Playing Games during Working Hours – Mad Retailers Make More Money

James, Judy and Judd are here today to sell. They’re on my shop floor and I have made a massive effort to stock my shelves with terrific merchandise.

It’s Thursday. James is working all day. Judy and Judd are working in the afternoon. Thursdays are slow in the morning and fast passed in the afternoon.

My Salespeople are going to play a game. It’s a selling game and they are going to be scored – on a level playing field. This means even though James is working in a slow period of the day he knows that his team mates have a handicap. Judy has to stock shelves for an hour and take an afternoon tea break. My retail management performance tracking system knows that and has accordingly given her a lesser amount to sell than Judd.

I have already entered a sales goal for the day and rostered my staff. My software spits out an individual sales target for each Salesperson which I hand out. Off they go to play a game that’s going to give me my best possible sales result for the day and their best opportunity at having fun and being motivated to do what they are here to do – sell.

The objective of the game is to achieve the highest sales. He who wins takes the spoils.

Psychologically they believe in themselves, are motivated by competition, and are interested in developing their sales skills. That’s rather utopian! The probability is 6 out of 10 of my Retail Salespeople are not like that. But my game keeps that in check by identifying their weaknesses and telling me what specific sales skill to coach them on next.

Integrated with my POS system I’m getting sales feedback on my Retail Dashboard every three hours and my system is comparing Actual sales versus Targets. It’s also comparing each Salesperson to the Store Average across 5 key performance indicators or KPIs: Sales per Hour, Average Sale, Items per Sale, Wage to Sales Ratio, and Conversion Rate.

I see that Judy has a low Average Sale, compared to everyone else. I let her know she’s been selling the cheaper items all day and challenge her to sell more expensive items for the rest of the day. James has lower Items per Sale than the rest so I tell him to focus on the products that have a natural ad-on. He’ll get more items per sale and increase his deficient statistic.

Here’s the rub for me – I have been able to tell my staff exactly what to focus on to get the maximum sales increase for my store. Individually they also have a better chance of winning the game. And this happens every single day!

At the day’s end I get a straight forward tally of who performed best overall – my winner. Apart from the statistical analysis I also get a visual assessment that uses colored symbols to identify sales performance across the 5 KPI’s.

My system tracks these numbers daily, weekly, quarterly, and annually to show me visual trends about each of my Salespeople. It tells me exactly what to coach them on to achieve the biggest impact on their own personal sales success – and ultimately mine.

I can’t get these numbers from my POS because it doesn’t have a Sales Goal framework and related Roster with Handicapping. At best my POS system gives me the 5 KPIs at store level – not individual level – and without the individual numbers I can’t make my people play a game. So while my POS system helps me compare performance across my different stores it does not compare performance within an individual store.

I care about who works in my store. When I sign them up I tell them about my sales game and they realize they have a chance to succeed within a framework tied exclusively to their own personal success – based on statistics not emotion.

If you think playing games in retail is not for you try watching your next sports match on TV without the on-screen statistics or score.

 

About the Author:

Steven Lipschitz has a 12 year track record in Internet enabled applications and today specializes in Retail Software. He is the developer of Retail Performer – software that translates Retail Sales Objectives into an easy to use desktop and web service application. For further information visit Retail Performer: http://www.retailperformer.com

 

Retail Management – Identifying Each Salesperson’s Lowest Kpi Can Boost Sales By 30%

Stick with me here for minute – its not hard math.

There are five retail KPI’s worth tracking at the individual Salesperson level: Sales per hour; items per sale; average sale; conversion rate; wage to sales ratio.

If you add them all up (individually) and divide by the number of staff you get the ‘store average’ of each KPI.

You can now compare each Salesperson’s five KPI’s to the ‘store average KPI’ instantly revealing the MOST deficient statistic or undersupplied KPI for each individual Salesperson.

Why is it important?
Well you are now able to say with perfect clarity that:

HAD (employee’s) average sale of say $69 been at the store average of $114, (employee) would have sold $2803.

HAD (employee’s) “Items per sale” of 1.68 been at the store average of 3.02 (employee) would have sold $3471.

HAD (employee’s) “Sales per hour” of $129 been at the store average of $169, (employee) would have sold $1355.

And so on…

Thus, $3471 is the greatest sales increase (employee) could have achieved – the deficient statistic – or undersupplied KPI – being Items per sale.

