Retail Fun and Games for Profit

The end of the year is coming!  You know you want to increase your sales.  But how do you keep your team motivated with PROFIT as the goal? One of the most effective ways to do that is to put together a motivational plan which includes games.

There are 5 components of a successful motivational plan.

G = Goal

If you don’t know what you aiming for, you will never hit it.  Set a sales goal for each month that you do.  It is critical to WRITE it down where your team can see it.

A = Accountability

Your team must know exactly where they are in relation to the goals.  For example, if the month is half over, then they should be half way towards the sales goal.

Use quarters or singles to reward a team member when they know what the goal is and what they have to do for the day to be on track.

M = Mix it up

Add games with different prizes and different specific focuses. Don’t let them get bored.  How many of you have done games that haven’t worked?  One of the key reasons is boredom!

• Different prizes are easy to come up with and we will talk more about that later.
• Different goals are important to keep increasing your team’s skills.
  • A dollar goal is most common but there are more!
  • Focus on selling behaviors and clarify what you want.  Work on opening lines or adding on. Train them on the skill using role plays and feedback.
  • Focus on selling specific items, vendors or classes.  Review the features and benefits of each.  It will increase their product knowledge.

To clarify, you will always have a total monthly sales goal. During the month you add different goals for shorter time periods.  Some weeks the goal should be a total amount of sales.  Another day you reward them for selling 4 items in one sale.  On another weekend select an item that isn’t moving and give a prize for selling a certain number of them. Play the “4 for $4″ game. For every 4 items sold, they get $4 in store credit.

E = Engage Everyone 

Your team might not used to being held accountable.  There are likely to be some naysayers– don’t let them ruin the party. It is YOUR store, YOUR party and you get to run it the way YOU want to.

S = Short and Sweet 

• SHORT:  Run them for one week only. If it is done for any longer than a week, everyone loses interest.
• SWEET:  Offer “sweet” prizes and place them in a prominent place.  Here are some examples:
• Candy and food are always good.  It’s amazing to see what people will do for a snack size bag of M & M’s!
• $5 food gift cards
• Quarters  or dollars
• Gift certificates to your store!
• A “Hour Early/Late Pass” is always valued – let an employee to come in an hour late or leave an hour early with pay.
• How about a “VIP Parking Pass” if that is applicable for you?
• Shop local – talk to the local coffee shop or nail salon – tell them what you are doing and ask how they could help.
• Be creative. There is much you can do with a small investment that can create big results.

A fun game to play is Bingo.  You create a list of 24 items to be sold and behaviors that you would like to see worked on and write them in the squares of a 5×5 grid – like a BINGO card.  Include the Free Space in the center.  You can specify items that need to be sold or a combination of items that are to be sold together.  You also can include behaviors such as getting a customer’s email address or writing a thank you note or completing a 5 item sale.  Be sure to vary the difficulty of contents of the squares.  The first time you play make it easy so that your team experiences success.  Change up the squares on each BINGO card keeping no more than 3-5 cards that are the same.  Prepare 6 cards for each employee that you have – so the game can be played more than once!

To play the game have each team member pick a Bingo card and keep it in their pocket.  They cross off each square when they sell that item or complete that specific selling behavior.  They win by crossing off 5 squares in any straight line – either across, down or diagonally.  You can give a big prize for doing a “cover all” when they cross off every square.

Follow these five steps for a successful motivational plan that will keep your team focused on achieving your goals for the end of the year.

Contributed by Cathy Donovan Wagner, The Retail Maven, who is the founder of RETAILMavens and works with specialty, independent store owners to help them explode their profit, get better results, have more fun and get better sleep. She offers private consulting as well as group programs such as www.retailprofitacademy.com. Cathy is also a Retail Minded Advisor and contributes regularly to RetailMinded.com. You can contact Cathy directly at cathy@retailmavens.com.