Walk the Parking Areas

A shopping experience that welcomes the customer and motivates them to come back for more should begin before the customer even enters your store. How easy it is for them to find a parking space? How well-maintained is the parking lot? If your store is open at night, how well-lit is the parking lot and/or street parking? Stroll through your parking areas with clipboard or voice recorder in hand to compile your task list.
Then do the same with the parking areas for your competitors' stores. Again, look around thoroughly and take notes about what you learn.
While you're at it, there is something important to add to your notes and task list. Use the opportunity to build Top-of-Mind Awareness. This from Making Money Is Not Illegal, Immoral, or Fattening:
"Do you go over to your competition, not just to walk through the stores regularly, but also to drive through the parking lot? Write down the names and phone numbers of the businesses that are in your competition's parking lots. Then come back to your store and have your outside sales person, you yourself, or somebody else contact these people to say, "Hey, you know what? You've got to come down here to OUR store. We have an excellent trade program….
"Do it in your own parking lot, too, because a lot of those people who are shopping are business-to-business shoppers, but you don't know that because they don't yet have an account with you. They have an account or accounts somewhere else. They're coming into your store to pick up one or two items, and then they're leaving. Get their business names from their trucks or cars in your parking lot. Look up the phone numbers, get in contact with them, and build those relationships."