This deduction gives us great insight into what behavior to coach first. In this case it’s ‘items per sale’ and the associated behavior correction is either a) (employee) is not adding on, or b) (employee) does not have enough product knowledge to sell companion products. The point is that managers who want to help their Salespeople perform better now know exactly which area of expertise to focus on to achieve the maximum possible performance improvement result.

In the case of ‘sales per hour’ (employee) may be slow at attending customers or taking to long with others. For ‘average sale’ (employee) probably doesn’t have enough product knowledge or does not know how to sell more expensive items.

By first looking at the deficient KPI, and then sorting through memorable observations about (employee’s) behaviors during the week, managers can quickly home in on corrective behavior, in its most appropriate or truthful form.

If you track these statistics each week at the individual staff level – which implies comparing each Salesperson to the store average – you would increase each Salesperson’s chances of succeeding within their own specific area of need and thereby create an opportunity to increase individual sales by as much as thirty percent.

About the Author

Steven Lipschitz has a 12 year track record in Internet enabled applications and today specializes in Retail Software. He is the developer of Retail Performer – software that tracks retail sales objectives at the individual Salesperson level – in an easy to use desktop and web service application.

New Staff Scheduling Software Generates Individual Sales Targets, Measures KPI’s

Coaching behaviors based on objective statistical analysis produces results. Software helps make Salespeople accountable for their selling time.Sydney, NSW, Australia (PRWEB) July 5, 2006 — Multicast Media Pty Limited released a new online service and desktop database program catering to retailers seeking to improve retail sales performance.

The online service named Retail Performer allows individuals and small business to schedule staff on shifts, set weighted individual sales targets, track individual sales performance, and ultimately coach on what the system has identified to be the Salesperson’s most deficient selling skill. With this information Managers can target and coach specific behaviors predicted to have the highest impact on sales.

According to the company’s website, Retail Performer is the first service and desktop application of its kind serving the Retail and Restaurant sectors.

“Retail Performer is the first online tool that makes sales staff accountable for their time and gives total control to Store Managers over the only two Operational Expenses within their grasp: Staff Wages and Sales Performance. Salespeople like our system as it offers statistical reasons for under performance and achievement – motivating them in a specific area of expertise.” said Steven Lipschitz, Director, Multicast Media Pty Limited

According to Gary Winter, The Friedman Group Australia, “Retail Performer is the smartest, most profit impacting initiative you can do for your business, for as little as $5 per week. There is without doubt a direct link between business success and employee performance,” he said.

Retail Performer is the only all-in-one, Retail Sales Staff Performance Management Solution online. Retailers may sign up for as little as $5 per week per store. Individuals and business may log on to the secure database 7 days a week. Area Managers can run Regional and National Reports comparing store performance. The software is also available for in-house adoption. The desktop version of Retail Performer is designed for single store operators and available for US$349.

About the Author

Steven Lipschitz has a 12 year track record in Internet enabled applications and today specializes in Retail Software. He is the developer of Retail Performer – software that tracks retail sales objectives at the individual Salesperson level – in an easy to use desktop and web service application.

Retail Executive Dashboard Does Not Serve Front Line Sales Managers

Retail Dashboards are pictures of spreadsheets used by executive managers to visually identify around five key performance indicators. Dashboards have gauges, like the speedometer in a car, and graphs and colour, to draw attention to areas of strong and weak performance of each retail store and the organisation as a whole. They may display: sales per hour, items per sale, average sale, conversion rate, and wage to sales ratio – at the store, regional, and national level.

The purpose of the Dashboard is to enable executive managers to effectively communicate strategy and objectives to area managers who then reinterpret the strategy into actions for each store manager. Ultimately it is the Salespeople on the shop floor who carry out the activities that satisfy the objectives of the company.

Sophisticated Dashboards allow executives to produce ‘what if’ scenarios, save them, and send them down the line to their area managers. But mostly, there is an upward reporting of numbers and a downward communicating of strategy – meaning that the statistics are lost at the individual Salesperson level.

For example, an executive dashboard may show each store’s ‘sales per hour’ KPI (Key Performance Indicator) compared to each other store but it does not show each Salesperson’s ‘sales per hour’ compared to each other Salesperson within the store. Therefore it is impossible for the executive to know – at the individual Salesperson level – how to improve sales performance.

