HR Rules

The staff turnover in retail is inevitable. And in a crisis and a fall in consumer traffic, it increases in arithmetic progression. But the success of your business today more than ever depends on the skill of your staff. How to establish teamwork and not lose profits through the fault of sellers? Let's try to figure it out.

Shoes Report Experts

Denis Podolsky and Dmitry Kolodnik - businessmen, business coaches, consultants, authors of the books "Retail store: how to double sales" and "Squeeze everything out of the staff! Motivation of sellers in a retail store ”. Supporters of a practical learning model. Studied with leading experts in marketing and sales in Russia and the world: Dan Kennedy, Tony Robbins, Andrey Parabellum and others.

Think of a situation where you have a salesperson who you want to take away. What's the first thought that pops into your head? Especially if you have few sellers and no one to replace him. The first thing you think about is "Who will work?" You need to train a beginner until he gets involved, and will the new one be better? And every time the same thing. Until your patience runs out or is irreplaceable, in your opinion, the seller will not leave on his own.

However, it is unlikely that you considered how much money you are losing. Usually, after such calculations, many open their eyes, and the desire to say goodbye to the seller, which prevents you from making money, leads to his immediate dismissal.

Let's look at a simple example:

1 million rubles is the monthly revenue of your store.

100% extra charge.

4 - the number of sellers.

We divide the revenue into all sellers and get 250 thousand for each. A poorly performing seller who has no desire to sell, who does not know how to work well with a client, sells on average 15–50% less than the maximum possible.

Let's imagine the case that is least critical for you. Let's say you have a seller who sells only 15% less than the rest.

15% of 250 = 000 rubles of revenue per month.

Now we will remove the prime cost of 37 500/2 and get 18 750 rubles of profit from sales, which simply cannot be earned, and for this you do not need to bring more customers to the store and invest in marketing.

Now count this figure for a year! And if this is not one seller, but two or three?

How much money do you lose monthly and annually simply because your sellers do not want and do not know how to work. And if the actions of your sellers

directly contradict your goals, namely to make money, then why do you need such cooperation? In this situation, the achievement of your results becomes in question.

In order to understand the state of the system of management and work with sellers, take a short test.

"Evaluation of the effectiveness of the seller management system"

For each answer "a" give yourself 1 point, "b" - 2, "c" - 3, c - 4 points.

1. What is your personal level as a seller?

a) No sales experience.

c) I read books on sales, very little experience.

c) I myself worked as a seller, I sell well.

d) Excellent seller, periodically undergo training (trainings and seminars).

2. How is the new seller trained?

a) I only instruct (where what lies), but it is training that does not take place.

c) I verbally tell you how to work in a store and how to sell our goods.

c) Training takes place according to instructions and scripts, and I personally do this.

d) Training is carried out according to instructions and scripts, plus practical training, which is provided by an individual employee.

3. How is the store sales training system built?

a) Not built up. The seller was trained in hiring, and that’s it.

c) The meeting at which we are analyzing who worked how, what happens, what doesn’t.

c) Sometimes I send to trainings and seminars.

d) A training system has been built, starting with individual work and ending with increasing knowledge and skills at seminars and trainings.

4. How is the work of sellers controlled?

a) No way, I rarely go to the store, everything goes by itself.

c) It is controlled only by me, while I am in the store.

c) There is a senior seller (administrator, supervisor) who always looks after everything.

d) Total control system: counters, cameras, senior seller (administrator, supervisor), for each seller, indicators of his performance plus control system of the senior seller (administrator, supervisor) are displayed.

5. What is the payroll system?

a) Salary.

c) Salary + percentage of sales.

c) Salary + percentage of sales, depending on the implementation of the plan.

d) Salary + percentage, depending on the implementation of the plan, plus additional performance indicators affecting the salary of the seller.

6. How much time do you spend working with salespeople?

a) Only when I hire a new one.

c) Periodically, I constantly explain what and how to do.

c) Little, I give instructions and scripts, and then only control.

d) Not at all, for me this is done by a qualified employee who is involved in sales management.

7. Can you dismiss the seller without hesitation?

a) No, no one will work.

c) Yes, but then you have to work yourself instead and change shifts, ask the other to leave.

c) Yes, but I will have to shift and redraw the sellers work schedules; the remaining sellers will work hard, but I don’t have to work in their place.

d) Yes, it’s easy, it’s not difficult for me, there is an employee on staff who is responsible for replacing the seller if he doesn’t go to work for the time it takes.

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8. How do you generally evaluate the performance of your sellers?

a) Do not know how to sell.

c) They do not want to work, they work well, only in my presence.

c) They do not work with every client 100%, they are “greeted by their clothes”.

d) Work with each client and give all the best 100% regardless of what the buyer is in front of them.

9. What requirements do you have for candidates when choosing a seller during an interview?

a) We accept anyone, if only someone worked in the store.

c) We do not impose strict requirements, since few candidates come to us for an interview.

c) We take sellers only with experience, so as not to waste time training, only in exceptional cases we accept without experience.

d) We have a tight selection system for candidates, we select only those who suit us according to certain criteria, experience is not important to us, because we have a training system that allows us to train candidates who have absolutely no experience in selling.

10. Do you measure the performance indicators of your sellers?

a) I can’t imagine what these indicators are.

b) I know what these indicators are, but I do not track anything.

c) Sometimes I track some indicators, but inconsistently.

d) There are a number of indicators that we regularly measure and according to these data we evaluate the seller’s performance.

Summary.

Up to 15 points.

