GOAL SETTING SERIES: Evaluating Employee Performance

Employees aren’t numbers, we get that.

As an owner, evaluating team members can be hard. After looking at your sales data, you might start to feel like you are only seeing your staff as numbers and not people. Just remember, numbers are only one data point in a person’s performance.

Use your bridal store data to evaluate your sales staff

Looking at each employee’s metrics will give you a great jumping off point to then evaluate their performance as a whole. By taking into account not only their numbers, but also their work ethic will help you determine their overall employability.

In this series post, we are only going to be looking at your data to evaluate sales staff. If your bridal store has support staff that are not tied to sales, finding data points can be a bit trickier unless you have already determined metrics for tracking what makes defines a high performer outside of your existing bridal software.

Three key data points to use to evaluate your sales staff

Step One:

Closing Ratios

First, you need to make sure your stylists know how to close. You will need to create closing goals focused around the store’s overall profitability. Next, you’ll want to set individual goals for each employee based on that closing number. Each member of your team should be hitting at or above that goal by the end of the year.

As a Poppy User, you can utilize the Closing Ratio Report.

If you aren’t using Poppy, it’s ok. Add the number of dresses sold by the employee within a certain time period divided by the amount of appointments they had during that same time period.

Step Two:

Items per Transaction

Next, figure out the items per transaction for each employee. Not only do you need to know how many brides your stylists are selling from their appointments, but how many items they are selling per bride.

As a Poppy user, the Sales Averages Report will come in handy.

If you are not using Poppy, look at each transaction made, add up the number of items and number of transactions, then take the total number of items divided by the total number of transactions.

Step Three:

Sales per Hour

Sales per hour can be tough if you have stylists that have multiple responsibilities in your bridal store. If you have a full time team member essentially working part-time in sales and part-time in social media or customer communication, then their sales per hour will be lower than the weekend warrior stylist working on the busiest days of the week. For instances like these, have a goal in mind. Don’t use sales per hour to compare to those two employees against eachother. Instead, compare both employees to the bridal store’s goal

As a Poppy user, you can use the Sales per Hour Report.

If you aren’t using Poppy, you can still find this data by taking the number of sales that have occurred for each individual during a specific time frame divided by the number of hours they worked during that same time frame.

Why do we look at these data sets in this order?

By evaluating closing ratio, sales per transaction, and then sales per hour, you can clearly see if your staff is prioritizing income producing activities.

Taking the time to KNOW your data instead of having hunches on how your staff is doing can help make giving raises, offering new positions or responsibilities, making schedule adjustments or possibly even cutting hours or staff a little easier.