One of my favorite quotes I love to share came from Jerry Kohl. He is the co-founder (along with his wife, Terri) of Brighton.

“The only thing my bank takes is money.”

Love it!! You can’t deposit effort and high-fives. You can’t deposit training and practice. You can’t deposit compliments and likes. You can only deposit money.

Sales revenue is the number one measure of success.

Of course, effort, motivation, training, practice, and customer appreciation are vital to your store/business success. But those are the means to the result—sales revenue.

Here are three ways to measure sales success.

1. Sales growth. We know that the cost of doing business is not going down. Even with the recent lower inflationary pressure, the cost of doing business continues to increase.

If you’re not growing sales, you’re not depositing enough money. That’s why my clients and programs all aim for double-digit growth annually.

2. Vital KPIs. Measuring and tracking the right KPIs (key performance indicators) is essential to understanding and driving sales. KPIs serve as quantifiable measures that reflect the critical success factors of your business.

By focusing on the metrics that truly matter to your business, you can gain insights into performance trends, identify areas for improvement, and make informed decisions.

My favorite sales KPIs in retail are average sale, conversion rate, and dollar per traffic. I know many people like UPTs (units per transaction), but I find that a secondary KPI to understand what’s happening with the average sale.

3. Individual staff sales performance. Tracking individual performance is exceptionally vital. I’ve worked with stores that didn’t want to do this out of fear of impacting teamwork. Well...the bank doesn’t take teamwork either, AND it doesn’t have to impact teamwork. It’s a data point.

You can choose to give individual goals or not. You can choose to share the individual sales numbers or not. But you are missing sales if you don’t know who is selling how much.

If you don’t ring in individual sales, you can always track the store’s performance for each employee working that day. Over time, that data can show you when employee X is working, the store does well, but when employee Y is working, it falls short.

FYI– most stores who add this are shocked by what they learn. It is a good shock so they can take action to increase revenue and bank deposits!

So, let me ask three questions:

1) What was the easiest big sale you ever made? I once sold a bunch of jewelry to a guy who left his wife during dinner to “take a call” and rushed into the store to buy her a gift.

2) What was the worst excuse an employee ever gave for falling short in sales? I once had an employee tell me he missed his monthly sales goal because he had trouble with his girlfriend. There's nothing like blaming the girlfriend who had nothing to do with his work!

3) How is your deposit and revenue performance right now? If it can be improved, hit reply, and we’ll schedule a time to discuss how I can help you quickly achieve 10% growth in KPIs…guaranteed. Contact page