I’ve worked in retail management for few years, and one mistake I often see is to building strategy from the top down. In most cases, the store plans, business strategies, product promotion, almost everything is designed at headquarter, miles away from the actual store location. Even though they have many years of data to understand customer need, and success rate for different product, the local situations are often very different. It’s always very difficult to to replicate the original plan, and there aren’t many resources to connect for customized need of each store.

For example, one of the store was located in a small town in Kansas, and the corporate office wanted to design marketing strategy for home owners, and do-it-yourself people. The salesperson were more comfortable working with big contractors, and needed to have promotional strategies targeting regular contractor with an ability to customize quote. Eventually the decision was made by corporate not to give any additional benefit for big purchases, rather treat everyone with same features. That decision caused a huge loss, as the contractor move on to competitor location, where they felt more comfortable with customized care. The implementation was very difficult, and team members felt uncomfortable with the challenges. I would consult with local employees before implementing such challenges and marketing strategy, where I think the company could do better.