Particular to the retail industry sales are made on the shop floor. Not by telephone or meetings, or online purchase. While branded merchandise and store design attracts customers to the shop it is almost always the Salesperson who makes the sale. But in almost all cases Salespeople have no individual daily sales target because there is no system in place to generate objectives, goals, targets at the individual sales level.

This represents a problem because area managers, who have been tasked by executive managers to improve sales performance, have no further information about the KPI activities within that store.

Once the merchandise and store displays have been checked by the area manager, the next logical step is to look at the POS (Point of Sale) reports to identify poor areas of performance. And here comes the surprise! – Not a single POS system is able to tell managers which Salespeople performed better than others. Why, simply they do not have a time sheet (roster) attached to Sales Targets so have no way of calculating predicted or actual individual sales goals.

Some attempts use spreadsheets to figure out individual sales goals but spreadsheets fall over. They inaccurately produce goals as they do not weight fast and slow periods of the day. They are not connected to a dynamic time sheet – meaning if the roster changes the goals do not, but should. Spreadsheets take time to copy, past, edit, modify, and correct mistakes. And there is no feedback system for comparing actual performance – compared to everyone on the shift.

While an executive manager can see that a particular store is underperforming, because a KPI is lower than the other stores, they cannot determine who in the store is underperforming on the same KPI.

So what’s the big deal? If you cannot determine low KPI’s at the individual Salesperson level in retail then you cannot improve individual sales performance based on statistics – and dashboards are pretty pictures about statistics – which we interpret as instructions for changing behaviors. Dashboards cause executive mangers to want to change behaviors across the organisation but, as you can see, they do not help front line store managers change behaviors at the individual staff level.

Effectively increasing sales in retail – by focusing on the sales skills and behaviors of each individual salesperson, requires a sophisticated, easy to use, web-enabled system, that communicates the objectives of the organisation to each individual salesperson – on a level playing field. Such a system will report both up and down the organisation so that staff at every level can understand the objectives of the organisation clearly, statistically, and fairly.

Staff Roster Software Eliminates Dumb Spreadsheets That Waste Time And Money

If you’re creating or managing time and attendance with a Staff Roster using a spreadsheet, or worse, paper, you’re wasting your valuable money, time and energy.

It takes most people anywhere from 1 to 4 hours a week to Roster staff and set accurate schedules. Mathematically speaking, if your hourly rate is around $25 then your wasting as much as $5200 every year. That also equates to around 208 hours or 8.5 days on the beach.

We’re all guilty of using spreadsheets at one time or another to create rosters. The problem with spreadsheets is they require constant re-keying of information. You can’t search them. They don’t show you any staff availability. Unless you have created complex ranging formulas you can’t easily predict wages. You can’t duplicate rosters without renaming a bunch of stuff. And they don’t have any staff information in them – requiring you to constantly look elsewhere for phone numbers, addresses and so on.

The easiest way I know how to create a roster is to add staff to a week – not a shift. Forget creating shifts – that’s for multi-national outfits or factory’s of hundreds of staff, all with their big budgets. If you’re a small business you need something off the shelf based on weekly data entry. Simple, add staff to days of the week – instead of creating complex shift formats that hardly ever comply with actual goings on.

The biggest problem with spreadsheets is they offer no feedback during data entry about staff availability. We spend hours and hours making calls or asking questions, writing post it notes, and relying on missed communications, in order to identify when staff are available. Imagine if, as you add a staff member to your weekly roster, it shows you exactly on what day and times they are available. It would also be useful if staff were able to update the availability schedule themselves so that you can see who’s available when adding them to the roster.

Spreadsheets fail at the basic need of communications between managers and staff. They are not integrated with your contacts so you can’t quickly see a phone number, or make the call from inside the spreadsheet. Email poses the same problem – you have to go to your contacts program to email staff.

Another drawback of spreadsheets is they do not accumulate data on a periodic basis over time. You either have to copy the sheets and rename fields or save the file with a new name each time. This makes it virtually impossible to search for staff and roster schedule data when you need it quickly.

Rostering using spreadsheets is a waste of time and money. You could literally be spending more time doing other things, or catching up on some rest. Give yourself a break and look for a smart, quick roster program.

