Photo Credit: Ingfbruno at Creative Commons

When I looked at developing my own startup this year, I naturally gravitated to the bricks-and-mortar retail sector. My background before I launched my own marketing agency five years ago was in beer, and more specifically, in the retail marketing side of beer. I've worked for companies such as Coors, Heineken and Tiger Beer over the years, and the way that liquor retail outlets are planned out to engage customers fascinates me. That fascination extends to all retail, and the manner in which retail has evolved over the past five to ten years to survive in a digital world is even more exciting.

So when we launched our beacon-led startup, I made the assumption that retailers would jump on the opportunity and we could ‘fast start' into the market. We wanted to start selling in September and be a significant player by December. It hasn't quite worked out like that.

1. The sales cycle is a lot longer than anticipated

The path from presentation to decision to implementation isn't instant in retail. It isn't fast in a lot of industries, but retail has an especially fragmented decision-making structure. This means that the person in charge of the store may not necessarily have any decision-making power when it comes to the marketing of the store. What starts off as planning in two meetings, often blows out to weeks and months of heading backwards and forwards.

And each store is different. Walking along a row of retail outlets, every one has a different structure: independent, small chain, national chain with management, national franchise, etc. Taking a singular approach to all of them will come undone quickly.

2. There are multiple levels of decision-making people

The sales cycle length is often a consequence of multiple levels of DMPs: decision-making persons. For example, our presentation to the head of IT in a major travel agent chain was highly successful with the guy in question, who turned into a brand evangelist for us before our very eyes. But then we had to get multiple brand and marketing managers of the individual retail brands to sign off. While we managed to get in front of the IT guy, presenting to that level of management proved more problematic. Every level of DMP needs to be engaged and sign off.