How to Increase Shoe Sales in a Retail Store by 25% Through Effective Management

Almost every retail company has effective and ineffective salespeople, that is, those who always fulfill and exceed the sales plan and those who fall short of one hundred percent month after month. And as a result, the entire store's sales plan sag. How to motivate and teach lagging salespeople to work effectively? Why does a "bad" salesperson mean that the store has a bad manager, who is not ready to take responsibility? And why, in order to be a profitable store, should the result come first, compliance with regulations and sales standards come second, and people come third? SR expert and business trainer Evgeny Danchev answers questions and analyzes mistakes in managing a team of salespeople.

Evgeny Danchev -

business coach, consultant, expert in increasing sales of the fashion market. Author of the book "A Practical Guide to Increasing Sales of Shoes and Accessories". Author of sales scripts "60 responses to customer objections in a retail shoe store" and "Standards for retail shoe sales." Creator of an online school for fashion market leaders.

@evgenydanchev, https://onlineschool.wconsulting.su/

I will share a case from my practice, which, however, occurs quite often.

Case from business practice:

In a retail shoe store, the total number of salespeople is 5. The sales plan is divided equally between them every month. This is quite logical, since everyone should have an equal chance of fulfilling the sales plan. But the final result of each salesperson shows a large spread in the percentage of its fulfillment. One of the five salespeople significantly fails to fulfill his sales plan every month, his performance varies from 60 to 85% throughout the year. Another salesperson also shows low performance, his percentage of sales plan fulfillment during the year is from 85 to 105%. The other three salespeople often fulfill and exceed their sales plan, but ultimately, over the year, the average percentage of sales plan fulfillment for the entire store is only 87%.

What do these statistics tell us?

No matter how hard strong salespeople try to cover the significant gap between weak ones with their sales, it will still not be enough. The result of the weakest salesperson will always predetermine the overall sales result in the store at the end of the month or year.

Where do ineffective salespeople come from?

They are a projection of sales management. There are only two reasons why weak salespeople sell less than strong ones: they don’t know how or don’t want to. The manager’s task is to motivate and teach their subordinates effective sales strategies. But there are situations when an employee simply doesn’t want to change anything in their life and work results. They are happy with everything.

And then the manager faces the question: what to do with such an employee? Fire him?

The process of dismissing an employee is associated with negative emotions for the manager, with condemnation of such decisions by other subordinates. And not everyone can take responsibility and make a decision to dismiss. It is much easier for the manager to once again tell himself and others that we will work with him and try to improve the results, and the results will be better next month.

And so this situation drags on endlessly, when on the 1st of each month everyone already knows in advance that at least one salesperson will not fulfill his sales plan even by 80-90%.

What does this mean in sales?

Let's say you're racing cars with six-cylinder engines. But for some reason, the spark plug in one of your cylinders has failed. The car will, of course, start on five cylinders, but it will be much slower than its competitors, and it will go slower.

This metaphor relates well to working in retail shoe stores. When I analyze sales of companies that come to me for a sales audit, in 80-90% of cases I see exactly this picture. One or even two salespeople from each store's team are the "sixth cylinder". But few people in the company want to make a decision on this issue. As a rule, it all comes down to the following phrase: "It is very difficult to find a good salesperson on the market now, we simply have no one to replace him."

If we look at the truth, such a formulation of the answer is more likely an excuse for managers who are not ready to carry out rotation in the team. There is a very good rule in coaching, which sounds like this: the solution to an emerging problem is not made at the same level at which it arose, the solution is made at a higher level. With regard to the task of increasing the efficiency of salespeople, we can say that a higher level for its solution is the manager's responsibility for the final result. Salespeople themselves, outside the context of the manager's work, cannot be assessed, because if he says that he has "bad salespeople", then first of all he needs to admit: he himself is a bad manager. After all, no one forces him to keep "bad salespeople", it is in his power to change them, train them, motivate them. But in fact, it is immature managers who relieve themselves of responsibility and shift it to salespeople, drawing a line between "I" and "they". Although in the context of sales, I would replace this formulation with "we".

To help you get the right perspective on all of this, I want to emphasize that I am not suggesting that every business should immediately fire employees who fail to meet their personal sales targets. Of course, they should be given a chance by training them in sales techniques and product knowledge through mentors, but if the situation has not changed after three to six months, the manager needs to make tough decisions. I tell all my clients: "A good person is not a profession." It is impossible to achieve the best results in business by repeating the same mistakes every day. To consistently meet the sales target in a retail store, a manager needs to adhere to three basic values, while maintaining a strict hierarchy between them:

1. Result

2. Sales regulations and standards

3. People

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Why is this particular hierarchy the most effective?