This is what to look for in Roster software:

• You should immediately save up to 2-4 hours per week by rostering dynamically
• You should be able to roster within set company wage budget parameters
• Look for Roster duplication options – amazing time saving feature.
• You should easily be able to notify staff by email about availability requirements
• Integrated email and telephony options to make follow ups a breeze.

The most important features of a Staff Roster are:

1. A Dynamic Staff Time and Attendance Scheduler – Roster
2. Dynamic Staff Availability display in the Roster
3. Staff Availability Scheduling and Allotment
4. Payroll or Wage Prediction
5. A Staff Team Register for recording Staff details
6. High speed reporting on any Windows computer
7. Code to ensure proper data entry
8. Should be really easy to learn and use.

Summary

You could be saving thousands of Dollars a year and around 8 days of time and energy using a purpose built tool for Rostering staff.

And you can get software to do it for under 50 dollars.

Spreadsheets may seem like the right choice but they do not actually save you time and money. In fact, most people find them a nuisance and waste hours/days even weeks creating formulas with pretty formatting. Give yourself a break and use small business Roster Software. You can save yourself a small fortune and get rid of the Staff Roster headache forever.

You can get my Roster Faster free trial here.

Retail Sales Training Essential To Increase Retail Sales Performance

Retail Sales Training should be designed to work on behalf of each individual Salesperson who wants to succeed for them, while being part of an environment that nurtures and speeds their growth.

Retail Sales Training is for each person who cared to show up today to express themselves in a retail sales environment and who demands more of themselves. Retail Sales Training is for people who want to feel they have done their best with what they knew, today.

Retail Sales Coaching’s purpose is to clarify, in a realistic, truthful and meaningful way, precisely how each person can perform better. It must do this by connecting people with the objectives of the company within the framework of their own need to succeed and be recognized.
Retail Sales Training Software must work by identifying the absolute area of selling skill, the one out of five key performance indicators (KPIs), which if the Salesperson were to focus on exclusively, would become their best performance enhancer – their best chance at optimum improvement.

Retail Sales Coaching Software should be about helping your company and its people become richer by revealing the truth about their performance, on an individual basis, so your Salespeople can focus on making their most significant improvements in the shortest period of time.

The result of implementing the right solution is that each Salesperson’s performance is increasing at optimum speed, so you can expect your retail store as a whole to increase sales by anywhere from ten to thirty percent.

Any Retail Sales Training system of appraisal and reporting should make sales people accountable for their time by measuring their performance according to key KPI’s, against each other, and against the store average. Unless measurements are taken on a regular basis and compared with the rest of the people on the shift it would be impossible to know the area in which to train.

Today, most POS software programs generate KPIs such as average sale, items per sale, sales per hour. However, they do not allow store managers to set sales goals and divide them up proportionally between salespeople so effectively POS sales reports are useless.

While door counters are useful unless they integrate with an effective Retail Training software program they cannot generate Conversion Rate KPIs – one of the fundamental KPI’s used in Sales Training.

There are software programs available to compliment your POS that will do the job including breaking down slow and fast periods of the day by weightings.

Here are some things to look for in a Retail Sales Training Software Program:

• Store Information Register to record specific information about the store.

• Staff Information Register and Coaching Log to record specific information and availability and coaching history of each sales person.

• Weekly Sales Goals Planner that automatically divides the store sales goal fairly between the salespeople on duty, including taking into account slow and fast periods of the day.

• Weekly Staff Roster to allocate staff to a time and attendance schedule within the framework of the store’s wage budgets, warning when over rostering and helping to improve wage to sales ratio efficiency.

• Actual Performance Score Card that tracks individual actual sales performance against individual sales goals to identify areas of weakness and strength so that managers can coach behaviors.

• Optimally, coaching tips should be integrated so managers can quickly get information about coaching on specific deficient selling skills.

The objectives of Retail Sales Training Software Programs are to:

• Increase profits, decrease costs, motivate staff

• Bring Retailers in line with industry Best Practice

• Filter company sales objectives down to Individual Salespeople on the shop floor

• Focus Store Managers on the two operational expenses within their control: Wages and Individual Sales Performance

• Make Salespeople accountable for their time

• Reduce payroll by Rostering within set wage parameters

• Identify each individual Salesperson’s deficient selling skills each week

• Show sales trends for each individual salesperson and store

• Integrate self-based coaching to give front line store managers’ tips on demand

• Motivate employees by instilling a performance based team culture

• Identify best performers allowing Store Managers to roster those staff more often – yielding a higher wage to sales ratio or ROI

• Reduce attrition rates, retain good staff

• Introduce a system of setting standards, tracking, measuring and reporting results, identifying under performance and coaching for success

• Integrate with POS to produce instant information at Salespeople’s fingertips.

