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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

New workers start around £4,783. Normal pay is £12,705 per year.
Highly experienced workers can earn up to £25,247.

Available jobs

In the past year there were 1,183,926 vacancies for this type of job

0.82%

Projected job growth over the next 8 years

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

  • Product Knowledge

  • Stocking Merchandise

  • Warehousing

  • Merchandising

  • Cash Handling

  • Customer Inquiries

  • Visual Merchandising

  • Order Picking

  • Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

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

  • Detail Oriented

  • Enthusiasm

  • Management

  • Retail Sales

  • Problem Solving

  • Planning

  • Positivity

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.