Maximizing Retail Sales: Strategies for Success in a Multi-faceted Business
When it comes to maximizing retail sales, it's common to face challenges in optimizing staff commissions, implementing effective shelf display strategies, and motivating your staff to actively engage. These 3 areas are important aspects for increasing sales and creating a positive customer experience. The following information will be particularly helpful if retail sales are one of a few aspects of your business, a full retail store will be able to use the advice but will need to dive even deeper into all of these areas!
Setting Staff Commissions for Retail Sales
Balancing commissions with product margins can be tricky, even more so if your margins are already tight. Here are a few strategies to consider:
Tiered Commission Structure: Implement a tiered commission structure where higher-value or higher-margin products offer higher commissions. This encourages staff to focus on selling products that bring in more revenue.
Bonuses for Meeting Targets: Offer performance-based bonuses in addition to commissions. If your staff meet or exceed sales targets, they can earn extra incentives.
Non-Monetary Incentives: Consider offering non-monetary incentives such as gift cards, paid time off, or recognition awards for exceptional retail sales performance. Base this on appreciation style as each staff member is different.
Shelf Display Strategies
Effective shelf displays can significantly impact sales. I highly recommend you read WHY WE BUY by Paco Underhill, the updated version found here.
Here are some other ideas:
Visual Merchandising: Create eye-catching displays that tell a story. Use colors, lighting, and signage to guide customers' attention to specific products. Group related products together.
Educational Signage: Use signage to inform customers about the benefits of your products, including how they solve problems and improve clients' lives. Highlight local and unique aspects of the products. Always display the price! Male customers in particular tend to refuse to ask for prices… and directions… lol
Cross-selling and Up-selling: Strategically place complementary products near each other. For example, if you're selling a homecare device, place related accessories nearby.
Seasonal and Trendy Displays: Rotate displays to align with seasons and trends. This keeps the shopping experience fresh and encourages repeat visits.
Motivating Staff Toward Retail Sales
Getting your staff excited about selling retail products requires effective communication and motivation:
Training: Provide thorough product training, and make sure it’s in their preferred learning style, not yours! When staff understand the benefits and solutions your products offer, they can confidently communicate this to customers. Also, explain that not providing these options to customers is unfair to the customer since it could help them so much. That’s a much truer paradigm than the one they’re making up in their head that makes them “not want to be sales-y.”
Share Success Stories: Share stories of how your products have positively impacted clients. This can inspire staff and help them see the real-world value. Posting these alongside the product displays and on social media can help increase retail sales.
Connect to Company Values: Emphasize how selling retail products aligns with your company's values. Reinforce that recommending products is about helping clients and make it specific to your culture.
Recognition and Incentives: Recognize and celebrate staff who excel in retail sales. This can create healthy competition and motivate others to follow suit.
Open Feedback Loop: Encourage staff to provide feedback on the products they interact with daily. Their insights can lead to improvements and innovations in your retail offerings. Yes, this means you need to let them all try all of the products!
Remember that building a retail sales culture takes time. Consistent effort in motivating and training your staff, along with strategic planning for displays and commissions, can lead to significant improvements in sales and customer satisfaction. It's important to create an environment where staff feel that their roles has meaning, they feel valued, engaged, and motivated to provide excellent service and recommendations.
If you are at the beginning stages of implementing selling retail products then check out our blog on championing successful change here. Here are a few key points:
Measure employee engagement and feedback before, during, and after the change. Your monthly employee feedback surveys should cover this!
Deploy effective leaders for the change (change champions)!
Plan out the change and share the plan!
Create a vision for the change and reiterate it often (it must be compelling for staff).
Create urgency. Answer the question, what will happen if we don’t change?
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