How to find a good seller?

03.04.2023 17:09

Trade automation expert at Torgsoft

Як знайти продавця для магазину?

The salesperson is the face of the retail business. The quality of his or her work determines the level of customer satisfaction with the service and, in general, the profitability of the store. Therefore, the question of how to find a salesperson is important for every entrepreneur who cares about proper service in their store.

Finding a job as a salesperson is as difficult as finding a good employer. How do you select staff for your retail business? Where to look for salespeople who can be trusted with the store, revenue and, ultimately, customers?

In this article, we provide steps and tips on how to successfully hire salespeople in retail.

Depending on the size of the business, the search for employees can be carried out either by the owner himself or by his subordinate managers: the head of the HR department or an HR specialist.

№1. Requirements for the seller

To make the search for an employee successful, you need to understand two main points:

What do you expect from the employee?
What are you ready to offer the employee in response to your expectations?

Write down the functionality of the vacancy point by point:

What group of goods the future salesperson will sell.
Working conditions: schedule, workplace, form of employment.
What accounting programme will he/she work with.
The procedure for calculating salaries and bonuses. What influences the high performance of a salesperson: sales of a certain type of goods, the number of sales per month, communication with customers, the number of repeat purchases.
Remuneration factors for the respective position.
Opportunities for career growth.
Length of leave, sick pay.
Participation in corporate training programmes and internships.
Other bonuses include health insurance, discounts on goods.

Make separate requirements for the applicant:

Professional skills and competences of the salesperson.
Personal traits of the employee: stress resistance, responsibility, discipline, empathy, sociability, politeness, etc.

This way, you will "weed out" candidates who are not suitable for your vacancy in advance.

It is worth remembering that Ukraine has labour laws that prohibit discrimination in employment based on gender and age. Therefore, when writing a job description and employee responsibilities, choose the correct wording.

№2. Search for candidates

You can look for employees either on your own or by contacting recruitment agencies. The second option is usually used by large retail chains, for which staff turnover is a permanent phenomenon. If you don't want to spend your time and energy on a constant search for staff, then specialised firms are your option.

Have you decided to entrust the job to professional recruiters? Pay attention to the competent drafting of an agreement with the agency. This way, you will protect yourself from problematic and unsuitable candidates.

You can (and in some cases should) look for employees on your own:

Register as an employer on popular job search sites in Ukraine: robota.ua, hh.ua, work.ua, jobs.ua, olx.ua.
You can search for salespeople on social media - Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter; in specialised groups, such as Best Jobs for the Best People, Work, current vacancies of Ukrainian companies.
Search for salespeople and sales managers in telegram job channels: Ukrjob, GoodJob, Happy Monday, Jobs for migrants from Ukraine, JOB for Ukrainians. Groups can also be searched by geographical criteria.
Recommendations from friends, current or former colleagues, reviews of vendors on social media, professional communities.
The company's own online resources. The wider the audience of a store's website, social media page or community, the more responses you can get to a posted job advert.

There are also two different ways of recruiting staff: passive and active.

The passive method is to post a vacancy and wait for a response. In this case, candidates choose you among others.
Active method - you look through new CVs on websites and call candidates yourself. In this case, you choose a salesperson based on their CV, professional qualities, photo, and the ability to check reviews about them beforehand.

№3. Selection of candidates

So, the first candidates started calling you. What do you do next? How do you find a good salesperson for your store who meets the criteria for the vacancy? What should you look for before inviting future salespeople for an in-person or online interview?

1. Resume.

Reviewing resumes is a fundamental step in selecting candidates for an interview. HR professionals call this process "resume screening". Focus on the following criteria:

Literacy. A resume is primarily a textual self-presentation of a person, so it should be written without errors. A few misprints or inaccurate word forms are not critical. However, if the errors are gross and frequent, it indicates that the candidate is inaccurate, inattentive or illiterate. There is no doubt that such a salesperson will transfer these qualities to work with clients.
Chronology of work experience. Pay attention to time gaps in the candidate's career, especially long ones
Use of professional terms. A person who has experience in the trade sector can be recognised by their vocabulary. However, there may be another side to the coin here, when an applicant wants to impress and inserts complex words everywhere, as if taken from some YouTube tutorial.
"Beacons" of competence and problematic issues. An experienced recruiter knows what signals can be used to create a real portrait of a candidate.

