Too often retailers look at  their sales figures to judge their progress.  We all tend to try and focus on the positive but often, the best way to boost the positive is to lessen the negative.  For example, a hitter in baseball may boost his batting average by reducing the number of times he strikes out. In that same way your sales will go up if fewer  shoppers leave your store without a bag of merchandise.

I am reminded of the story of a sales women in an upscale boutique in Chicago. When a shopper would come in the store dressed in “substandard” attire, they would label them an AWOT(A Waste of Time) and work hard to avoid waiting on the shopper.  One day a level 10 AWOT came in the store and this women was “stuck” with the assignment.  She decided to see what she could do to sell the woman despite the low odds.  It was her personal challenge.  Making a long story short, the woman bought over $15,000 worth of merchandise.  Lesson learned there but the question is, how much business are you letting walk out of the store?

 It seems obvious yet so many retailers lose sale after sale because they don’t do some simple things well:

o   Expect top notch performance with every shopper from every sales person

o   Set standards and positive examples of top notch performance

o   Motivate sales staff to get sales

If your average sale is $50 and you walk 2 customers a day that could have been sold if the sales person handed them off, showed them more items or maybe didn’t prejudge them as an AWOT.  Let’s say you are open 300 days a year so your sales could have been $30000 greater.  If your MMU is 50% that would have been $15,000 more cash in your pocket last year.   If you walk more business OR your average sale is higher, your lost sales are higher too.

The most basic principle in Winning@Business™ is that if you can’t measure it you can’t improve it.  Using the right measurement is the first step. Measuring sales does not always indicate that you are losing fewer sales. That is why CONVERSION FACTOR  is so very important.  Conversion is the number of sales compared to the number of shoppers that enter the store.  Every time you make a sale it boosts your sales figure AND your conversion. On the other hand, every time you lose a sale it does nothing to your sales figure while it lowers your conversion.

When you start measuring conversion and giving bonuses or commissions on conversion, you will begin to strike out less often.   When that happens, watch sales go up.