Retail Contrarian

It's not personal: Success one customer at a time

Here’s a Weekly you’ll want to share with your entire team.

A friend and client likes to remind her team, "Retail isn't for sissies."  It's hard work, and from time to time you will be rejected. People reject what you have for sale, and sometimes they reject you. It happens.

Here’s an example. I was working with a store onsite, and I asked a sales associate to engage a customer with a particular product. (A handbag, to be exact.) Within a minute, Marti started talking to a customer who had just walked in the door.

Marti told the customer about the handbag and encouraged her to try it on. Marti handed her the bag, and the customer handed it back so fast you would have thought they were playing hot potato. The customer then went on her way.

Afterwards, Marti and I talked about what happened. She asked what she could do with a customer who isn’t interested. I told her that the best thing to do is just move on to the next customer.

Marti said she understood that, but it's sometimes hard not to take the rejection personally. True, and I know that many retail salespeople feel that way.

Here's the key: It's not personal.

As a matter of fact, it's very unlikely the customer's decision to not engage had anything at all to do with Marti. The customer declined the opportunity. Maybe she was in a hurry. Maybe she has no money. It doesn’t matter. It's our job to move on to the next customer who appreciates our help.

Remember, success comes one customer at a time.

Marti agreed that she shouldn't take the rejection personally and was ready to move on to the next customer. Right then a family walked in the door and Marti said with a big smile, "Welcome!" Believe it or not, the man bellowed, "NOOOOOOOOOO!"

That cracked me up. I've heard "no thanks I'm just looking" or "thank-you," but I don't believe I have ever heard someone respond to “welcome” with such a loud and resounding "NO."

At this point it would have been very easy for Marti to take it personally and walk away. She had had been rejected by the last customer, and now this customer didn't respond positively to her welcome. But she didn't. She grabbed a handbag off the shelf, walked right up to the family, and started telling them about it.

Fifteen minutes later the family walked out the door thrilled with their $580 purchase, and Marti was happy that she didn't take the customer's first response to heart. She continued to engage her customer and deliver the best possible experience, and there's no better experience than purchasing the products in that store.

How we treat each and every customer should have nothing to do with how the last customer reacted to us.

Every individual who walks in the door deserves the best possible experience, and that comes from delivering our best. Even if that best was rejected before. It's not personal. Success comes one customer at a time.

So let me ask, how well are you at giving each and every individual customer your best? Remember, your success is based on that customer.

- Doug

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Developmental updates and announcements

* My new training program for DMs, RMs, area managers, and multi-store owners will now start on May 14th. This will give those multi-unit managers who are busy with Mother Day’s an opportunity to participate. Read more about the program and reserve a spot here.

* I’m also running another Four Weeks To Becoming A Next Level Coach And Developing A Winning Retail Team group next month. This is an extremely effective program that has helped many assistant and store managers as well as owners become comfortable in coaching and giving feedback. Effective coaching will help your team sell more, deliver a better experience, and reduce issues and drama in the workplace. Read more about the program and reserve a spot here.

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Doug Fleener, a proven retail and customer experience expert and consultant, helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit the Dynamic Experiences Group website, or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create extraordinary results.

 

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"How" lasts far beyond "what"

How to attract high-quality candidates

Don’t forget I’m starting a blended-learning training program for multi-unit managers. More information is available here.

It takes a great staff to consistently deliver an extraordinary customer experience, but finding, hiring, and keeping a great staff is never easy. Here are a few tips and ideas to attract high quality candidates.

1. Keep your eyes open. Most of the best candidates aren’t even in the job market. If they are they may not have considered working retail in general or your store in particular. Take notice when someone gives you amazing service, or you meet someone that has that positive energy about him or her.

Of course, recruiting someone at his/her workplace is not just tricky; it’s not really the right thing to do. What you can do is reward someone who gives you great service with a gift card from your store. Thank him for the great service, and tell him you’d like to show your appreciation by inviting him into your store to pick up a gift.

You can openly recruit anyone who is in your store. However, be cautious about recruiting your best customers. Just because they like your products doesn’t mean they’d be good at selling them. Look for those customer engagement skills before you think of moving a customer to an employee.

2. Upgrade your online job posting. Too many retail job posting are the same: Boring! If the ad is boring, the person reading it is going to think the job is boring, too Rewrite your ad to focus more on the benefit to the candidate, and less about the specifics of the position. Your job posting shouldn’t sound like a job description. People know they have to wait on customers and clean.

What they need to know is why working in your store different and more enjoyable than most places. Highlight the benefits, including a fun work environment, the chance to win prizes and products, extremely generous discount, accommodating schedule, potential career advancement, etc.

I also like to include quotes from the current employees. Who better to tell people why they should come work for your store than those who already do? This can have a big impact on potential candidates.

Two things. First, if you can’t list any benefits that are different from most retailers, you now know why you’re not attracting high-quality candidates. Second, remember that you have one goal. Get the potential candidate to respond. You can communicate everything else in the interview, but your goal is to get the person reading to ad to act.

