Maximizing sales isn’t just about great products or services — it's also about how efficiently you manage your team.
Effective staff scheduling can significantly impact your bottom line by ensuring the right people are in the right place at the right time.
The #1 benefit of using staff scheduling software is its ability to dynamically adjust to customer demand, ensuring you’re neither overstaffed nor understaffed at any given time.
Let’s explore 7 stellar strategies to optimize your sales through smart staff scheduling.
From using data-driven insights to fostering a more flexible work environment, these tips will help you create people-centric schedules, enhance customer satisfaction, and ultimately, boost your sales performance.
- 1. Sync Staff Availability with Peak Business Hours
- 2. Assign Shifts Based on Skills
- 3. Evaluate Past Performance
- 4. Offer Flexible Scheduling Options
- 5. Boost Sales Through Stable Scheduling
- 6. Give Employees a Voice
- 7. Ask AI for Help
- Use Cases of Optimizing Sales through Scheduling Software
- MakeShift: Smart Scheduling for Sales Success
1. Sync Staff Availability with Peak Business Hours
Intuitive scheduling tools help you align staff availability with peak business hours, ensuring you have optimal staffing when customer traffic is highest, which is crucial for maximizing sales.
For example, having ample restaurant staffing for the Friday night rush means customers get prompt service and tables are turned over quickly.
MakeShift helps you go a step further than scheduling an “adequate number of employees” during busy times.
You can use AI forecasting to build schedules based on trends, traffic flow, skills, and OT rules. It also schedules your ✶superstars✶ during peak hours to enhance sales and client satisfaction.
2. Assign Shifts Based on Skills
Assign employees to shifts based on their skills and strengths.
For example, someone who crushes product demos might be best scheduled during peak shopping hours, while employees with strong organizational skills might be better for stocking and inventory tasks during the same shift.
Skills-based scheduling impacts sales and employee morale. People are happier and more productive when they’re leaning into their strengths.
MakeShift allows you to input relevant skills for each employee. When you’re ready to create a schedule, use ShiftMate AI to help assign shifts based on skillset and availability
3. Evaluate Past Performance
To optimize for sales with staff scheduling, you need to check past performance.
This includes:
- Analyzing employees’ past sales performances and noting during which shifts they best performed.
- Compare overall sales per shift when understaffed vs overstaffed
Evaluating past performance can also help pair co-workers when shift planning to increase overall sales.
A 2022 study found that co-scheduling high and low performers helps low performers tap into their potential. The low performers’ sales increased by 2% a week, so your sales should be about 8% higher in a month.
Full disclosure — if they’re only paired for a week, the low performer’s sales will probably be a little worse than usual. You’ll have to hang in there for at least a month to reap the full rewards of higher sales.
MakeShift’s AI-powered SmartInsights makes evaluating analytics an interactive dialogue rather than a tedious chart-reading task. Just ask for the info you need, and SmartInsights will sift through the sales data in a snap.
Want to identify your top performers?
You could ask, “Which sales staff worked on the shifts with the highest sales for the last 3 months?”
4. Offer Flexible Scheduling Options
Flexible work schedules lead to higher employee morale and efficiency, which translates into better customer service and increased sales during critical business hours.
As you know, engaged, motivated employees are more apt to provide exceptional customer service. And that’s where the sales are — in the customer experience.
Check out these customer service facts:
- You can grow revenues between 4% and 8% when you prioritize better customer service experiences.
- 89% of consumers are more likely to make another purchase after a positive customer service experience.
- Increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95%.
Offering flexible work options supports your employees’ well-being.
It allows them more work-life balance and time to prioritize their physical and mental health. When they have balance, they’re more productive.
So, create a policy that allows for:
- Split shifts
- Shift swaps
- Self-scheduling
- Remote work options where applicable.
Encourage employees to choose from a variety of flexible scheduling options, enhancing their ability to manage personal obligations alongside work.
MakeShift makes offering scheduling flexibility a breeze. Simply preset shift rules and employees can easily manage their schedules on the app.
5. Boost Sales Through Stable Scheduling
Providing stable and predictable schedules can decrease turnover and boost employee loyalty, which stabilizes sales performance by ensuring experienced staff are available to meet customer needs.
