business advice - Craft Focus Magazine

how effective are your staff?
Using the Statistics
One of the greatest things about using numbers, is that they allow no room for opinion, simply
facts. On the surface, judging you sales staff by their conversion rate may appear to be relatively
straight forward. But in reality, conversion rates will tell you much more than just how many
people out of ten your salespeople are selling to.
Using our two salespeople, Joe and Jane, look at Figure A and let’s analyse their conversion
rate figures:
Figure A:
Weekly Conversion Rate
Joe
Jane
Monday 30% 70%
Tuesday 10% 80%
Wednesday 40% 50%
Thursday 20% 90%
Friday 10% 60%
Saturday 30% 80%
Sunday 40% 70%
Gross Sales £2,000 £2,000
Both Joe and Jane each had £2,000 in gross
sales for the week. On this basis it may seem
that they are comparable salespeople. In
reality, they are really quite different and
each must take different steps to improve
their performance.
Based on Joe’s low daily conversion rates
you may conclude that he either sells more
items per sale than Jane, or he sells higher
ticket items. In this case, the way for Joe
to increase his gross sales is to sell to more
people. You see that once Joe establishes a
relationship with a customer, the customer is
likely to spend quite a bit of money. You could
conclude that in order for Joe to get into more
conversations with customers, he needs to
work on his communication skills along with
his opening and probing techniques.
Jane’s high conversion rate tells us that she
is already selling something nearly every time
she makes a demonstration. Advising her to
approach more customers would be useless.
What Jane needs to do is to sell more to each
customer. To accomplish this Jane should
be encouraged to demonstrate higher ticket
items, as well as attempting more accessory
and add-on sales. Very different advice for two
salespeople selling the same weekly volume
isn’t it?
Neither Joe or Jane should be considered
poor salespeople. But, if you had to model
your staff after just one, you’d be far better
off with Jane-clones than Joe-clones. Why?
Jane has a much larger customer base than
Joe. Generally, repeat customers buy more
than new ones and can bring in more
referral business. This makes Jane’s potential
for making more sales greater. The rule
to remember here is: First sell everyone
something, then sell them more.
As you can see, besides knowing how
many customers your salespeople are selling
to, conversion rates also tell you how they
are selling. So, if you had to make a decision
on who to keep and who to let go in your
store, conversion rates give you a quantitative
number on which to base your decision.
Who are your salespeople most like, Joe or
Jane? Don’t guess as you might be in for a big
surprise. Take responsibility and track their
conversion rates for a month. It will make
your job as the ‘coach’ of your sales staff
much easier. C
Further information
Nick Waller, Owner of Driving
Performance Ltd, specialists in improving
sales and service performance. Nick can be
contacted on T: +44 (0) 1892 524 824 or
+44 (0)7811 251 367,
E: nick@driving-performance.co.uk,
www.driving-performance.co.uk
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