In Chapter Two of Nail the Sale, I shared my suggestions for improving Best Buy’s in-store sales process along with ways that other retailers are forfeiting sales, sometimes after providing superior “customer service.” Chapter One was picked up by Retail Wire last week and can think of no better way to wrap up the conversation than by sharing some choice cuts from the Retail Wire panelists and contributors. I love, love, love the insights that these guys and gals brought to the table!

In my last blog posting, I detailed a recent visit to Best Buy, one that was perfect right up until it was time to seal the deal. . . My friend and I walked away empty-handed after spending a couple of hours fully engaged with store associates. I’ll address that specific foregone opportunity in a minute but first, the reason I’m bringing all of this up to begin with. All the retail-speak about “customer centricity,” “shopper marketing,” “connecting her world,” etc., leaves out one important point: if a customer leaves the store, the chance of nailing the sale (particularly a high-dollar sale) DECREASES exponentially, and that has never been truer than right now. The store may not be the beginning of your shopper’s process, and it may not be her intention to make it the end . . . but these days, it needs to be because once you set your shopper loose from your controlled store environment, she’s off into the wild blue yonder where any number of factors can derail all of that touchy-feely goodwill you’ve built up.

. . . I can be a browse-resistant, Benjamin-shooting machine and up until last weekend, Best Buy has never given me any reason to change my M.O. It’s worked out well for both of us. All of that changed last weekend . . . and not to Best Buy’s benefit. After I had one of the greatest customer experiences I can remember, Best Buy forfeited a doozy of a sale (upwards of $5,000)—and they had sunk a big chunk of time into it, too. Here’s how it went down (and BTW, I'm using the recent Best Buy trip as an example. Y'all know I'm about patterns, not anomalies, and I'm seeing this situation lots of other places).

Judging from the great insights that flooded in on the heels of our Retail Wire discussion on Monday, retail localization is in its infancy. In that piece we addressed the historical tension between centralized and localized buying, the perceived benefits of both strategies and recent attempts at localizing assortments through centralized buying structures. Here are some highlights. (Warning, only major retail geeks should press on)!

Imagine if every Wal-Mart and Target were a clutter-free wonderland, where your products are perfectly merchandised, every aisle is generously spaced with enough room for two-way traffic and then some, and the only thing cleaner than the sight lines is the floors. Envision the usual shopping cart cacophony reduced to a faint whoosh, olfactory assaults completely eliminated, and all audio turned down to pleasing ear-range volume. Order completely restored. Wouldn’t that be amazing? . . . Maybe.

Remember when any brand that mattered was provided by a vendor? When the terms “private label” and “generic” were synonymous? A time when Andrea Thomas’(Walmart’s Senior Vice President of Private Brands) lead question, “What is a brand?” was a lot easier to answer? Read more of our coverage of Ms.Thomas’presentation as part of the Bentonville Bella Vista Chamber’s Champion Speaker Series.

Target just decided to take its web platform away from Amazon and bring it in-house. Before you say, “Who cares? I’m not Amazon,” I pulled together a couple of insights from the development that retail suppliers might want to think about. If we've said it once, we've said it hundreds of times: retailers see themselves AS a brand these days, and perhaps no retailer out there believes that more than Target.

Introducing electric vehicles, expanding into vinyl records, exploding private label, unveiling used game exchange kiosks, launching an online open idea exchange, forming an exclusive alliance with TiVo, incubating an experiential in-store environmental upgrade . . . all major initiatives that Best Buy has announced since the beginning of the year. Oh and look for this month’s launch of “Twelpforce,” which will have Best Buy associates scanning Twitter to find folks seeking electronics illumination. (click on blog title to comment) Is Best Buy biting off too much at one time? Tossing it out and seeing what sticks? How can they take all of this on? Well, how can they not? If you ask us, Best Buy serves as a case study in post re-set relevance at a time when some other retailers and brands continue to pick, choose, dabble, and dunk pinkie toes like it was 2000.

The private label re-launch, reinvent and reinvigoration process marches on (see previous post on Walmart's Great Value). Took a few snaps of Target's "up & up" brand which the retailer is framing as a re-launch;however, I think it's more accurate to call it a replacement (for the Target brand, previously represented by a red bullseye).