My Life as a Retail Salesperson

Retail Salesperson 

Because I am young student, I haven’t had a lot of work experience, especially in the business field, which I plan to take part in after I graduate. However, when I was a junior in high school I briefly served as a retail salesperson at a boutique called LF. Although the title is pretty self-explanatory, I am going to briefly explain what my life was like for a few months as a salesperson. 

A retail salesperson is someone who serves customers by helping them select products that they like and feel confident in. We tackle several different job responsibilities that are centered around selling as much product as we can and making sure our clients know about our new clothing arrivals and markdowns. 

There are three jobs that help to sum up the responsibilities of a retail salesperson: 

• Stylist 
• Cashier 
• Marketer

I’ll describe these positions using examples of what I did on a daily basis. 

Stylist

The work of a stylist occurs in these ways: 

• Suggesting items to customers 
• Boosting the client's confidence 
• Offering opinions on outfits 

As a retail salesperson, my favorite part of the job was always the stylist aspect of it. I knew the ins and outs of the store, including the best pieces and deals, that the customer was most likely unaware of. To best describe my duty as a stylist, I’ll give an example. One day, a young girl walked in our store and I could tell right away that she was overwhelmed by our mound of clothes. I walked over to her and asked if she was looking for anything specific. Like many customers do, she responded with the typical “No, I’m just browsing”. But this is my favorite response because it means I get to recommend all my favorite items from the collection and the pieces I knew would fit her body type best. Immediately, I assigned her a dressing room and gave her an assortment of different articles of clothing. Although she was skeptical at first, after trying everything on she was extremely happy. She loved almost everything I had given her, even though she would have never picked them out herself. Because of me, the customer not only bought more clothes than she was planning on, but she also felt confident in her new outfits and was excited to show them off to her friends. 

Cashier 

The role of a cashier includes: 

• Processing payments (credit cards, cash) 
• Totaling purchases 
• Handling returns

The cashier side of my role as a retail salesperson was less exciting. Along with the responsibilities listed above, I was also in charge of handling the returns and informing our customers on our “final sale” policy on discounted items. However, not every check-out was as simple as it should have been. For example, one time a customer was trying to “play the system” and split her total purchase on several different credit cards and cash so that her mom would not notice the large bill. When this occurred (and it occurred more often than you would think), I had to subtract the total bill by the amount of cash and then divide it by the 3 separate cards she gave me. This turned my simple cashier job into a more complicated responsibility that was dependent on my math and technology skills. However, after a couple minutes and slight aggravation, I succeeded in processing her payments. 

Marketer

The work of a marketer occurs in these ways:

• Notifying clients about private sales 
• Informing customers about new collections 
• Handing out fliers
• Asking customers to model and promote our clothes  

My duty as a marketer was exciting because it got me out of our small store occasionally. Overall, my end goal was to promote our sales and new collections to as many people as possible. To do this, I used several different methods, including handing out fliers, sending mass emails, and reaching out to customers to model our clothes to be featured on our Instagram. For example, when our new fall collection came out, I reached out to a group of friends from my high school to try on a couple of different outfits and be featured on our Instagram. They happily agreed and came into the store that Saturday to be styled by me and my coworkers. Once I dressed them in complete outfits with several accessories, we walked around Downtown at the Gardens for the perfect background for our photo shoot. When we finished taking pictures, I posted the shots to LF’s Instagram, which they then shared with their own followers. 

Comparison 

My role as a retail salesperson is very similar to the duties of a makeup artist. Like me, a makeup artist's job is to make their client feel beautiful and happy in their own skin. They choose their style of makeup they use based on what the clients say they want and what the make-up artist knows will look best on their client. After they complete their work, they share it on their social media to boost their awareness as a makeup artist and, hopefully, gain a larger client base. 

Flesch Reading Ease: 60

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 10.1 

Passive Sentences: 0%