Sales performance reviews are critical to keeping your frontline retail teams performing at a high standard. They reinforce positive behaviours, which encourage your customers to buy and they help you spot negative habits which are affecting your conversion rates. But how do you carry out a sales performance review in retail and what do different types of reviews look like?

In this article, we’re going to take you through different performance review examples that our well-known retail clients have used. You’ll learn what to include and how to leverage the information you collect to strategise your training initiatives moving forward.

What is a sales performance review in retail?

Before we begin, let’s define what we mean by a sales performance review.

A sales performance review is a structured assessment where a manager evaluates the performance of a frontline sales associate. The observation should highlight areas of strength and weakness, making it easy to see how the employee can rectify their behaviour to achieve better results.

Why are sales performance reviews so critical to retail success?

When you run a large retail business, your customers have a lot of opportunities to interact with your company and every interaction affects your brand image. This is why it’s crucial that your frontline employees consistently behave in a way that’s aligned with your brand’s personality and customer journey. But it can become difficult to manage shop floor performance when you’re busy working in head office and this is why sales numbers decline. There is usually a large disconnect between what managers think employees are doing to what they are actually doing.

Employees fall into bad habits with no one there to rectify their mistakes when these problematic behaviours occur. A sales performance review gives managers a tangible way to know what’s causing a dip in sales so they can develop an action plan to break the cycle and improve performance. So what are the different types of sales performance reviews? Let’s dive into the examples below.

Example #1 Sales associate performance review of soft skills

This sales performance review is focused on the individual employee, assessing how their attitudes and behaviours affect their number of sales. It considers personality traits and personal habits, looking at how the employee can modify their behaviour to get the most out of their customer interactions. Here are the main goals of the soft skills performance review:

To identify problematic behaviours that frontline employees may not be aware of.
To identify positive behaviours that employees demonstrate and encourage them to display more of those types of behaviours.
To assess how well customers respond to them due to their behaviours.
To conclude which behaviours are positively impacting sales.
To conclude which behaviours are negatively impacting sales.

What questions should you include in your performance review of soft skills?

Below, we have included the perfect questions to assess individual performance along with scored answers so you can easily tally up their results.

1. What is the overall attitude of the sales associate?

2. What is their overall energy level?

3. How do they approach customers?

4. Are they greeting the majority of customers?

5. Are they smiling at the majority of customers?

6. How do they act when a customer asks them a question?

7. What is their overall tone of voice?

8. On a scale of 1-10 how eager are they to make the sale?

9. Do they work at a fast pace?

10. Are they problem-focused or solution focused?

11. Do they seem happy at work?

12. Are they exceeding expectations to meet the customer's needs?

13. What can they do to improve their performance?

Example #2 Sales associate performance review of hard skills

This sales performance review is focused on the hard skills that the sales associate demonstrates, assessing how their job-related competencies are affecting their performance. It considers their sales knowledge and technical ability, looking at what they need to learn to improve their performance. Here are the main goals of the hard skills performance review:

To identify training needs for the employee.
To assess where they need further support to improve.

What questions should you include in your sales associate performance review of hard skills?

See the best questions to use below:

1. Can the frontline employee use the till?

2. Can they manage returns?

3. Can they process vouchers?

4. Do they know all of the current package prices?

5. Are they capable of handling complaints?

6. Do they follow the correct procedure when selling high-ticket items or services?

7. Do they follow the correct procedure when selling low-ticket items?

8. Are they adequately explaining our customer satisfaction policies?

9. Are they using the persuasive techniques outlined in our customer service training programme?

10. Are they following the correct procedure to close the sale?

Example #3 Customer journey review

Your customer journey is the process your customers go through, eventually leading them to buy your products or services. Having a customer journey map is essential to ensure you’re consistently meeting customer expectations and making those all-important sales. An excellent way to optimise the customer experience is to utilise your journey map highlighting areas where you can improve your performance.

This sales performance review is focused on your customer journey map, making it easy to see if your frontline employees are following your process. If they’re not, it could be affecting your customer’s experience, which is ultimately costing you sales.

The questions and answers you include will depend on your individual customer journey map, but please see a generic example of what to include and how to answer below.

1. Is the window display clean and tidy?

2. Are the majority of customers being greeted as soon as they enter the store?

3. Are the majority of customers being asked what they are looking for today?

4. Are the majority of customers able to easily navigate their way through the store?

5. How does the average customer look during their visit to the store?

6. Are the majority of customers' needs being met?

7. Does the average customer have to look for help, or is help coming to them?

8. Are the majority of customers being offered upsells?

9. Are the majority of customers being offered alternatives?

10. Are the majority of customers making a purchase?

Example #4 Sales team performance review

To create a high-performing selling environment, it’s crucial that your sales team works well together. This review is used to assess the relationships between your frontline associates so you can discover what they need to do to strengthen their relationships and improve their performance as a team.

See the types of questions which you should include in your review below:

1. Do the sales team work well together?

2. Does everyone strive to help each other?

3. Does the shop floor feel like a supportive environment?

4. Are sales associates taking notice of their colleague's customers?

5. Do all team members know their responsibilities on the shop floor?

6. Are colleagues politely pointing out the mistakes of their co-workers?

7. Are the sales associates showing their appreciation to each other?

How to make your sales performance review quick and efficient?

Of course, you can carry out your sales performance review with pen and paper, but this can take a lot of time, and it makes it difficult to share the results within your business.

We’d highly recommend using a digital observation app where you can carry out your observation from any mobile or tablet device. Managers can swipe, tap and write their answers and everything is automatically saved so if a customer interrupts, they can pick up from where they left off.

Our sales observation app is used by the likes of Next, Victoria’s Secret and Virgin Media 02. They can tailor all of the questions to suit their individual business needs and the automatic reports and action plans make it effortless to see areas where they need to improve. Incorporating the observation app into their training plans has led to incredible results and increased sales which they weren’t able to achieve before.

If you want to know how Review can be used in your business, get in touch today so we can give you a personalised demo.

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Sales performance review examples for frontline retail teams