"What is the one thing you as a manager or owner must directly provide your employees in order to grow your sales?"
When I ask this question in a workshop I always get a variety of different answers. I hear everything from "product knowledge" to "current promotions" to "company updates." It's true that employees need that information but it isn't essential that they hear it directly from the manager.
Someone inevitably comes up with the answer I'm looking for:
Feedback.
Feedback is extremely important to an employee's growth and their ability to excel in their role. Without feedback, employees don't know what do more of, what to do less of, and what to do differently.
If giving their employees feedback is so important, why do so many managers not provide it on a regular basis? I think the biggest reason is that a lot of managers think they're giving feedback - but they're not. Or at least not in a way that the employee hears it. Another challenge is that some managers simply aren't comfortable doing so.
If you fall into either of those two categories, or even if you're an old hand at giving employees feedback, consider these three things that will improve the feedback you give your staff and, ultimately, improve your store.
1. Don't think of feedback as positive or negative - think of it as praise or instructions. Positive feedback is our way of praising an employee and telling them to continue to do something in a way that meets or exceeds our expectations for their position. Whenever someone's behaviors or actions fail to meet our expectations anything we say about it is labeled by some people as negative. The only time feedback is negative is when it is delivered in a negative way. Otherwise you're just instructing an employee how to do something better, or differently, in order to meet or exceed the expectations of the role.
2. Our feedback, both praise and instructive, should focus on the behaviors and actions that we can see, and not about the person him/herself. Telling an employee that he's wonderful doesn't explain what behaviors he should continue. Telling a person that you're pleased with how well she's suggesting products and is now leading the store in sales does. The same holds true for giving instructive feedback. If we don't keep our focus on actions and behaviors the feedback becomes personal, which will not help the employee improve.
3. Feedback needs to given in as timely a manner as possible. Telling an employee how well they handled a challenging customer right after the customer leaves the store is much more effective than waiting eight months for their performance appraisal. Obviously you can bring it up again on the review but don't miss the chance to say something right away. The same holds true for instructive feedback. You want to be timely but you must make sure you make it the appropriate time. Giving an employee feedback on what they could have done differently with a customer is very productive; doing it in front of the customer is not.
So let me ask, are you giving enough feedback for your employees to succeed so ultimately your store succeeds? To find out the answer ask your employees that same question.
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