How to Find Great Sales Associates

Hiring Sales Associates 

One of the smartest approaches that we have ever encountered to finding truly great sales floor associates is so simple that few retailers do it - yet it produces the best results. The secret is to "GO SHOPPING". Make it a point when you are shopping for your own needs to pay close attention to the level of service that you are receiving form the sales associate who is assisting you.

The average sales associate turnover rate is typically over 100%, meaning the "average" sales associate tends to stay with their employer less than a year! Use that statistic to your advantage and start a conversation with the associates that impressed you the most, get their names and tell them you might be hiring and ask them if they would be interested in speaking to you about a position in YOUR store. BE SELECTIVE and hire the people you really want instead of the person who walks through your door to answer your help wanted ad.

For more information on this topic, please contact us at www.AtlantaRetailConsulting.com.

How to Determine How Many Store Hours to Schedule

Store Labor Scheduling

Large retailers utilize very complex and very expensive software programs to calculate their staffing needs. Many utilize the programs effectively, some do not. The concept of calculating store staffing levels is actually rather basic and can be done by a small retail organization on a store by store basis by utilizing a few key concepts.

First, the retailer needs to think about their store tasks in groupings of similar functions. An example might be all selling tasks on the sales-floor. Second, the retailer needs to create productivity benchmarks for each of the function groups, making sure to include all of their employees in a group. Examples of possible function groupings might be as follows (yours may vary):


- All selling tasks (including returns and adjustments)
- All receiving, processing, merchandising tasks
- All maintenance, housekeeping and cleaning tasks
- All recovery tasks (neatening up after your customers)
- All pricing and signage tasks
- All clearance merchandise tasks

For each grouping, like above, you should then select one key task or type of work for each group that can be easily measured and calculate an overall productivity benchmark for that group. See the article on developing productivity benchmarks for more information. Using the benchmarks, if you then project what your workload may be next week or the week after you can calculate how many hours of employee time you will need to get that amount of work done. See below for an example:



Having this detail will tell you that you may need 43.5 hours to run your store for the period you are looking at based upon your forecast of the workload coming up and the time it takes to do the work. Sophisticated retailers use this type of logic to develop staffing guidelines for the week then schedule the hours by day based upon their knowledge of when the work will happen. For example, if most of your sales occur on Saturday, then you should make sure you schedule most of your selling time when your customer traffic will be heaviest.

For more information on this very important topic, contact us at WWW.AtlantaRetailConsulting.com.