You are very dependent on your sellers, and as soon as something happens to any of them, your sales will noticeably decrease. You cannot evaluate their work, because you have very little control over the sales process itself, which greatly depends on the initial skills of your sellers.

You urgently need to introduce the basic elements of systematizing the work of sellers.

15 - 25 points.

You are already introducing some working elements of sellers motivation and get certain results. However, everything is very much tied to you personally, the work of your sellers is poorly regulated.

You need to devote more time to writing scripts, instructions, regulations. If you work on this more carefully, your sellers will earn you much more money and will spend much less than your time.

25 - 35 points.

You already use the vast majority of technologies that allow you to spend less of your time on the routine associated with sellers. You are less exposed to the risk of lower sales due to incompetent sellers. However, you still have where to turn around.

Most likely, you have already implemented the basic technologies, but in order to establish this system, there is not enough. Work through all the little things, collect the whole picture from the “existing pieces” and refine the missing elements. Transfer the work into the hands of another subordinate of yours, hire for these purposes a person who will do this.

More than 35 points.

Congratulations - you use most of the technology that makes you feel confident. You have a well-developed system that makes you practically invulnerable.

The recommendation is the following: do not stop there, continue to experiment, and introduce new elements of training, control, motivation, and management of sellers.

Most importantly, take off absolutely all salesperson work.

Who is to blame and what to do?

With the first, we more or less sorted out - in most cases, the poor performance of salesmen is the business owner's fault. If you didn’t score the most points on the test, reconsider your HR tactics.

1. Remove the crown from star sellers.

First, why does the seller consider himself a star? Does he have significantly higher sales than the rest of the employees? The next question is why other sellers have lower sales? Maybe you should train others to his level, and if it doesn't work out, then find new ones, more worthy to work in your store. You will only benefit as everyone will sell more money and the stardom will pass by itself.

Second, perhaps the seller performs some other additional duties, solves additional tasks that you can only entrust to him. Write down on a piece of paper all the affairs and responsibilities that are entrusted to him: sales, warehouse ... and write down instructions for each process. By distributing them to sellers, you will be able to determine who does it better, and the topics will show the lack of indispensability by the most, and in the event of the dismissal of a star employee, protect yourself from failures in work.

Third, if the "star" does not interfere with your life, then let him work if he has really good sales. But you should treat them in the same way as the rest, do not give any indulgences.

2. Establish discipline in the team.

Are sellers violating the rules you set for the job? Of course yes. How do you react to this? Close your eyes? Well, think about it, I was 5 minutes late - no big deal. Yes, perhaps 5 minutes is not a critical offense, but how many of these happen a month, and how many cases do you know about?

It all starts small. When you forgive a minor oversight, a slight delay, or any other minor blunder. After you have not noticed the violation, a red light comes on in a person's head: "Aha, then nothing will happen for this."

And with a certain frequency, delays are normal, since the sellers are wagging that they can get away with everything - why bother if things don't get worse. Further, it is even more interesting: the most courageous begin to increase the rate that they turned a blind eye to, until you notice and begin to apply certain sanctions - reprimands, de-bonuses.

Do not let you slowly but surely sit on your head, since it will be much harder to win back your positions.

In order to immediately stop such situations, enter the list of deprivation and outline in it all the boundaries that sellers are forbidden to violate. If violations occur on this list, then

the seller receives deprementation in the specified amount.

This is a very effective method. I would like to immediately warn that the deprivation should be significant, because the larger its size, the less the desire to receive it, regardless of the reasons why this happened.

If withdrawing money does not help, then it makes sense to think about the need to keep this employee on staff.

3. Stop plugging holes with the "right people"

Often, owners dig a hole for themselves: in a situation where a seller is urgently needed, they choose the best of those who came for an interview, even though this person does not fit the requirements. “But now we need a seller!” They say. Yes, but why take those who are not suitable just to plug a gaping hole in the state? And how much effort, time and emotions will be spent on training a seller who is not suitable, who will quit after a while, or your patience will run out and you will fire him yourself. There are people who cannot sell and are not ready to take responsibility for their lives and their earnings, who believe that they should be paid money only for taking goods from the shelf, putting them in a bag, taking money and giving back their change.

4. Be prepared for unexpected layoffs.

The most important event that can happen at any moment is nobody to sell. Even if everything is in order now, everything works fine and there are no problems, they will certainly arise. And the most interesting thing is that this will happen at the most inopportune moment. You must protect yourself from such sellers, you should always have a full-fledged replacement for a first-class seller, a person must work who is able at any time to go out and start working for an absent seller.

You need a sales manager. This position can be called differently, it is important that working with a client is not a direct responsibility of this employee. As a rule, this is the next stage of moving up the career ladder in your store. Such a person must necessarily be able to sell and do it very well.

The more sellers you work with, the higher the likelihood that something will happen to any of them. In order to make your business more resilient to such troubles, hire an additional employee, transfer part of the work to control discipline, analyze sales performance, training and another part of the routine that takes your time.

5. Demonstrate leadership skills.

Your personality plays a big role in managing people. If the owner as a person is weaker, sellers will immediately determine this. Lack of leadership qualities and your clear inner understanding of who is the owner and who is the subordinate lead to significant problems. If at the interview stage you feel that a more self-confident, somewhat arrogant applicant is sitting in front of you and somewhere on a subconscious level you understand that he can simply eat you - do not risk it.

If they start to ignore you, not to do something, first look in the mirror - perhaps the problem lies there - and start acting immediately: first put in place, if it does not help, fire.