Retail competition is fierce and times are tough. If you want to increase retail sales performance then coaching sales people is vital to success. Successful retailers put into place best practice retail training software programs to help them immediately identify skill areas requiring coaching attention.

Without the help of retail performance metrics you may be wasting valuable training time and missing the point for each individual salesperson.

Improve Retail Sales Performance With These Sales Coaching Tips

Your POS system generates key statistics that tell you about your Retail sales performance.
These key statistics are: Average sale, Transactions per hour, Items per sale, Conversion rate, Sales per hour.

But did you know that tracking these statistics on an individual Salesperson basis can lead you to focused clues about improving individual performance. Most POS systems don’t enable you to track individual sales performance or generate individual KPIs (key performance indicators). If they do, they do not allow you to set a Store Sales Goal for comparative purposes.

If your POS system does track these KPIs they can lead you to some very important coaching strategies:

Coaching on Low Average Sale

Salespeople need to create value in the sale by demonstrating more expensive merchandise. This usually requires more skill and more product knowledge.

Customers need to be probed to identify their needs so the Salesperson can match them with the right product. There is no point in launching into a demo unless the needs of the customer are known. This leads to unsuccessful attempts at adding on. Perhaps the sale itself is lost due to inaccurate probing.

If the Salesperson is in a hurry they may not maximise their opportunity to sell. This will usually be characterised by low items per sale and/or high transactions per hour, as well.

Salespeople need to be aware of natural product add-ons such as extended warranties, product customisation and delivery options. Lack of product knowledge again is a cause for low average sale.

Coaching on Low Transactions Per Hour

Salespeople may be guilty of spending too much time with customer and not closing sales quickly enough. This is usually due to a lack of skill or motivation.

You need to identify a specific behavior that is cause the poor performance which may be thing like too much time spent merchandising, taking breaks, smoking, or talking to customers without trying to close the sale.

Converting customer is paramount to increasing transaction per hour.

Approach more customers and try to spend less time with them

Coaching on Low Items Per Sale

Salespeople need to at least attempt to sell more than one item to a customer. Product knowledge and sales confidence are the keys to a successful add on. Lack of sales skill will inevitably result on giving up too quickly or ignoring an opportunity to add on.

Probe customers with broad questions relating to the product they are buying. You may find out something about the customers that leads naturally to the ad on.

Since the customer’s mind is most open to buying prior to making a buying decision on the primary item, a Salesperson who always waits for that commitment prior to adding on may be minimising his/her chances of successfully adding on.

Salespeople are sometimes much to careful about saving a customer’s money instead of trying to sell them more items. If the store is quiet Salespeople need to try harder to ad on. Even if the store is busy, a customer who has already decided to make a purchase is more easy to sell something to than a customer walking into the store.

Coaching on Low Conversion Rate

Lack of probing, skill in selling, product knowledge, and approaching customers is usually the cause of low conversation rate.

In most cases increasing the conversion rate of the store is the quickest and easiest way to increase the sales average. Converting one more customer per period can create a dramatic effect on the sales for the day so Salespeople need to close faster and attend to more shoppers.

Lack of clear and targeted demonstrations and a lack of product knowledge can cause wasted time with Salespeople performing the sale but not closing the deal.

Coaching on Low Sales Per Hour

Usually this statistic is low because one of the other’s is low.

Make sure you are tracking this statistic accurately. If you are measuring sales performance for an individual who is selling for less hours than being tracked this will inevitable show us a low sales per hour.

Summary

Targeting individual deficient sales statistics provides vital clues to Store Managers about the specific area of performance that should be targeted for coaching purposes.

Coaching on the most deficient statistic yields the greatest and quickest results and the potential the biggest improvement in sales performance.

The author of this article has developed a software program used by retail stores to quickly and easily calculate individual salespeople’s statistics.

Retail Performance Best Practise Now In Reach Of Single Store Operators

In recent years, with the aid of sophisticated information technologies, multi-store retailers have developed a science out of Retail Performance Best Practices by putting into play real-time systems for recording and measuring performance KPIs at all levels of the organisation.

