Setting Daily Expectations For Your Store

How many times have you heard yourself saying “fingers crossed” you will have a good day or  “hope” that customers come into your store? If this sounds all too familiar, then your daily expectations aren’t on track. As a single or multiple store owner, it’s important to identify in advance what your daily goals are. Sometimes this means just accomplishing a rock star day of sales. Other times – and often based on previous year numbers – it means using your time to prepare for busier days. Ultimately, though, the idea is to have a goal in place for each day in an effort to meet your total weekly, monthly and yearly numbers.

Now before you start freaking out and wondering how you will get this all organized, consider the following. Do you:

1. Track your daily sales?

2. Plan special events, including sales & markdowns, in advance?

3. Set monthly goals?

4. Set annual goals?

5. Set personal selling and team selling goals?

It’s likely you are already doing this, since these steps are near natural for retailers. To help maximize this, though, you need to actually write things down (yes, seems obvious yet so many retailers still don’t do this) and then break down your goals on a daily level based on the following.

1. Identify last year’s numbers (if available) per day, per week and per month

2. Identify monthly financial overhead, including product and operations

3. Identify your target numbers per month to pay expenses, including personal salary. 

4. Divide this goal by 4 (total weeks in month) to determine weekly goals. 

5. Divide your weekly goals by day, adjusting them based on known special events, peak days, down days, employees on schedule and other known factors (local events, holidays, etc). 

While this may seem daunting, it’s actually quite refreshing to get completed and implemented into your daily routine. Remember to take your daily goals and split them up among working employees (or keep for just your single self!).

Once this is in place, take the initiative to plan ahead to promote your store sales, events and everyday product assortment. Having financial goals identified will encourage you to plan in advance – therefore creating more rhyme and reason to your sales being made.

So what do you say? Still dreading the daily goal shift? Have this already in place? Let us know what you think! Share your tips below.