3. Advertise where people are actually looking. That may sound like a given, but sometimes retailers aren’t thinking like a high-quality candidate. Besides postings on Craigslist, Facebook, Monster, and other job boards, some independent retailers have good luck with a whimsical display add. No, not in the classifieds, but rather in a section of the local paper that local readers actually read.

4. Cast your net wide with group interviews. A great job posting should attract many candidates. Many of them under-qualified, some of them over-qualified, and a lot of them are retail job jumpers. They’re the ones who don’t have enough room to list all of the companies they’ve worked for.

Somewhere in that sea of candidates is your catch. That’s why I like to bring them all in at once for a job fair, or a group interview process. It takes a little extra work to sort through a large number of people, but if you don’t you stand a good chance of excluding your high-quality candidate.

5. Follow-up immediately with all candidates. Many retailers go to great efforts to do take all of these steps and then drag their feet when it’s time to follow-up with the candidates. Make it a goal to reach out within twenty-four hours whenever possible.  

So let me ask, which of these tips can you implement to attract the best possible candidates?

- Doug 

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Doug Fleener, a proven retail and customer experience expert and consultant, helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit the Dynamic Experiences Group website, or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create extraordinary results.

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Problem or solution?

I used to work on an executive team that invariably divided into two camps whenever there was an issue in the stores.

One group always believed that the store staff was the problem. Whether it was how they received product, used the POS, or worked with customers, this group always went immediately to "the staff is doing something wrong."

The other group almost always believed that the process was the problem. There was something wrong with the way we asked the stores to receive product, ring sales, or work with customers.

I look back now and see that we wasted way too much time and energy debating the problem, instead of focusing on the solution. I'm sure we believed that the conversation was leading us to a solution, but in reality it kept us stuck in the problem.

From time to time I see the same thing happen in companies with whom I consult. Here are a few tips to keep from spending too much time on a problem, instead of the solution.

1. Focus on facts, not feelings. Solutions come from what from what we learn and know, not what we think or feel. When you work with facts, the problem is rarely as big as it might seem when feelings and emotions get in the way.

For example, say employees are only allowed to use black pens. If 5% of your stores are using a red pen, it's probably a people problem. If personnel in 50% of your stores are using a red pen, you probably have a process problem. At the very least, the staff doesn't know or understand the expectations.

2. Get agreement on the problem. Our group used to debate different problems without even realizing what we were doing. That is, until one person would stop everyone and ask, "What problem are we trying to solve?" You'll be amazed how this simple question accelerates problem solving.

3. Get involvement from those the problem is impacting. Including frontline employees in a call or meeting brings a perspective others don't have. Using the red pen example, I might include a store from both the red and black pen groups.

4. Focus your time and conversation on the future solution. Why do you care what people or departments are to blame for the problem? The problem needs to be solved so the organization or store can move forward.

Returning to our pen example, the goal should be to have 100% of stores using black pens by May 1. What steps must the team take in order to do that? Do stores need to be told to destroy the red pens? Is it a change to the order form? Does there need to be a memo or training sent out?

5. Scale your solution to the problem. If one person, or just a handful of stores, is the problem, address that one person or handful of stores. If the majority of the staff or stores are having a problem, then provide a store or company-wide solution. But don't keep addressing or training stores who are doing things right just because another group isn't.

The above can work at all levels of the company. It’s also a great way to identify solutions to slow traffic, improve ADS, or anything else you want to move from issue or problem to solution.

So let me ask, how well are you and your team driving solutions?

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NEW PROGRAM - I’m excited to announce a brand new coaching and leadership program for multi-unit managers. While I know this only applies to a small percentage of readers, it is something that I believe can have a big impact on holders of a key position that doesn’t get a lot of development opportunities. Read more about it and reserve a spot here.

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Doug Fleener, a proven retail and customer experience expert and consultant, helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit the Dynamic Experiences Group website, or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create extraordinary results.

How to create a drama-free store – part two

Last week’s Weekly Retail Experience on creating a drama-free store clearly hit a nerve with many readers. The guidelines for a drama-free store sign was downloaded a record number of times. 

As I said last week, staff drama can have a negative impact on morale, the customer experience, and sales results. Wherever there are people there is the potential for drama, but I do believe that instituting last week’s guidelines can greatly reduce that potential in your business. But what about the store that already has it going on, or when, despite your best efforts, it does rear its ugly head?

Here are some tips and guidelines for eliminating drama in your store:

1. Don’t participate.  The first guideline to a drama-free store is to only speak positively about someone if he/she is not present. How often does one employee tell you something another said or did behind your back? In many workplaces it happens all the time.

You may think the information the person is sharing with you is valuable. It absolutely is - IF the other person is acting in a way that threatens the business or another employee. It’s not, if all it does is add a layer of drama in how you lead and coach that employee. I call it noise. Noise that does nothing but get in the way of you helping people be successful.

Worse, by allowing people to speak behind other’s backs you’re demonstrating the wrong behavior with the employee who is gossiping. I recommend that you tell the chatty person that unless the other employee’s actions are hurting others or the business, you’d rather not hear about it. Make it clear that you do want to hear about it if someone’s behaviors are causing a legitimate problem. It rarely is.

