When I first became a franchisee I wish I had known what the big deal about my average transaction value (ATV) was….
As a franchisee I was always hearing: well if your ATV was higher; perhaps if you upsold your ATV would be higher; where is your ATV in relation to other franchisees in your group? What does it matter?
Like any franchisee I was sure that my team were upselling even though my mystery shoppers said they weren’t. Liars! What would they know? I had trained them and they were upselling!
They were when I was in the shop anyway….
So if they were doing this then my ATV is as high as it could be. That’s right isn’t it? People just don’t want to spend more and the economy is bad.
And so on my excuses went. I was going to prove my franchisor wrong! My ATV was as high as it could be…I was certain!
So I set about picking just one standard upsell for all my team to offer. A $1 bottle of water. I offered a prize to the team member who sold the most. I trialled this upsell for just one day. After all it wasn’t going to work. I’ll show them!
Wait!…. What? There’s no more water to sell. But it’s only 11am you couldn’t have sold them all. Hang on I will borrow more from the other store.
And there you have it my sales that day were up 17%.
Okay so there were more people in the centre. Umm no… there were actually less. So it was a hotter day than normal so they needed the water– Umm no it was actually cooler. Perhaps they were just thirsty???? Oh dear my franchisor was right. That hurts.
So what did I actually learn from this? Upsizing works. UPSIZE the culture in store to see a lift in sales.
- UNDERSTAND what your ATV is and how increasing it can build your sales. You do not need anymore people coming into your store you just need to make sure you are upselling.
- PEOPLE train your team – have a standard upsell that works in every situation. Make it easy for your staff to offer at the register. Have a list of reasons why the customer might want this upsell, so that your team can use these reasons as an upselling tool.
- STRATEGY actually look at your individual staff members weekly ATV, this will tell you who is upselling and who isn’t. It will show you who needs to be trained or who is just being plain lazy. Create a strategy to improve the individuals ATV.
- IMPLEMENT a competition between your staff to create excitement.
- Z-READS regularly monitor the daily Z read (your daily sales output from your cash register) to see what your ATV is. Set a daily target for your team to reach. Targets work.
- ENCOURAGE your team to upsell, make it the culture of your store to upsell, reward your greatest upseller – the rest of your staff will want to be that person who wins the prize.
Elizabeth Gillam founder and CEO of Franchisee Success creates High Performance Franchisees. Having owned and operated three franchised food businesses; Boost, Healthy Habits and Bucking Bull; she knows what it takes to operate a profitable food franchise. In her recent book, Would you like Profits with That? – 6 steps to running a profitable food franchise she outlines how franchisees can ACE their franchised business unit.