If the manager puts people first, then his subordinates will quickly start to "sit on his neck" and manipulate him. Constant lateness, leaving work early, failure to fulfill the sales plan, unwillingness to work on weekends, all this leads to familiar relations and the absence of real levers of control for the manager. Subordinates begin to communicate with the manager as with a friend, which does not contribute to effective management.

For this reason, the manager should always have the result in the first place, since he is hired to achieve it. In second place are the regulations and sales standards, due to the observance of which the company achieves the result, and only in third place will there be people who act as a resource for the implementation of the tasks set.

Violation of the hierarchy of these values ​​in managers leads to a decrease in sales results and loss of control over the work of the store team. There is a good way to determine the hierarchy of values ​​of a manager in a store or in a business. To do this, business consultants usually ask the following question: "When was the last time you fired employees from the company?"

If they tell me that people have been leaving us for a long time, and in general, people themselves, it means that people as a value will most likely be in first place for such a manager. I declare with full responsibility that there are no businesses in which at least one or two employees do not need to be fired within 1-2 years. Well, it simply does not happen that all 5-10 or more salespeople work effectively after the company begins to increase the requirements for fulfilling the sales plan. There are always weak links, and not every salesperson is ready to change, to leave their usual comfort zone, to work according to the company's standards and regulations. And there is only one way out of this situation - to fire the employee after several months of trying to change his approach to work.

I often use the following comparison: you can lead a horse to a well, but you can’t make it drink if it doesn’t want to. If an employee doesn’t want to change their work strategies, then your time is not worth wasting on useless actions.

If the team in the store is small, within 5-6 people, then based on my experience as a shoe sales consultant, I can confidently say that, at a minimum, sales in the store can be increased by 15% due to the manager's work to identify and eliminate weak links. The manager's constant work with sellers who do not fulfill the sales plan gives results, but only under two conditions:

• the employee's willingness to change and show different results;
• the willingness of a manager to replace an employee if there is no progress in his work.

If the team in the store is about 10 sellers or more, then we can talk about lost profits in the region of 25-30%. And it is this percentage of sales growth that the manager needs to count on, because the more sellers there are, the more nonlinear their sales results will be in the store. The key word in increasing efficiency is lost profits. It is what determines success in business now. It seems to be unnoticeable due to the lack of obvious signs of losses, but if you sit down at the table and calculate how much money the company actually spends on attracting one buyer to the store (including rent, marketing, taxes, logistics, etc.), then in some cases the salary of sellers turns out to be higher than the marginal profit that the company receives. Everything is known in comparison.

The dream of business owners is to hire highly motivated salespeople who will meet their personal sales targets month after month. But the reality is that this is a utopian strategy, because then the entire sales management system would be unnecessary. Why hire a store manager or a sales director if the salespeople are doing just fine without them?

To understand the psychological aspects of sales management in more detail, let's take a closer look at the specifics of the work of salespeople in a retail store, depending on their number in one shift. When there are 1-2 salespeople per shift in a store, then, since there are few of them, they are more likely to approach customers themselves more often and make contact with them.

When there are 3 or more salespeople working, they will be less likely to be the first to make contact, since an effect arises between them, which in the psychology of influence is called the "principle of social proof". Its essence is as follows: we often decide what to do by looking at what others are doing. And if one of the salespeople allows himself not to approach the buyer, then such behavior allows other salespeople to conclude that inaction is the correct behavior.

And this inaction is due to two factors:

1. When several salespeople are involved in the work, the sense of personal responsibility of each decreases. 2. When there are many unfamiliar people (buyers) in the sales area and there is no manager in the role of leader, salespeople work and act more often as other salespeople act.

These findings explain why retail store employees can afford to stand in groups and chat with each other, while completely ignoring the presence of customers on the sales floor. For them, social proof is the inaction of their colleagues. If someone can do what he wants, then I can do the same, and no one will judge me.

These examples of the specifics of the work of sellers depending on their number in the sales area show the need for a qualified manager in the store. And if your business is faced with the task of increasing sales and improving work efficiency, it is necessary to take into account all the nuances of managing the store team. It is necessary to find a balance between the result and the interests of employees.

In companies where the result comes first, and people are not even in third, but in the "tenth" place, there is a high turnover of personnel. Employees can be fired in shifts or teams if they do not meet the strict requirements of the business. The realities of the labor market are now such that "tightening the screws" must be gradual and, of course, taking into account the competencies of employees. A lemon cannot give more juice than it contains, and a salesperson cannot sell more without motivation and training in sales techniques. It is always necessary to invest resources in a business for the possibility of further growth, and this article analyzed the strategies of effective management, due to which market leaders minimize lost profits and achieve sales growth of 25-30%.

The key strategy of a manager is the ability to make unpopular decisions and remove people from the business for whom the result is not the fulfillment of the sales plan, but the very fact of being at work and the opportunity to communicate in the team, without bothering to comply with the standards adopted in the company.