Selling Skills- Part I

Sujith was looking at the DSR and analyzing the sales for the previous day. He was not happy with the sales.
The manager had noticed that customer flow the previous day was phenomenal. Stocks on the floor were also adequate, then why sales had not happened. He called all his supervisors and wanted an answer for the same
He wanted to analyze the store-performing indicator one by one with the supervisors.

Ramesh was not happy with his department’s sale. He and his team were putting full effort but still they were not getting good results. To understand the reason Sujith asked Ramesh for the percentage of conversion of customers in his section? Ramesh had no clue.

To understand in more detail Sujith went through the Men’s department to check what all merchandise was sold the previous day. He noticed that most of the stocks from the new arrivals had not sold. Only those stocks put up on offer had sold well.

The staffs from the section also told that they sold many products throughout the day and not left even one customer empty handed. Hearing this he asked Ramesh what was the average value per piece in his section. He could not answer.

Sujith finally understood the problem. He noticed that his staffs were selling but without properly understanding the store performance indicators.


In India today most of the retail stores operate in a very unsystematic way, and are not at all process driven. The managers inside the store will be mostly in a reactive mode and seen mostly facilitating the operations rather than managing the operations. These managers are also not aware about the performance of their stores simply because they do not have or are not aware of any tools to measure the store performance. In worst scenarios they are not aware of what they are supposed to measure, how to measure and how these measures are important in the day to day activities of the store and how it affects the business directly.
Every operational activity requires inputs which results into favourable outputs. In retailing these inputs are stores, staffs and stocks which are transferred into sales and satisfaction which are the outputs. Most of the retailers in India work on this concept but to manage and measure the efficiency, productivity and profitability one more very critical input is required and that is the input of systems and processes.
It is a very crucial input which should not be ignored at any cost. Most of the retailers are not aware of this input and hence because of this not ina position to really understand
Let us understand how to measure productivity, efficiency, sales, and satisfaction levels with the help of these indicators and why they are of utmost importance.

Store Performance Indicators: tracker for measuring sales
1. Customer entry
2. Conversion (%)
3. Average Value of Bill (Cash Memo Size)
4. Average No. of Pieces. Per Bill
5. Average Value per Piece