Sales and Retail Assistants

Sales and retail assistants demonstrate and sell a variety of goods and services in shops, stores, showrooms and similar establishments.

Wages

New workers
AVERAGE
Experienced
£ 4,783
£ 12,705
£ 25,247

Available jobs

In the past year there were 1,184,933 vacancies for this type of job

Related courses

People work towards these careers by taking these courses at college and uni.

What they do most days?

  • Handles returns and deals with customer complaints.

  • Arranges and replenishes goods on display stands, undertakes stock checks and assists with the receipt of deliveries from suppliers into the stock room.

  • Receives full or partial payment, checks validity of form of payment, writes or prints bill, receipt or docket and packages merchandise for customer.

  • Advises customer making major purchase on credit terms and arranges finance as appropriate.

  • Advises customer on selection, purchase, use and care of merchandise and quotes prices, discounts and delivery times.

  • Discusses customer requirements, including type and price range of goods/services desired.

Hard Skills

Hard skills are specific, learnable, measurable, often industry or occupation-specific abilities related to a position.

Skills are ranked based on the number of job adverts that list them as required skills.

  • Selling Techniques

  • Warehousing

  • Product Knowledge

  • Merchandising

  • Stocking Merchandise

  • Cash Handling

  • Customer Inquiries

  • Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

  • Visual Merchandising

  • Marketing

Soft Skills

Soft skills can be self-taught and usually do not necessitate a certain completed level of education.

Skills are ranked based on the number of job adverts that list them as required skills.

  • Customer Service

  • Sales

  • Communication

  • Management

  • Enthusiasm

  • Retail Sales

  • Detail Oriented

  • Positivity

  • Problem Solving

  • Cleanliness

How do I get a job like this?

People in these types of job started their career paths after studying courses like the ones below.