A study on predictable scheduling was conducted at Gap stores from March 2015 to August 2016. They implemented 2 key scheduling changes across all U.S. stores:
- Two-week advance notice on schedules
- On-call shifts were eliminated
The new scheduling practices improved consistency, predictability, and employee input.
The result: Sales in the pilot stores jumped by 7%, and labor productivity increased by 5%.
Commit to stable scheduling by doling out schedules well in advance (we recommend a minimum of 2 weeks).
Scheduling software like MakeShift simplifies the scheduling process, so getting schedules out well in advance isn’t a problem. You can automate scheduling based on rules, availability, and workload requirements.
6. Give Employees a Voice
More engaged, motivated employees offer better customer service. They’re more energetic and attentive to customer needs, which directly impacts sales.
Involve employees in the scheduling process to better align their preferences with business needs. This inclusion can reduce absenteeism and boost retention while also maintaining top-notch customer service and sales efficiency.
Try these 2 ways to involve employees more:
1. Implement an online portal or an app where staff members can submit their availability and shift preferences directly.
2. Use a common communication channel where employees can bring up scheduling issues, ensuring their voices are heard and considered in the scheduling process.
The MakeShift app allows employees to access their schedules, set availability, swap shifts, and submit time off requests right from their phones.
7. Ask AI for Help
We all know workforce forecasting is the future. Adopt a scheduling platform that uses AI to predict peak times, customer flow, and your top performers more accurately. This technology can optimize staff allocation to enhance sales during critical periods.
Embrace the role of AI in transforming workforce management. AI-driven predictions provide a more scientific approach to predicting staffing needs. They ensure that staffing perfectly matches real-time sales potential, maximizing revenue opportunities during peak periods.
MakeShift’s AI-powered scheduling platform revolutionizes the scheduling process by transforming it into a holistic workforce management system that’s optimized for sales.
Use Cases of Optimizing Sales through Scheduling Software
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. We’ve created 3 industry-specific examples to help you more fully grasp how staff scheduling software can help optimize sales.
1. Retail
Retail stores can use scheduling software to align staff numbers with anticipated foot traffic, especially during sales or promotional events.
This ensures there are enough employees on the floor to assist customers, process transactions quickly, and restock items, all of which drive sales.
But why settle for enough bodies on the floor? By ensuring your best sellers are on the floor during peak hours, you go beyond scheduling to maximizing sales potential.
You can also match employees with specific skills (like expertise in particular product categories) to shifts when their skills are most needed, enhancing customer service and sales potential.
2. Restaurants
Restaurants experience waves of customer influx throughout the day. Scheduling software helps ensure the staff strength during peak hours like lunch and dinner is adequate to handle the rush, reducing wait times and improving customer service.
Scheduling software efficiently schedules staff based on roles (chefs, waitstaff, bartenders), ensuring each area is optimally staffed to handle tasks promptly, increasing table turnover and enhancing revenue.
3. Hospitality (Hotels & Recreation)
The hospitality industry, especially hotels and resorts, needs 24/7 service. Scheduling software helps manage shifts across various departments and locations, such as the front desk, housekeeping, and maintenance.
This ensures guest needs are always met, leading to better reviews and repeat business.
For recreation facilities like theme parks or event venues, staff scheduling software helps align staffing with expected visitor numbers for events, ensuring there’s enough personnel for security, operations, and customer service.
These businesses experience seasonal peaks, and scheduling software can adjust staff levels as needed, preventing overstaffing in off-peak times and understaffing during high seasons, optimizing operational costs, and maximizing revenue.
MakeShift: Smart Scheduling for Sales Success
Our intuitive, AI-powered scheduling solution lets you simplify scheduling while maximizing sales potential.
It’s elevated workforce management.
Feed your sales performance data into MakeShift and it’ll automatically create schedules with your top talent in peak traffic shifts.
You can create schedules optimized for sales and do it in 55% less time.
Optimal Staff Scheduling Impacts Sales
More sales. That’s what drives us, right? How can we make more sales?
Putting the right people in front of the right customers is a key driver of sales. Smart, people-centric staff scheduling paves the road for getting your star performers in the right shifts.
When done right, it can help some of your lower performers rise to the challenge.
Ready to see how MakeShift can help your team reach its selling potential? Schedule a free demo to see how better scheduling can improve your sales performance.
Ready to Make the Shift?
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