So sophisticated are these systems that they are able to tell employees, even at the operational level, exactly how they are standing up to the company’s vision, plans and objectives.

Using balanced scorecards with lead in and lead out Key Performance Indicators, staff at all levels of the organisation can track statistics and glean information that allows them to react in time and perform better.

Performance based measures are important for any retailer whether large or small and serves to communicate the strategy of the business and align employees with the goals of the organization. Managers use performance measures to track staff against benchmarks and targets. Managers are able to identify poor performance areas and react in time to make adjustments in resource and skills. Big companies motivate staff using Key Performance Indicators (KPI) as the basis for rewards. And performance measures are used by Senior Managers to guide future developments and plans.

Whether a multi-store retail chain or franchise or single store operator; measuring performance is key to identifying opportunities for success. The problem is that systems used by large retailers are usually out of scope and not cost-effective for single store owners to adopt. Moreover, wasting time producing spreadsheets that do not produce the ‘full picture’ may inhibit examination of all the facts.

Usually single store owners rely on their POS systems to track the obvious KPIs such as Average Sale, Sales per Hour, and Items per Sale. However, the figures produced by POS systems are simply a tally of those KPIs and do not show Store Managers how each Salesperson is performing in relation to each other as well as the store objectives. Unless you have something to compare someone to you cannot identify their area of weakness. Moreover, Salespeople need to be measured on a level playing field to make any sense of the numbers, because they work in slow and/or fast periods of the shopping day.

Look at the following example in sport. The Manager of a baseball match is interested only in whether his team wins. Of course knowing by how much they win or lose will offer some indication of the team’s performance compared to other’s in the division. Tracking each week’s result will produce important trend information for Managers so they can begin to forecast the future or look at other avenues for improvement should the team lose matches.

Taken from the Coach’s point of view however things look quite different. While the Coach is equally interested in the team winning matches, he/she is focused on the strategy that will yield results. The strategy for this team is to run out wide, drive the ball up the center after set plays, and score goals using a 3 point dummy run from the centers. Thus the Coach needs to measure how well the team performs according to its strategy. Measuring the wide run outs, centre plays, and dummy runs will shed new light on the internal events that took place during the game. These statistics are measured on an individual team member basis to track their performance and help the coach determine who the best players are or whether the strategy us a successful one.
Not measuring performance at the individual level, the team would be left asking questions without answers.

It is virtually impossible to train a Salesperson without knowing their deficient selling skills. Most single store Managers guess and if they do coach, it’s often by gut instinct alone. Many retailers make no effort to train their Salespeople beyond smiling at the customer and ‘trying their best’. If you can’t track performance against the basic POS KPIs (average sale, items per sale, sales per hour) within the framework of a Store Sales Goal and comparing Salespeople to each other, then you cannot identify individual coaching needs.

Competition is fierce and customer and staff loyalty are low. To strike back you need to look inside your business at precisely how to have each individual Salesperson perform at their optimum. Not only will your sales skyrocket due to coaching in the right area of expertise, but your staff loyalty and motivation will increase too.

Multi-store operations put into place sophisticated Report Dashboards and Scorecards that “make all salespeople accountable for their time” and “filter business objectives down the shop floor”. Making this kind of information available to Salespeople and Store Managers is paramount to growth and success and is now within easy reach of single store operators.

Single store operators no longer need to be a multi-store chain to benefit from smart KPI performance reporting. Recent developments in desktop technologies have resulted in off the shelf software systems that allow single Store Owners and Store Managers to play the same game as multi-store retailers, at a fraction of the cost.

Smart Retailers Dramatically Improve Sales Performance Using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Retail Performance Methodology is based on key principles adopted and tailored by retailers to gain competitive advantage and improve sales performance.

The basic principles of a successful Retail Performance Management Model will:

1. Instill a customer focused, sales oriented culture throughout the organization

2. Introduce a methodology for setting standards, tracking, measuring and reporting results, identifying under performance and coaching for success

3. Bridge the gap between common sense and common practice
Create a World Class Retail environment where it easier for your people to succeed than to fail

4. Drive compliance with World Class Retail standards and practices.

Retailers’ performance solutions include a dynamic blend of different consulting styles, training philosophies, coaching and mentoring. They provide customers with a proven methodology for driving retail success and the skills, knowledge and understanding to make it work, creating significant and sustainable increases in sales.

