The biggest brands in business didn’t become so famous by sheer chance. There are numerous smart decisions and careful planning that helped them achieve this.

Every small business dreams of the day that their business can reach countless consumers from all over the world, but very few genuinely reach this point. Regardless, there is plenty of room for success further down the mountain; you just have to know which strategies to implement.

When providing retail services as a small business, there are many hurdles to growth and profit. If you learn the right lessons, however, it can be done.

There are a few lessons that any small retailer can learn from major giants like Amazon when building their business. We’ll review these lessons so you can learn from them as well.

Improve Procurement and Fulfillment

The biggest retail names in the game consistently seek to improve their efficiency. These improvements start on the fulfillment floor.

Using inventory management software, retail giants can accurately pinpoint down to the square foot where a particular product is stored in a warehouse. Larger retail giants diversify where their products are stored; if somebody from Texas orders a product, then there is a good chance that the product will ship from a warehouse in Texas. Retail giants minimize the lead time they have on products arriving with ironclad agreements and by ordering from vendors domestically.

All of these elements combined can help improve profit margins and ensure that it takes less time and energy to process and ship each order. This will help keep more customers happier, which brings us to our next lesson…

Provide Ample Customer Service

When you inspect big-box retailers like Amazon and Walmart, they all have something in common: they strive to provide ideal customer service experiences. Some of these items include 24-hour customer service by phone and chat, which allows concerned customers to receive a response any time,

While some entities have reputations for not caring about each individual customer impression, these successful entities very much guard their online reputations and strive to handle each interaction with the utmost care. One bad impression can result in the loss of numerous sales.

If you want to build your retail business into a major, successful entity, then customer service must come before all else.

Establish Price Perceptions

Every business uses some form of marketing to try to appeal to customers. Ideally, your shoppers will choose you based on quality rather than price. However, cost is a major factor for most shoppers.

When it comes to large entities like Amazon and Best Buy, one notable trick revolves around them convincing shoppers that they have the lowest prices. For these major retail entities, this may largely be true: larger purchases are often sold at lower prices than at other retailers, even at a loss. However, these businesses make up the difference by increasing the price on auxiliary items. For instance, a home entertainment system may be cheaper than anywhere else, but the cables and accessories to go with it are not. This allows the retail company to make just as much money as other stores, but secures more business because of its reputation of having “low prices”.

By shaping perceptions in your favor, going above and beyond when it comes to customer service and improving the logistics of your retail operations, you can begin to create the same conditions that allow retail giants like Amazon to thrive.