Retail Contrarian

Seven tips to better delegating

Most people need to be better at delegating. There are three reasons for this. First, leaders need to create more time to work on strategy, marketing and driving traffic, and actively growing their staff. Second, delegating helps future leaders grow and develop. Third, retail can sometimes get routine, and giving people additional responsibilities results in a more engaged workforce that's more emotionally connected to the business.

However good a delegator you already are, here are seven tips that can help you be even better.

1. Let go. It's okay to not do everything yourself and, more important, it's okay that others don't things perfectly. The margin of error for most what we do (except involving money and high priced products) is pretty wide. Let go and let others contribute. You and staff will be the better for it.

2. Give yourself a daily or weekly delegation goal. A lot of people who say they need to be better at delegating really just need to delegate more. The first step is to get into the habit. Setting a daily or weekly goal for yourself keeps the need to actively delegate right at top of your list.

3. Delegate the things you like to do. When I was a store manager I delegated tasks all the time. Of course, it was the boring stuff I had no interest in; things like cycle counts, filing paperwork, etc. Good for me, but not so good for my team. I was appalled when my manager suggested I do this, but it worked! This is especially important if you don't have time to do everything you need to.

4. Don't insist that people always do things the way you do them. Sometimes there is a documented process that needs to be followed, like checking in merchandise. Sometimes there are many ways to do something that all end in the same result. It's okay to let people find their own way. It might just be a better way.

5. Use delegating as teachable opportunities. Telling people what to do is easy. Teaching people why and how to improve is harder and takes more time, but the return on your time investment is huge. Remember: Teach, don't tell.

6. Stop fixing other people's mistakes. As I said earlier, delegating is a learning experience for the employee. If they don't do something right, take the time to teach them how to do it the next time. Just fixing it doesn't teach anybody anything. If they still can't do it right after you've taught them, then you need to rethink whether or not they're the right person to delegate the job to, or if they're even right for the position. The same holds true if they didn't do what's been delegated at all. Don't do the task/action yourself, but follow-up and find out why the action was not taken.

And that connects right with our seventh and final tip.

7. Build specific follow-up expectations and accountability into the delegation itself. Many people struggle to delegate because they're fearful things won't get done, and even worse the task/action will fall through the cracks. That's an easy fix. When you delegate give very specific expectations, and then put the accountability to communicate completion on the person being delegated to.

As an example, "Bob I need you to run the report and identify the top 100 customers by 3:00pm today, and please send me an email letting me know you've completed it or if there is a problem." Then write on your list "Bob-3pm?"

So let me ask, which one of these tips can you apply today?

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Doug Fleener is a proven retail and customer experience expert that helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit our website or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create an extraordinary experience and results.

Are you an And or a But leader?

One of the points I teach in our Extraordinary Coaching program is that leaders often inadvertently mitigate the praise they give their staff.  It usually happens by linking criticism (which we call instructive feedback) to the praise with the word "but."

"Nice job on the sale, but you should have showed him the matching widget."

"That was a great event, but you came in over budget."

"Those products were a great buy, but we need to make more margin."

I like to tell people to keep their "but" out of their feedback and use the word "and" instead. 

Look at how the praise remains positive when "and" is used instead of "but."

"Nice job on the sale, and next time show him the matching widget."

"That was a great event, and hopefully we can make the budget work."

"Those products were a great buy, and going forward we need to get the margin up."

I've also come to see how some leaders demotivate people with "but" even when it isn't linked to praise.  More often than not it's the result of the leader redirecting the conversation because of a different perspective.

Here's an example of what could take place on a district conference call:

Store manager: "We had a strong weekend and finished the week at 110% of goal."

District manager: "Yes, but your ADS was down over $10."

In this example I doubt the DM is even aware the impact her "but" had.  Here's a manager who is justifiably proud of her results, but the DM is looking at the possibility of missed opportunities with average daily sale being down.

I've also met and worked with many "But" leaders who constantly do this with his/her staff.  If it is a pattern, it's usually because of some need to be right, or maybe his/her glass is always half-empty.  Whatever the reason, the result is demotivated people.

Again, most leaders mistakenly use "but" to redirect, and just like praise all they need to do is replace "but" with "and."

Store manager: "We had a strong weekend and finished the week at 110% of goal."

District manager: "Great, and maybe we could look at why your ADS was down over $10."

Again, compare these two:

Employee: "It wasn't easy but I finally got her to buy two of the widgets."

Manager: "But why didn't she buy a third widget?"

Now compare the subtle but important difference using "and"

Manager: "And why didn't she buy a third widget?"

Here's my challenge for you.  For the next few days listen to how often you use the word "but" with your staff when the word "and" might have been more effective. 

If you discover you're more of a But person than you knew, you can begin to get your "but" out of the conversations with your team and start on your way to becoming an And leader.

By the way, the same approach works for parenting.

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Doug Fleener is a proven retail and customer experience expert that helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit our website or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create extraordinary results.

Your 2012 resolutions

I know how busy for the last few weeks, so I've taken the liberty of putting together some potential resolutions for you and your team in 2012.

