BUS210 Barbara Ricketts 02/19/12 Developing a Good Business Sense

Developing a Good Business Sense
Every business has daily operations that must be performed for it to run properly and make a profit. The daily operations are different, depending on what type of business is in question. For retail store environments, the tasks performed varies depending on what the company is selling. For instance when looking at three different employees, each working for a different retail chain, the differences are more apparent. The first employees name is Michael , he is a sales associate who works in the tools department at Sears and has several different tasks that are mandatory for each shift he works. The tasks he is responsible for are: being responsible for daily quota, running register efficiently when handling money between customers, stocking the shelves, and selling merchandise by offering Sears credit. At Sears all of the employees go through a battery of training sessions including all of these tasks and this prepares them for floor sales and peer employee interaction. Michael starts every shift by counting down the register and entering start of day codes into the terminal. He then checks to make sure the sales floor is ready for the customers who come in by making sure all the merchandise is in place and the sales signs are up in his work section. When making any sale part of his job is to offer Sears credit as a method of payment to increase the purchase amount and create a lifetime customer. The next employees name is Crystal, she works as a sales associate for Zale’s Jewelers. Her daily tasks are to count down the register in the morning, do case counts of all the jewelry in the store, and make daily sales and credit app quota. The case counts tasks are required because Crystal is selling expensive jewelry that must be accounted for at all times meaning it is counted in the morning and at night by employees
Developing a Good Business Sense Her sales presentation is also more personal than Michaels because she is selling jewelry to customers for birthdays, anniversaries, weddings and other special occasions. The last person’s name is Valarie and she works for a clothing store called Cato’s as a sales associate. Her daily tasks include register counts and transactions, greeting of customers and visual merchandising of clothes and jewelry for the store. The store has a quota it needs to make but Valarie does not have a specific quota for herself that she has to reach. She does have to focus on the customers that come in but it is not as hard to generate sales for the store as Crystals and Michaels jobs. Clothes are more of a bare necessity than that of jewelry or certain types of tools and appliances and this is why, Valarie is able to reach the stores plan easier. The operations aspect of any business is all about creating value for the customers and this value is what keeps them buying a company’s products time and time again. For example Michael, the sales associate at Sears, creates value by offering customers ways they can save money on products year round in his presentation, one of these ways being a Shop Your Way Rewards Card. This is a discount card anyone can sign up for which gives them additional discounts on products that are already on sale. Another way Michael creates value is by also offering the Sears credit card as a method of payment. Customers who have decent credit can use Sear’s credit to make large purchases and make low monthly payments, and this keep the customer within their monthly budget. Krystal creates value in her sales presentation buy, establishing a strong rapport with the customer before they even come in the store, by complimenting their jewelry as the walk by, or offering to clean it for free. This gets the customer