Let’s go one thing straight: Your retail store isn’t just about having shelves stacked with enticing products. 

Also, you could have the dopest packaging, killer pricing, and slickest campaigns to create hype anyway – but if the management couldn’t reflect it, you might fail.

With the courtesy of the internet when e-commerce is growing day by day, it has already intensified competition with retailers for consumers’ wallets. Above that, when retail stores are already experiencing declined foot traffic, a broken on-field management can make your store shattered.

So, before facing the bottlenecks, know about the old-school problem and cut the noise with the field tracking that can shake up your retail performance.

Here’s the reality check!

Why is the current retail setup broken? And, how field tracking can be a fix?

Let’s not sugarcoat what really goes wrong when real-time field tracking isn’t smart and don’t focus only on the problems but talk about solutions simultaneously.

Overhead inventory management

Problem:

Imagine this, your best products are “out of stock” from your high-performing outlets, you’ll definitely lose the opportunity to make a sale. And, on the other hand, if your field reps overestimate the demand and fill your warehouses, it might incur higher holding costs that might go comparatively higher than customer acquisition – dead cash can get stuck in excess goods.

According to IHL Group, retailers lose over $349 billion each year due to bad inventory decisions.

Solution:

With a field tracking application, you can build a resource-intensive program for your retail store inventory. How?

• Maintain work order inventory: You, your retail managers, or the field staff can add the part demanding consumable products prior. And, make a good list of available product quantity and mark which needs to be filled when, so that invoicing can always be accurate.

• Track supply chain: With geo-tagged field tracking applications, tracking the whole life cycle of inventories becomes so easy. As soon as your retail manager cuts any product for a new purchase, it joins your inventory and in the meantime, the destination route and all the activities along can be optimized with live tracking – better track it all till it gets handed off to your customer.

Driving qualified leads

Problem:

Attracting the right prospects into your store’s front door and converting them into a high-paying consumer are two sides of the coin. A conversation without empathy or pitching without understanding consumers’ needs can just take the first step towards their agitation. Things get out of hand when your field reps forget to follow up or mess with customers’ purchasing history – ultimately failing to keep their interest.

A study says that 80% of potential leads can slip out without proper follow-ups and it can remain inevitable in retail sales too.

Solution:

While it’s an awful situation that potential sales are never being closed and the revenue being left on the table, a field tracking system can save you though.

For example, a better field tracking system like Lystloc comes with built-in CRM and a business card reader functionality within it. So, whenever customers visit your store, your field sales reps can use their business card reader to automatically save customer info. 

Additionally, they can segment customers and create different stages as per sales progress, so that not even a chunk of information vanishes and follow-ups looping in the loop – instead a personalized follow-up takes place to make your customers pay.

Satisfied customer service

Problem:

Think of it, your in-store product experience is excellent but your field retail reps don’t reflect the energy that has to take place. When your reps must be busy with your customers on-site and offer a solution that feels tailor-made for them, those reps just sneak in late or skip the meeting deliberately.

Why? Your reps may be worn down by the constant rejection. Doubtful self-regulation reflects on your reps’ reaction and that can turn on worse customer service.

But customer experience is everything because 80% of buyers believe speed, knowledge, and friendly service are driving positive customer experience and thus make them pay.

Solution:

Best field tracking applications ensure accountability and consistency, just like Lystloc does. While using Lystloc, your field reps are asked to authenticate their attendance with fingerprints and make it geo-tagged to save you from excuses and deal with buddy punching.

In fact, reps can log time-stamped visits, and upload store photos, videos, or meeting files from the field so that you can make sure every store interaction hits the mark.

A one-man army

Problem:

Let’s not live in a delusion that you can do everything on your own from scheduling reps, monitoring their moves, analyzing their expense claims, and every other thing that comes between to show up your brand every day. Doing solo – it’s a decision to grind yourself and make your efficiency a nosedive.

Solution:

Why not let technology do things for you? With a field tracking application, you can customize your strategy based on your territory and handle multiple stores with grace and resilience. If you use Lystloc, you can create a geo-fence between your multiple locations, and restrict your reps’ check-ins/outs within that particular territory.

In fact, if someone tries to breach or fake their location visit, you’ll get an instant notification to take immediate action. Moreover, you can filter the shortest and best route to the doorstep of your store and keep your reps informed, cutting the excess budget and automate expense management that otherwise flows because of false reimbursement claims.

Visit blind spots 

Problem:

Your ability to spot the gap between what you’re expecting and what your reps make actually achievable can make or break the deals. If you know, your customers want to buy from the trust, convenience, and authenticity that you build. But if you’re falling for baseless updates or half-baked data, you’re hurting yourself.

Solution:

Whether it’s engaging with your prospect, tracking your rep’s on-field performance, or analyzing field service metrics, a field tracking application can make everything seamless. Because they’re not allowed to log out from the application until they provide their time-stamped reports with supporting proof. And, in Lystloc, you get this data customized as per your requirements, which comes with accurate precision and figures on your desired period levels.

Solve retail challenges with field service automation from Lystloc!

We all have been there – when a prospect raises his objection, a field rep misses out on interaction or their knee-jerk reaction is countering an argument. But that doesn’t mean you push back yourself. Better if you can understand perspectives and for that, you should encounter precise tracking without biases or micromanagement.

By investing in Lystloc, you can do from managing field reps to customers in multi-location retail stores to optimize reps’ activity with geo-tagging tracking, from squeezing customer communication data to analyzing sales performance, from customizing tasks on priority to analyze sales performance and strategizing as per trend – everything.

Lystloc is built with a purpose where AI, CRM functionality, and location intelligence take place together so that you, your field teams, and your customers stay on the same page.

So let’s not overlook the problem anymore, instead hit a 7-day free trial with Lystloc.