MightyRecruiterSetting out to write a position description that is clear enough to weed out the unqualified and attract the top talent? Make sure to focus on clarity, focus, and details. In the end, you’ll find that a little extra effort in this stage will pay off when you locate, recruit, and hire the best performers, maybe even those who aren’t actively searching for a job but stumbled across your posting. Below is a Retail Sales sample job description to get you started on your way to writing an accurate job description.
Retail Sales Job Summary
Customers count on retail salespeople to provide fast, friendly service by actively seeking them out to assess their needs and provide assistance. As a customer service salesperson, you will be tasked with helping customers locate, choose, and purchase the merchandise they are searching for in a retail environment. By encouraging customers to purchase products, you will be responsible for all sales activities, from lead generation to closing the sale. The success you produce will not only promote organizational standards, but will meet client expectations and accomplish sales goals.
Retail Sales Job Responsibilities and Duties:
- Greets customers promptly and determines needs quickly
- Helps locate, suggest, and select the perfect product
- Possesses detailed knowledge of product benefits and features
- Demonstrates product uses and operation
- Answers questions about merchandise and the store
- Makes suggestions to encourage product purchases
- Provides details about merchandise specifications, maintenance, care, delivery, and warranties
- Offers financing alternatives
- Processes credit, check, and cash payments
- Provides change and receipts
- Packages or gift wraps merchandise
- Counts and balances tills and sort credit and debit slips
- Maintains sales records and place special orders
- Organizes and processes merchandise exchanges
- Processes alterations or merchandise repairs
- Identifies and monitors security issues
- Arranges and displays merchandise
- Takes inventory and requisitions new stock
Retail Sales Skills and Qualifications
- High school diploma, GED, or equivalent
- Knowledge of customer service principles and processes
- Relevant product use understanding and training
- Expertise and experience in sales, retail, or customer service environments
- Business administration proficiency a plus
Company Profile
SaveMor Salon is a cosmetics and fragrance superstore in the Midwest, with over 100 stores in six states. SaveMor was founded in 1999 and has grown by meeting and exceeding our clients’ expectations. Our strategy is to provide options for every generation, from young teens to older women. The goal is to capture a bigger share of the market for prestige beauty products. By hiring top talent, we are able to lead the industry in expanding our retail footprint online.
Writing a Job Description Best Practices
- We have provided you with a good Retail Sales sample job description, but there might be instances when you don’t have an example to use. If you are wondering how to get started writing a posting in those situations, we have the solution. To help you write a position description for any job, even one that is created solely for your organization, here are a few basic best practices to make sure you get it right.
- Do include an introduction to accurately describe the role of the position in the organization.
- Don’t refer to anyone by name in the posting, such as the supervisor or manager.
- Do include employment legislation specific to your state and language indicating that your business is an equal employment opportunity employer.
- Do indicate employment terms, such as whether the position is full- or part-time, temporary or permanent status.
- Don’t use industry jargon to ensure the position description is clear.
- Do emphasize the minimum requirements the job entails to help job seekers determine if they qualify for the position.
- Do focus on the benefits of working for your company to provide candidates with many reasons to want to work for your business.
- Do use an impersonal writing style by focusing on facts, not opinions to present an unbiased, professional perspective to potential applications.
- Don’t list minor tasks that not specific to success on the job.
The Retail Sales sample job description above is a great job posting that can help you recruit not just one but many qualified applicants and give you a choice of top talent with which to fill your opening. Let a well-written position description do your work for you and weed out the unqualified or uninterested job seekers. The time you save can be reinvested in training the ideal candidate.
Retail Sales Job Responsibilities
To make your retail sales job description as strong as possible, focus on formatting the responsibilities section correctly. This section should be the meatiest and most in-depth portion of the entire document. While it is true that the content is most important, the format is what determines how easily accessible the content is. No matter how well you portray the opening, it does not do any good if readers get confused or intimidated.
To begin, make sure you write your retail sales job responsibilities section as a bulleted list. To strike the right balance, aim for between six and eight bullet points. This is not too long and intimidating, but it is not too short and vague either. Additionally, using a strong action verb at the beginning of every bullet point is a good way to add focus to your retail sales job description. It also allows readers to envision themselves in the position.
Use the following example entries to make your own responsibilities section as effective as possible:
- Interact with customers to answer inquiries, provide assistance and help them with their purchases
- Ring up guests, completing purchase procedures correctly, quickly and tactfully
- Handle money responsibly, complete transactions accurately and return change precisely
- Greet customers as they arrive, using standard company language at all times
Retail Sales Job Specifications
At the end of your retail sales job description, you should include a short job qualifications and skills section. While this section needs to be brief to be effective, it is not unimportant. In fact, because it controls how many and what kinds of candidates apply, it is just as essential as every other section of the job description. If you write it vaguely, you may receive an overwhelming number of applications from unqualified candidates. On the other hand, if you portray the expectations too strictly, you may even intimidate the talented professionals you are looking for and cause them not to apply.
To combat this, separate your retail sales job specifications into two sections. One should list the preferred qualities and the other should outline the mandatory requirements. This strategy makes it perfectly clear to unqualified readers that they should not apply, but it gives those who meet your expectations a little more leniency.
These examples include both kinds of requirements for your retail sales job description:
- Must have two years’ experience working in the service industry
- Experience in a position of leadership preferred
- Excellent communication skills, including written, verbal and especially interpersonal
- Strong perception abilities and attention to small details
- Good critical thinking, evaluation and analysis skills