This is a fairly extensive list, and you're probably already very good at most of these things. Even so, there might be one or two areas where improvement will have a positive impact on your business.

If you will, let me know which of these are right for you, and tell me about any of your resolutions that I've missed.

1. Taking your customer experience to the next level. Your store/company's customer experience is good, but deep down you know it could be so much better.  

2. Improve your staff's sales abilities. Your staff is really nice and delivers a very good customer experience. Now you aim to translate that to higher conversion and average sales.

3. Better clienteling. As online sales continue to grow and outpace traditional retail, in some segments the personal relationship between the customers and staff will become vital to keeping and maximizing customers.

4. More relevant marketing. The good news is you've got your Facebook page up and you're posting on a fairly regular basis. The bad news is you have no idea the impact it's having on your business. That probably means it isn't having much.

5. Increase accountability within your store/company. This could be in all sorts of different areas. Maybe it's expecting more from your frontline employees. It might also be holding managers and district managers more accountable for each store's sales performance.

6. Move the underperformers up or out. If you're tired of talking about the same underperformers over and over, maybe 2012 is when you finally improve their performance or promote them to customer. Yes, this goes hand in hand with #5.

7. Challenge and grow your top performers. The worst thing you can do is to not continue to develop your top people. It might be time to either create a new program for high-potential employees or, at the very least, figure out a way to better leverage their talents.

8. Invest more time and focus on developing your people. Unless you're competing on price you're probably competing with your people and the service/experience they deliver. Are you spending the appropriate time and energy on them?

9. Be more comfortable giving people the direct feedback they need to be successful. One of the managers I work with recently said to me, "I can't believe I coach without thinking about it! It feels natural now to give feedback at anytime, to anyone, and not worry about how it will be taken. We all "get it" that it is just information we need to get the results we want!" That's how we all need to think.

10. Improve your hiring process. This could be interpreted to be about improving the quality of the people you hire, but I don't want anyone to think that you haven't hired good people. You just need to get better at your process so you can do that more consistently. 

11. Standardize your training and development. Chances are you and your stores/staff are good at training new people. The challenge is that no two new hire trainings are the same.

12. Work more strategically. Some people say you should work smarter but not harder. I think if you've survived the economy we've had for the last few years you're pretty smart. A lot of people they just need to work from a better-defined plan and then work the plan. 

13. Delegate more. I hesitated about putting this on the list since most of the time delegation isn't the real issue. It's usually either that people can't give up control or they don't have the quality of staff to delegate to. Whatever the reason, you probably need to do less.

14. Become a better merchant. Whether it's buying, visual presentation, or financial management, you know that if you improve in this area you'll see an improvement to the top and bottom lines. Frankly, I put this at the bottom of the list since I know that most of you I know are stronger at these things that the above items. But hey, they're your resolutions.

15. Be more action oriented. Your list of things you were going to do or wanted to do is probably longer than what you did. Don't feel bad, that's true for most of us. But did you do what you know you needed to do to be more successful? The road to mediocrity is paved with good intentions.

So let me ask, what will your resolution be for 2012?

 

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Doug Fleener is a proven retail and customer experience expert that helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit our website or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create extraordinary results.

Rock the boat!

I recently spoke with a retailer who is disappointed with the performance of one of her key employees. When I asked how she is handling the situation she replied, "I haven't really said much.  I don't want to rock the boat this close to Christmas."

I hope your reaction is the same as mine.  Rock the boat!

Here's why.  A mentor of mine recently explained that people and organizations have a finite amount of energy and focus at their disposal.  This energy and focus is used both externally in creating sales and building your community, and internally in dealing with organizational problems, challenges and opportunities.

What he said next really stood out for me:  Any additional energy and focus that's required internally is taken away from the external customer side.  We may fear rocking the boat during the holidays, but not quickly resolving issues during the holidays will cost you a lot more money than will rocking the boat.

Here's my advice for that retailer and any other owner/manager in the same position. If an employee is falling short of your expectations, address it now.  As I've said many times, most employees want to do a good job.  They can't improve if you don't let them know what to work on.

Nine times out of ten these conversations go better than we expect.  Remember, keep the focus on future behaviors and don't dwell too much on past actions.  Keep it positive. Express your support of the employee and be done with it.  Take the internal distraction, fix it, and get the energy and focus back on the customer.

Also, don’t forget to praise and thank all of your employees at the end of each day. It’s Showtime!

So let me ask, do you need to rock any boats?

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Doug Fleener is a proven retail and customer experience expert that helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit our website or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create extraordinary results.

The leadership holiday effect

There are several somewhat intangible staff attributes that separate the good from the great stores over the course of the holiday season. They aren't things we train on, but are the result of the leadership and the effect they have on his/her team.

These intangibles directly impact the customer's experience and, ultimately store results, in a positive or negative way. Here are some key intangible for your consideration.

Attitude

Well-led teams are excited about the upcoming holiday. They know that the next six weeks will be very busy and at times very tiring, but they're also eager to get started because they know how important Christmas is to a store's long-term profitability.

In other stores, the staff is dreading the holidays. They're talking about how difficult customers are, how the store hours stink, and everything else they believe is going to be bad about the holiday.

