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By employing effective merchandising techniques at your rental store, you make your selling job easier, according to information from the National Retail Hardware Association. And increasing retail sales at your rental operation can boost your bottom line considerably.

Effective merchandising encourages most customers to serve themselves, thus freeing you to help those who really need your help. In addition, good merchandising does the following:

• Increases your sales per customer. Even when you serve a customer, an attractive merchandising arrangement will stimulate extra sales.
• Raises your total sales. You can only wait on one customer at a time, but many customers can serve themselves at the same time from the displays you build.

Suggestions for success
Merchandising is not some mysterious art only a few possess. Merchandising is daily display activities that almost anyone can do if he or she works at it. Effective merchandisers:

• Put attractive displays, provided by manufacturers and wholesalers, to work for them.
• Use effectively the many point-of-sale pieces he receives.
• Displays related merchandise together for increased impulse sales.
• Features all advertised and promoted items.
• Ensures that all displays are neat, well-stocked and accessible to customers.
• Prices all items consistently. Updates all prices when they change. Makes sure the store is as competitive as possible.
• Allocates space to each department in line with that department's sales.
• Identifies all departments with signs or attractive decor or both.

Relating space to volume
For maximum sales, the amount of space a department occupies should relate to the volume the department generates. Keep in mind you should display what your customers are interested in.

The only way to know how much space you should allocate is to routinely check the store's record of sales per square foot for each department.