Salespeople who are well motivated and well informed not only sell effectively, but they also feed back to you every nuance of change in customer buying attitudes.
If salespeople are indifferent or poorly prepared, their sluggish performance can sabotage your best efforts in merchandising and pro motion, and can leave you groping in the dark for clues as to why your customers did not buy.
The larger and more complex the operation you head, the more you depend upon your selling staff. They become the medium through which you make contact with customers.
Ironically, the larger your operation, the harder you have to strive to reach and be reached by every salesperson - part time, full time, branch, or main store - who sells for you. But strive you must, if you are to make a good fashion buyer.
The selling in your department will be largely what you make it. The majority of excellent fashion salespeople are not born with a flair for selling but are developed through the patience and skill of the buyers.
Although you may delegate much of the actual training and super vision to assistants and department managers in the branches, the responsibility to motivate and inform the sales staff remain yours. When you take over a department from your predecessor, you may have the good fortune to inherit a well prepared and well motivated selling staff.
Your New Sales Staff
In that case, treasure what you have! Continue to provide leadership, training and supervision, so that your people will not lose interest and effectiveness.
If your predecessor is still at the store, try to listen to some of his sales meetings. Look through your files for some of his bulletins to the staff. He was doing something right. You may be able to follow his lead, especially at first, until you hit your own stride and develop your own style. If, as sometimes happens, you inherit a problem with the selling staff,
- consult the personnel division for assistance in evaluating and coping with the situation - especially if you encounter hostility, sullenness, or other indications of disaffection
- check for gaps in fashion and merchandise information and proceed to fill these for your staff, so that they will develop more confidence in themselves and function better
- resist the temptation to replace salespeople until you see what you can accomplish through efforts to improve their performance.
The fallacies of this approach are many. The world is not exactly full of eager, alert, and smart-looking young people who are waiting to be recruited for selling careers. Moreover, the more eager and alert some of these young people are, the less likely they are to be content with selling as a permanent career. They usually move up or out very quickly.
All salespeople, young or old, need constant training and motivation. The same training and motivation that you invest in an untried newcomer may very well accomplish more for you if you invest the effort in some of the old-timers who already know your store, your department, and your customers, and who also have a commitment to the job.
It may happen that some salespeople who are in the department when you take it over do not personally project a good fashion image. In such cases, do all you can within the framework of store policy to encourage better dress and grooming:
- convert some of your staff meetings into personal fashion clinics
- see what you can do about getting for them generous discounts on clothing, beauty parlor services, etc.
- offer personal fashion counseling, but oh so tactfully, especially to the older women, who may have lost confidence in their looks and in their ability to wear smart clothes. They are usually extremely responsive to attention and advice.
In the normal course of business, some of your salespeople will leave or be laid off and others will be hired. Many stores encourage their buyers to take an active part in approving or rejecting applicants for positions in their departments.
Whether or not this is the practice in your store, let the employment office know what qualifications you consider important for your department before they begin interviewing for you.
For example, you may expect your girls to model featured garments or accessories from time to time, or to dress as much as in garments from the department's stock. If the employment interviewers know this, they will give consideration to appearance and figure before sending candidates to your department.
Or, it may be that the merchandise in your department is heavy to handle, as in the case of shoes or winter coats, or that your stock fixtures require stooping and bending, as in some intimate apparel departments. If you mention such a requirement, the employment office will not assign a saleswoman who isn't equal to the physical demands of the job.
If yours is a new department, spell out some of your less tangible needs: people who relate well to youth; people who appreciate high fashion: people who understand the values of the budget customers, or whatever the case may be.
When new people report for work in your department, try to meet them personally, memorize their names, and chat with them about their backgrounds and aspirations.
This is not merely to make the newcomer feel at home, but also to check on any special talents you may be able to use.
Sometimes the simple courtesy of greeting a new member of your staff may reveal that you have just acquired someone who can sketch, or who has a knack for display, or who has had experience in fashion manufacturing or retailing.
If you are dissatisfied with someone assigned to you, or if it seems to you that the salespeople who are sent to you are not the type you need, talk it over with the employment office.
You may not have made your requirements clear. Or there may be some temporary difficulty in recruiting the sort of people you want. When you do get someone who seems exactly right, by all means send the good word back to the employment office. You'll not only encourage future cooperation by expressing your appreciation; you’ll also be providing an example of what to look for in future.