This will make your job a lot less stressful, and the information you’re not getting will have very little impact on your business.

2. Teach changing conversations as a key skill. The second guideline to a drama-free store is learning to take responsibility for asking someone to stop speaking negatively about another person.

That is not an easy thing to do, and that’s why you train on it at a store meeting. Just as you teach your staff how to engage a customer or check in an order, people need to learn and practice how to not participate in gossip.

It is as simple as saying, when one person begins to talk about someone who isn't present, replying, "Let's change the subject."  It’s not confrontational. It’s not judgmental. It’s just an easy way to move the conversation from gossip to something more productive. Practice it in a store meeting and you’ll be amazed at how much drama is reduced.

3. Resolve conflict before it becomes drama. Most drama is the result of unresolved conflict between two or more people. That’s why it is so important to address any conflict the minute you’re aware of it. If the conflict is not resolved it can fester and take on a life of it its own.

I first tell people to work the issue out among each other. We’re all adults, even if not everybody acts like it some of the time. The key is to give the parties a timeframe for it to be resolved by, and to tell you when it has been resolved. Giving that deadline is key.

Don't try to fix conflict by yourself. I'm the first to admit that when I was a store manager I tried to fix any issue between two employees. I'd talk to one person. Then I'd talk to the other person. Then I'd go back to the first one. At the end of the day the only thing I had accomplished was making myself mad at both of them!

If the parties can’t work it out, have a sit-down to resolve it. Just addressing an issue in the open is usually enough to make everyone so uncomfortable it gets resolved pretty quickly. Here are some guidelines I give the parties in a sit-down.

a) Don't make it personal. Keep the conversation centered on what someone actually said or did, and how it made the other person feel. No hearsay. No rumors. No sharing what someone thinks the other person thought. As the detective on the old crime drama said, "Just the facts."

b) Keep the primary focus on how to move forward. Although we do need to start with how the conflict began, the main focus should be on how to move forward. If not, the meeting really becomes a 'he said - she said' marathon. I get a headache just thinking about that!

I like to ask the individuals, "What can each of you do going forward to ensure there is no further conflict? Notice that with this question that we're asking each person to take responsibility for his/her own future actions.

c) Make sure each person feels that the conflict is resolved by the time the meeting ends. While I love to say that people can agree to disagree, at the end of this meeting there needs to be resolution and no disagreement. I ask each person if they feel there has been a resolution, and if he/she is ready to move forward. If not, then at this point I'm playing judge and jury, and I decide on the resolution. This could leave one or both employees unhappy. Again, you can't let the conflict linger and grow into drama.

4. Roll out last week’s guidelines to a drama-free store. Making this foundational will greatly reduce the possibility of even having to take the steps I’ve just described.

So let me ask, is any drama happening in your store? If not, jump right to number four and continue on. If yes, take action with any of the first three tips and get it eliminated.

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Doug Fleener, a proven retail and customer experience expert and consultant, helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit the Dynamic Experiences Group website, or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create extraordinary results.

How to create a drama free store

Staff drama can have a negative impact on morale, the customer experience, and sales results. Unfortunately, retail is essentially a petri dish for drama. Lots of downtime and working with a small group of people, many the same age and/or sex, can at times result in too much drama.

For our purpose we’ll define drama as unresolved conflict among two or more people, over-sharing of personal matters at work, constant sharing of negativity, and/or talking about co-workers who are not present.

That last one, gossip, is the biggest drama maker of all. It’s like a smoldering fire that along the way is fanned enough to blow up into a huge staff inferno. (How’s that for drama?)

The key to avoiding drama is to create a store environment where it’s simply not acceptable. That’s why I like to create a Drama Free Store. A Drama Free Store defines and communicates the expected behaviors of all employees, and managers are quick to point out when someone isn’t in alignment with those expectations.

Here are seven staff guidelines for a drama free store. I recommend that you share these guidelines with your team, and review them with each new employee who comes onboard.

1. We only talk positively about someone if he/she is not present.
2. We each take responsibility to ask someone to stop talking negatively about another person.
3. We focus our feedback on someone’s behaviors and actions, not the person.
4. We speak directly to any person with whom we are having an issue. We ask a manager to facilitate a conversation if we are unable to do so ourselves.
5. We focus on solutions rather than complaining about problems or issues.
6. We avoid sharing any personal problems at work.
7. We treat every colleague and customer better than we would like to be treated ourselves.

I suggest posting these guidelines in a very visible location in the backroom. Here’s an 8/12x11 sign you can download and post, or put them into your own document.

While sharing and posting these guidelines won’t stop all drama, it does cut down on the drama since the appropriate behaviors are kept top mind. It also makes it easier to address inappropriate behavior once you’ve made it clear that it is, in fact, inappropriate.

So let me ask, how drama free is your store? Consider using these guidelines to reduce the drama even more. Next week we’ll look at how to address drama if it does happen.

- Doug 

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Doug Fleener, a proven retail and customer experience expert and consultant, helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit the Dynamic Experiences Group website, or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create extraordinary results.