Were you surprised by what caused last week’s $3.6 million sales gap? Or did it make you wonder about yours?
In The Troubling Tale of Two Locations, the whole difference came down to one simple thing one store did — and the other didn’t.
But isn’t that always how it goes?
The answer’s been there the entire time. You just can’t see it. Or you can see it, and you don’t know what to do about it.
It starts simple: know how many customers are in your store at any given moment — and what happened before they left.
You don’t need McKinsey to tell you what your gut already knows. That’d be like taking a sledgehammer to a thumbtack.
So here’s the spoiler.
The glaring difference between a good location and a $3.6 million better one?
“Be-backs.”
The customers who say “let me think about it” and “I’ll be back.” One location tracked them — captured 123 be-backs and followed up on over 100. The other watched them walk out the door and out of memory.
Now, that little data point didn’t fix anything. It just named the problem. But isn’t there a strange kind of relief in that — when everyone’s finally sitting on the same side of the table, looking at the same thing?
Solving it is another story.
Which is exactly why The Troubling Tale of Two Locations — and its $3.6 million ending — is worth a second read. Like any good mystery, the clue was on screen the whole time.
P.S. Download the full report to get the rest of the story — the complete tale of two locations, and exactly what was separating the winner from the laggard. Then, if you’d like the same picture of your own stores, we can build it for you on a quick 15-minute call.
