By Scott Nichols

How has your recovery year gone so far since Covid hit? Some of us might be in areas where restrictions are eased up and others might be in areas where it’s more difficult to run your business. Either way, I want to lay out a 5-point plan to help you bring your business back and/or grow your business to the next level. I understand this is easier said than done, but my hope is within 60 to 90 days of implementing this 5-point plan, you start seeing increases.

1. Scheduling for sales vs. Scheduling for coverage (80/20 rule).

The schedule needs to be filled by employees who are hungry to make commission or bonuses. If you have someone on the schedule that helps with filling hours but lacks in sales, you need to replace that employee with someone who wants to be there and sell. These employees exist!

How do you find these employees? Well, it starts with you. If you are excited about employees making commission and bonuses, your staff will be too. When interviewing a potential employee, make sure you talk at length about your commission and bonus structure. Watch their reaction, and if it’s positive and they get excited, that is a great step in the right direction. If there’s no reaction, then I would look to find someone who understands that selling equals bigger pay checks.

The next step needs to relate to the 80/20 rule. Roughly 80 percent of your sales should come from 20 percent of your staff. These 20 percent need to be highly trained selling machines! Your managers are going to be working about 40 hours a week along with assistant managers working 30 to 40 hours as well. That doesn’t leave a lot of time left over for part-time help. So, the employees working the majority of hours better be making the majority of sales.

Click here to read the entire article in the latest issue of Smart Tan Magazine online.