Retail Stores - How Many Salespeople Do You Need?

Retail Stores - How Many Salespeople Do You Need?

Are you paying five salespeople during times when you could get by with two? Or worse yet, are you losing potential sales because you're understaffed at busy times?

According to the On The Floor Journal, as a general rule, salespeople should be able to sell at least 10 times their hourly wage. For example, if a salesperson earns $9.00 per hour, he or she should sell a minimum average of $90.00 per hour over the course of a week.

Your total calculations can be done on a weekly basis. Take your weekly salary and multiply by 10. If your sales are higher than that amount, you should hire more sales people. In other words, you don't have enough sales people to handle the number of customers coming into your retail store. If you sales are lower than that amount, you are spending too much money on sales help.

You may also want to look at your figures during any one or two hour period of time. If your employees are being paid $9 per hour and you have 3 salespeople on the floor, your expected sales are 9X3X10 or $270. If you are doing sales in excess of $270 during this period of time, it's time to add a sales person. If you are doing less than $270 in sales during that period of time, perhaps it's time to send out one for lunch.

Obviously, this could get very complicated. You need to look at your sales statistics. If 1 PM is your busiest time of day, you need to make sure that you have an adequate number of sales people on the floor at 1 PM. Don't send your employees out to lunch during your busiest times of the day.

Banks notoriously used to send tellers out to lunch between Noon and 2 PM. Noon to 2 PM is the busiest time for a bank since lots of customers stop at banks during their lunch hours.

As a retail owner, you need to make sure you are adequately staffed during your business hours.

On the Floor Journal is a FREE newsletter published by The Friedman Group (a company specializing in helping retail stores increase sales and profits). Your can read the entire article at:

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