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Retail SMART |
Employees
Are Key to Profits |
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By:
Dennis A. Conforto
Chairman & CEO of A-Z Media Group, Inc. |
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In my series of articles on the retail grind, I've listed ten ways in which to remove yourself from the retail grind. The seventh step to making it out of the retail grind is when your sales per employee are $150,000 and above. A little known fact is that every profitable business today has to live by this very simple rule of $150k in sales per employee. It doesn’t matter if you’re a service company, a manufacturer or a retailer, the rule is just about the same across the board.
A common mistake made by many retailers is hiring, then not properly training the staff. Without this training, the staff cannot produce revenues or reduce expense.
Here are some simple rules to live by when hiring retail employees.
1. Train your staff at least one hour per week on product knowledge and
sales.
2. Train your staff at least one hour per week on company policy and
procedures.
3. When you know more than your staff, you have failed in your primary job to train and to motivate.
Make your staff better than you and let them fly along with your business.
4. Consider motivating your staff by paying employees minimum wage with a
commission or bonus plan based on revenue. You might want to give them some of the bonus on sales and a greater part of the bonus on profits so that you have two incentives. This will have them protect your interest and reduce the temptation they might have to steal from you.
5. Hire right and you have a great business; higher poorly and you help create the retail grind that you’re trying to get out of. When you hire a new employee
use sales testing evaluation tools (you can find these on the internet) to help rate your new candidate in relation to the evaluation you do on yourself and your best employees.
6. At the end of each month report sales and profit results to your
staff. It teaches them how to win. It is your score board; never hide your score board from your team. They can help you win if you are totally open with them.
7. Pat the staff on the back daily, recognize weekly, reward monthly and party quarterly. They earned it and so did you. Always find ways to
catch them doing things right in your eyes.
8. Rotate your staff, taking them with you to trade shows, so they see what you see and feel the passion you
feel. This is how they learn and you create a learning machine in your company.
9. Share your business problems with the staff and allow them to
suggest solutions. Group solutions are always best because the team commits to the solution, not just the owner. In the end it’s more important that the team commits to solutions than the owner.
10. Ask the right questions of your team, these always
start with the words, "How can we achieve this goal?", then state the goal and sit back and watch the magic of it all.
It’s always great to watch an awesome retailer in action, and you always see how great they are by how great the staff is that they have created. Do you want a great company and you want to be out of the grind of retail? Then focus on your staff and they will focus on your customer and you in the end will win the great business we call RETAIL.
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