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Should Your Employees Be Paid A Commission?
Windows Vista 22.48% Share of the Market
Kingston Flash Drive $9.07 Including Shipping
The Retail World Is Coming To An End
Contacting pcAmerica

Should Your Employees Be Paid A Commission?

CRE (Cash Register Express) has a great built-in employee commission tracking feature. Commissions can be awarded differently for each item, or % of sales, or % of profit, or flat amount. Commissions can be turned off for low margin items.

Should you pay commissions to your sales staff?

Most stores do not pay commissions. BestBuy and Staples do not pay commissions. Circuit City was a successful chain that paid commissions. After removing commissions, they went into bankruptcy. Many shoe and sneaker stores pay employees commissions.

My opinion...Yes stores should pay employees a commission. However, you need to be very thoughtful about your commission plan. You must realize that training your sales people is just as important as a commission incentive. You should also realize that a 3 to 1 positive response ratio to employees can be as valuable as commissions. That is, if your positive interactions with employees are far more frequent than your negative interactions, you will have more productive employees.

You do want your commission plan to help increase sales. You don’t want employees who solely respond to customers based on commissions. The built in functions of Cash Register Express let you set different commission payouts for each item allowing you to reward employees more for some items and less for others. You need to decide how you want to structure your commission. Should you pay a higher hourly rate and a lower commission? Or, should you pay a lower hourly rate and a higher commission? You need to figure out what will work best for your type of retail store.

Windows Vista 22.48% Share of the Market

According to Net Applications, 22.48% of all computer users are using Windows Vista.

Net Applications is a company that monitors all types of computer usage statistics. They capture that statistic when people log onto the internet.

Here are the stats:

Windows XP 63.76%   Windows Vista 22.48%   Apple Macintosh 9.49%

All others 4.27%

Although 22.48% of computer users are using Vista, I would estimate that less than 1% of all CRE (Cash Register Express) and RPE (Restaurant Pro Express) users are using Vista. 

Most corporations and schools are still using Windows XP. Most small businesses are still using Windows XP. The 22.48% installed base is coming mainly from home computer users.

For those of you interested in Linux (a non-Microsoft product), it has a 0.83% market share.

That being said, I use Windows Vista and like it. It looks a little nicer, it has somewhat better security than Windows XP, and it works a little more efficiently.

Here are my latest recommendations:

If you own a small business or retail store and have been using Windows XP, stick with it. If you are willing to learn something new and overcome the frustrations that you will encounter, try using Vista. Once you figure it out, you will like it.

If you are buying a computer for your home or a student, Vista is probably the way to do. It’s the latest and greatest. It works well. It looks nice. It’s a lot of fun.

Or, better yet, wait until the end of the year when Microsoft releases Windows 7. Windows 7 is an easier to use version of Windows Vista. From early beta reviews, people seem to really like it. It uses less computer resources making it work faster. Rumor has it that if you purchase a computer after July, you will be able to upgrade for FREE.

To see operating stats, go to:

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10 

Kingston 4 GB Flash Drive $9.07 Including Shipping

My favorite Kingston 4 GB Flash drive is now $9.07 at Buy.com including shipping.  I already have 10 of them. I only use one, but they are so cheap that I keep buying them.

4 GBs is enough to backup your CRE or RPE data. It’s enough space to backup all of the important data, photos and documents on most computers.

4 GBs $9.07   8 GBs $16.15   16 GBs $34.19   32 GBs $79.43

Here the Buy.com link:

http://www.buy.com/retail/usersearchresults.asp?qu=kingston+flash+drive&queryType=home&storeResults=0

(This is not an advertisement. pcAmerica has no association with Buy.com.)

The Retail World Is Coming To An End

Stores are closing all around you. Business is down. We’re all going broke. Even government appointees aren’t able to pay their taxes (yes, I am being sarcastic).

I have a little psychobabble for you. Our goal here is to figure out the best way to manage your business and survive the economy.

According to researchers, most productive relationships have at least a 3 to 1 positive to negative ratio. I’ll give you a link below with the entire article, but let me explain this a little further.

If you are a store manager, it is best to say positive things to your employees at a 3 to 1 ratio or better. If you are yelling or reprimanding your employees all the time and not giving positive feedback, you are going to lose. You need to have a 3 to 1 positive to negative ratio.

Good marriages also require a 3 to 1 ratio. If you are constantly criticizing your spouse, you are going to lose. You need to have a 3 to 1 positive ratio to have a successful marriage.

If your internal thoughts don’t have a 3 to 1 positive ratio, you are less likely to succeed than if your internal thoughts have a 3 to 1 positive ratio. If your brain is constantly telling you that all is bad, you will lose. You need to retrain your brain to look at the positive things in life at a 3 to 1 positive ratio. You need to think about the good things that you are going to do, and think less about the failures.

Certainly, if you are a teacher or a parent, you will only succeed with a 3 to 1 positive ratio or better. If you are constantly reprimanding your kids, you will lose. You can only win with the better than 3 to 1 positive ratio.

I recently heard about the 3 to 1 positive ratio on a CBS Radio Business Break and thought it was a good time to pass it on. By the end of the year, our economy will be turning up.

To read the article, go to:

http://pos-psych.com/news/jen-hausmann/2007010319

That being said, is the retail world coming to an end? We are not likely to get into a depression. If you remember, last year I discussed the overabundance of retail stores. Many retail experts were warning that historically we had 25% too much retail space. We just had too many stores and too many square feet of selling space compared to the number of buyers.

We now have a merging of negative factors. Credit is tightening, many people are losing their jobs, and we already had too much retail selling space.

If you are still in business and a survivor, you are going to see an equal and opposite reaction later in the year. You won’t be able to keep up with business. Lots of stores are closing, leaving the survivors the pick of the upturn in business that will be coming. Eventually, people will start buying new cars and new clothes to replace their clunkers and worn clothes. It’s a natural flow of the economy.