Preparing your stores for the busy holiday sales period is top of mind right now.  In addition to ensuring appropriate inventory and staffing levels, how do you train and evaluate employees before this peak season begins?  To make the season the most productive, guide employees on expectations now to add impact to your bottom line.  If you want to learn more about the actual impact of employee sales behaviors to the bottom line, use Confero’s Return on Investment Calculator.                       

Here are three steps to help you get the most from the holiday sales period:

1. Evaluate employee selling behaviors.  Are they listening to customers and identifying ways to meet their current needs as well as suggesting other products or services?  Are they upselling consistently?
2. Identify weak areas and common missed opportunity scenarios and devise training to address improvement.  Identify positive actions and encourage staff to continue them.
3. If you don’t already have a mystery shopping program, consider one.  Many firms find that the return from a program easily outweighs the costs.  Improved service is the obvious outcome, but many firms also realize significant revenue from increased upselling.  When employees know that any shopper may be the mystery shopper, upselling occurs more frequently and, as a result, sales increase.  To quantify the increase in sales revenue, try Confero’s Return on Investment Calculator.