Your profits from your retail sales should be enough to cover spa rent and utilities. (Read more here). This is hard to do all on your own as a manager or owner. In order to reach this goal you need to get your staff selling. But let’s rephrase this, as most staff members do NOT want to sell as do customers not want to be sold to.
Have your staff look at it this way “you are not selling products you are giving your customers solutions” You and your staff are professionals in your business whether it be skincare, haircare, wellness etc. Customers come to you for your professional knowledge and you should not be afraid to use this knowledge to recommend products or “solutions”.
Customers will buy products from somewhere it may as well be from you!
Incentives are simple and effective ways to motivate your staff to sell. Money is always a great incentive and can be paid out as commission or bonus. You can set a standard percentage of the sale that would go directly to the person who sold the product. This could be paid out monthly or on each payday. Alternatively you could give a bonus to the person who sold the most that month/quarter/year. This could be monetary or a gift. You may also want to combine the 2 and give a percentage for commission along with a bonus for top sales.
Paying a set amount for each product sold can be another incentive. This is much less record keeping and is often a good tool to have your staff push ALL items on the shelf and not just the high end items. This could be paid at the end of each day or week @ $5 per item sold.
If you are going to set goals to achieve commission or bonuses make it easily attainable. If your goal is unreasonable your staff will not be interested or motivated. Make small goals easily attainable and purchase incentives to hand out when goals are reached such as $5 gift card to a coffeehouse, lottery tickets and scratch cards are entertaining alternatives to gift cards. You can also be creative within your store. Give out Vendor gratis or aging inventory. These types of incentives are very inexpensive and can go a long way in motivating a staff member.
A grand prize is something that staff can work hard to obtain and reward the person who works the hardest. This can be a variety of things and can be done on a quarterly or yearly basis. You can give out things as big as a trip (maybe you have a vacation home you can send them too), TV, in house gift cards for services or even a gift card to allow them to take a day or 2 off OR come in an hour late and leave an hour early. There isn’t a staff member that wouldn’t work hard for time off and this doesn’t cost you anything. Use your imagination for a variety of incentives to motivate your staff and you will see your sales sky rocket in no time.
If you are interested in more information on these or past topics please contact me directly.
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