these words or heard any member of your staff recite them, you may have outdated systems in place. These systems might even be hindering sales. Take a look at the following policies that retailers realized were not only outdated, but were preventing sales:

• For 40 years, a successful music store had a policy of never selling anything that cost more than $200 over the phone. There was one problem with the policy; today nothing in the store sells for less than $200!
• A national chain of marine boating stores carried lures in the fishing department of West Coast stores, for species of fish that were only caught on the East Coast. Guess where the buyer lived?
• A chain of 150 stores had a policy that required every phone call made from every store to be recorded on a phone log. Four years later, no one was ever looking at the logs and 20,000 trees fell to provide the paper they were written on!

These are classic examples of what is referred to as The Roast Beef Syndrome. The Roast Beef Syndrome is an old story about a young woman who has her boyfriend over for a roast beef dinner. When she serves him the meal, he savors the wonderful aroma and notices that the ends of the roast are cut off and asks why. Somewhat puzzled, the young woman replies she doesn't know the reason why, but it's the way her mother always cooked roast beef. So she calls her mother to find out why she cut the ends off the roast. Amazingly enough, her mother says she doesn't know either, but that's the way her mother always did it. Now the mother proceeds to call the grand­mother who says that the reason she cut the ends off the roast beef was because it was the only way it would fit into her small oven!

Obviously, the need to cut the ends off the roast was long gone, yet two generations continued to do it without even knowing why. Other than needlessly throwing away a small portion of the roast, there was no harm done by cutting the ends off. When it comes to your stores, however, continuing to follow policies and procedures that are outdated can be very costly.

How the Roast Beef Syndrome Develops

As a business grows and develops, it becomes increasingly necessary to implement new systems, policies and procedures to facilitate and manage that growth. What tends to happen afterwards is that weeks, months and even years later, these same systems are still in effect even though they may no longer serve a purpose. Worse yet, as was the case with the mu­sic store referenced earlier, these systems actually end up hin­dering sales efforts.

Also, new policies and procedures are sometimes developed without any con­sideration being given as to how they may affect sales. For example, suppose your com­pany has a strict policy on obtaining the customer's name and address for its mailing list. As a manager, you understand the importance of building the mailing list and the reason for the policy. But you also know that nothing is more important than making the sale and satisfying your customers. Your salespeople, on the other hand, may just follow the policy without understanding that making the sale is more important than ob­taining the customer's address.

When faced with the choice of making a sale without getting the customer's name, or losing the sale completely, many salespeople will feel as though they are in a no-win situation. If they sell the merchandise without getting the customer's name and ad­dress they are violating company policy. On the other hand, they may risk losing the sale if they push too hard to get the information from a customer who doesn't want to be added to the mailing list. It's the responsibility of management to make certain that the systems that are put in place to accommodate operations do not impede the salesperson's efforts to sell; after all, without sales there would be no operations.

Eliminate the Potential for Roast Beef Situations

Both new policies and old have the potential for becoming obstacles preventing your salespeople from maximizing their sales opportunities. Generally speaking, coming up with new policies and procedures is easy. The difficult part is reviewing and revis­ing them to keep them current. Think about your policies and procedures. What systems or organizational bottlenecks are in place that may be preventing your salespeople from making more sales?

Are there policies in effect that could be classified as roast beef? Just because you've always done it that way, doesn't mean it's the way you should continue to do it! Clean up the systems that may be preventing sales in your stores today!

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