Knowledge Driven Success

Key to retail performance is the ability to measure actual versus planned individual sales and coach on undersupplied statistics. Retailers must be able to define Key Performance Indicators or KPIs, set targets, and measure the performance of individuals, stores and areas within the business.

The Retail Performance System should provide relevant reports at all levels of the company, highlighting areas of poor performance, recommending the specific actions required to improve sales and reduce wages. With the correct information, managers are able to take quick and decisive action that results in a more responsive business and improved results.

Retail Coaching KPI Measurement Methodology

Retail performance measurements must be broken down into two main categories to be effective at identifying specific areas of poor performance: Wages and Sales. These are the only two areas of expense and income within a Store Manager’s control. Expenses such as stocking, rent, electricity, marketing etc, are managed by Middle and Senior Management not by Store Managers or Salespeople. Thus the solution to improving sales performance will focus on identifying only those critical factors that can be influenced by people working in the store.

Controlling Retail Staff Wages

A Staff Roster System must be employed to empower your front-line Store Managers to do weekly Staff Rosters within the framework of the company’s strict wage budgets. Rostering within budgets is an opportunity to reduce operational expenditure – an expense within the control of the Store Manager.

Using spreadsheets to manage time is useful. But being able to see how much money you actually have left to spend on wages as you add people to the Roster is much better. It helps Store Managers assign hours when they are needed so they can Roster within payroll budgets.

Retail Sales Performance KPI Reporting and Coaching

The Retail Sales Management Reporting component of any system should make “all individual Salespeople accountable for their time”, by setting them individual sales targets by shift within an overall weekly sales target framework and measuring and analysing their performance according to five (5) key KPIs.

With this information, Managers can target individual Salesperson’s weaknesses as their system will guide them as to which KPI to focus on first. Because being able to identify and then focus on the most undersupplied KPI yields the greatest and quickest increase in each Salesperson’s performance.

Retail Performance System Adoption Ideals

Keep the following ideals in mind when implementing a Retail Performance Model. You must be able to:

ROSTER within set company wage budget parameters. Managers must be able to see how much is left to spend as they add Salespeople to the Roster.

GENERATE SALES TARGETS by individual by day & by store by week. Managers must be able to show each Salesperson how much they expect them to make in sales for the day(s) they work – this enables Salespeople the ‘play the game’ while Store Manager’s keep score. Would playing sport be as interesting if no one was keeping score?

MEASURE individual sales performance compared to everyone on the shift. Managers must be able to track #Sales; #Transactions; #Items/Sale – versus Time Worked for each person compared to the Store Average.

INSTANTLY IDENTIFY the most undersupplied or deficient individual selling skills and trends for each Salesperson. Managers must be able to view individual KPIs compared to the shift & store that identify individual coaching needs. Knowing what is wrong means knowing what to fix.

TARGETED COACHING on the selling skill delivering the greatest value. Managers should be able to view integrated, on-demand, coaching tips and advice about improving deficient selling skills and individual sales performance. Know exactly what to show a Salesperson yields the best results.

Which KPIs are Tracked in the Ideal Retail Performance Management System?

An ideal Retail Performance Management System must track five (5) Store and Individual Staff KPIs:

1. Sales per Hour – the fiscal value of the individual’s and stores hourly sales.

2. Items Per Sale – the number of items sold by individual compared to the store average.

3. Average Sale – the average fiscal value of each individual sale compared to the store average.

4. Conversion Rate – the number of walk-ins that can be converted to sales.

5. Sales per Wages Spent – the fiscal contribution each salesperson makes, or how much is spent on wages compared to how much they sold.

Tracking KPIs at a store level alone without being able to compare them on an individual level is futile. Unless each Salesperson can be shown how well they performed in relation to everyone else it is impossible to know their own area of weakness or strength.

Summary

An ideal Retail Performance Sales Performance Management System must:

1. Focus on the two areas within the Store Managers control: Wages and Individual Sales Performance.

2. Offer a Rostering Solution for controlling wages and identifying your best Salespeople.

3. Give feedback via a Reports Dashboard about the Individual Sales Performance of each staff member compared to the Store Average so as to identify the most deficient selling skills of each person.

4. Integrate coaching behavior tips and advice so that Managers can instantly be enlightened as to what to coach each individual Salesperson.