For example, the use of active or passive voice, certain language clichés or terms; the presence of a large number of pages on social media; and most importantly, a long list of previous jobs may indicate certain difficulties in the applicant's professionalism and communication skills.

Availability of recommendations. If the applicant has recommendations from previous jobs or a motivation letter in addition to a CV, this is an additional competitive advantage, indicating the seriousness of the candidate's intentions and professional achievements.

2. Vetting the seller

This area of responsibility usually falls to the HR department, which has to submit inquiries to various authorities to find out the candidate's past background: criminal record, credit or other debts, etc.

You can check the seller yourself:

Try to find the seller by phone number on the Internet, but this does not guarantee that the reviews will be real and that it will be possible to do so at all. It is impossible to find a seller on olx by phone number.
Enter the phone number in the Facebook search. If the seller has harmed someone somewhere and it has been posted on Facebook, you will find them by their published data - phone number or surname.

3. Check-up during a phone conversation

When you call the person you're considering for the sales position yourself, you can immediately find out the points that are important to you, get a basic idea of the candidate, and hear the level of enthusiasm for the job. Invite a potential employee to ask you questions about the working conditions: the emphasis of the questions will show what worries the applicant the most, the tone of the conversation - the attitude to work, and doubts are very clearly heard in the voice. This will significantly save time and your nerves on interviews with unsuitable employees.

№5. The interview

The interview is the final stage that candidates go through during the hiring process. This is the stage where the answer to the question of whether a person is suitable for a job as a salesperson or not is determined.

Depending on the size of the store and the position of the salesperson, the interview may take place in one or more stages. Sometimes a candidate talks to an HR specialist first, then to a department manager, and then, if necessary, to the store owner or manager.

In addition to the traditional questions asked at the interview (education, work experience, career goals), the interviewer should pay attention to other points that are important in the position of a salesperson.

Oral literacy and communication skills. This competence is important for a salesperson whose main job is to communicate with a large number of people. Competent speech and tactfulness in communication can do a lot to persuade a customer to buy and motivate them to come to the store again.

Stress tolerance. To find out how a candidate reacts in a stressful situation, ask them a few provocative questions that can throw them off balance. This reaction to the stressor can predict how the salesperson will communicate with customers.
The candidate's feedback on previous jobs. If a salesperson constantly scolds former employers during an interview and accuses them of various sins, this is a serious reason for the interviewer to be wary. It is highly likely that this person is capable of sabotage and will subsequently find reasons to tarnish your company by spreading gossip and false facts.

The best solution in this situation is to call the candidate's previous place of work and ask for feedback.

№6. Employment

The interview is over. The candidate is a good fit. What's next? The procedure for hiring an employee is regulated by labour law and includes several stages.

The candidate writes a job application and provides all the necessary documents: passport, TIN, education diploma, employment record book. Depending on the specifics of the job, additional documents may be required, such as a health book, vaccination certificates, etc.
The day before the new employee starts work, an order is prepared to hire him or her, and, if necessary, to create a new staff position. If the employment involves a probationary period, this should also be stated in the order. The tax inspectorate should be notified of the hiring of a new employee.
At the employer's discretion, an employment contract and a non-disclosure agreement may be signed with the employee.

If the employee successfully completes the probationary period, the employer does not need to do anything. If for some reason the trial period is not completed and the salesperson does not satisfy the employer, a dismissal order is prepared. However, the real reason why the employee failed to meet the requirements must be given.

What should you be wary of when choosing a seller?

Indifference
Verbosity
Familiarity
Categorical approach
Irritability

How to determine the effectiveness of a salesperson?

To assess the performance of store employees, the accounting automation program comes to the rescue.

The Torgsoft accounting programme allows you to assess the personal contribution of each seller using reports on the number of goods sold and cash register reports. In addition, the functions of the programme help to control the discipline of employees, record the start and end of the working day, track and prevent possible cash fraud.

The software has motivation tools that allow you to identify the best salespeople and reward their achievements with bonuses and bonuses, for example, for individual sales, for selling a certain product, etc.

Програма обліку товару для інтернет-магазинів, крамниць, торгових точок, складів та виробництва

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