The attitude of the leader is the attitude of the team.

Beliefs    

Well-led teams believe they control what happens this holiday. They don't dismiss how challenging the economy has been for a lot of people, but they also know they have the products and store experience that people will pay for.

Other teams are already preparing for failure. They've been told that customers prefer other stores so they just do the best they can. Unfortunately for them, when the bar is set so low the best isn't going to be good enough.

Staff beliefs come directly from the leader.

Energy

This may well be an outcome of attitude and beliefs, but customers can feel the energy and passion from a well-led team. Energized teams have a bounce in their step as they work the floor and enthusiastically welcome their customers into their store. 

Not so for the other teams. Maybe they'll find it when the holiday crowds hit - but if they don't have the energy now I'm not sure they'll get it later.

The daily energy level of the leader sets the energy level for the team.

Focus

Well-led teams are laser focused on the customer. Their goal is to win every customer who walks in the door, maximize the opportunity, and extend the relationship by setting up the next visit. Everything else is secondary. The holiday is well underway in these stores.

Other teams are still waiting for the holiday customers and are juggling current customers with getting everything ready for the big day. They fail to see that every day is now the big day.

A team's focus is determined by the leader's expectations and own actions.

As a leader, all you have to do is look around to see what your attitude, beliefs, energy, and focus are. Your team is displaying them today. I hope you like what you see.

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Doug Fleener is a proven retail and customer experience expert that helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit our website or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create extraordinary results.

Purposeful parties and events

Last week one of our clients announced to their employees that the traditional holiday party will not be held this year. The employees were very disappointed. The annual event has long been a high point of the year because it brought families together together for an evening of food, drinks, and socializing.

The disappointment turned to excitement when the owner announced that the holiday party hasn't been completely cancelled, but will be replaced by a smaller scale event that will enable people to give back to their community.

The company is giving each employee a gift card to use to purchase holiday gifts for children in need. The employees, along with their families, will bring their purchases to a giftwrapping party held over consecutive nights at the company's office. The giftwrapping party will be catered and is shaping up to be a wonderful evening.

LOVE IT!

It's a holiday party with a purpose. Employees are still recognized for their contribution to the company, but at the same time the organization is able to give something to their community. It's a win/win that makes a difference, and in this particular instance it could spell the difference between a child having a present under the tree or not.

Whether you currently do something like this or not, it's a great reminder of the opportunities to touch more lives we have in our businesses. You also can't underestimate the impact this has on both employees and customers.

Here are a few more suggestions for ways to add more purpose to holiday parties and events:

* Donate a gift or make a contribution for every customer who shows up at a VIP or Wishlist event. This gesture could be the tipping point for a customer who is undecided about whether to attend or not.

* Ask customers to bring a gift or canned goods as the price of admission for an event. Even better, match the donation.

* Offer a gift card or discount for bringing in a gift or canned goods. This is a great way to start the sale. It's up to you and your team to finish it.

* Let customers vote on Facebook and/or in the store for your holiday charity.

* Partner with a local shelter or charity to create a Wishlist tree. Customers can purchase an ornament that helps a particular person or family in need, and those customers are invited to an exclusive evening or weekend holiday event.

So let me ask, how can you add more purpose to your parties and events?

 

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Doug Fleener is a proven retail and customer experience expert that helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit our website or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create extraordinary results.

Looking for Love in all the right places

In my last post I wrote that specialty retailers whose competitive advantage is their staff and the experience they deliver must have employees who Love their jobs.

The difference in the passion, energy and conviction of Love people compared to Like people impacts both the top and bottom lines.

How do you build a staff of people who Love their jobs?  Consider these tips:

1. Be incredibly particular about why you hire someone.  It starts right here. You can hire potentially good employees based on their past experience, or you can hire people who would truly Love to work for your company/store.  You can teach product knowledge and selling skills, but you can't teach the passion and desire to be associated with your store(s).  While candidates obviously need to possess some skills and attitudes, I'd be concerned about any applicant who doesn't convey their Love.

2. Show the Love to get the Love.  I firmly believe that employees give their customers what they themselves receive from the company.  One of my favorite sayings is, "You can't expect your employees to give service with a smile unless you first give them something to smile about."  This is why employee recognition, appropriate rewards, a strong culture, and managers and owners simply saying thank you is so important.

3. Refuse to accept Unlike behavior. I think we can all agree that retail is not as easy as it may look to outsiders, and that it can be hard to be "on" every minute of the day.  So while it's only natural that some employees might have a bit of an off day, we can't accept any employee demonstrating any behavior to customers or their peers that communicates they don't like their job or the products.  

Too many managers/owners look or explain away such behavior by saying, "Oh, he's having a bad day."  Well, that employee bad day may have just cost you a sale and a customer.  Directly address any employee who has an Unlike day, and either turn around or remove the frequent Unliker.

4. Mirror the Love. Employees follow their leader's behavior.  That's why it's called leading. If you want your staff to be Love people, not Like people, you must first demonstrate the Love.  Do you engage customers with passion and energy?  Do you unfailingly avoid any negative talk about customers and competitors?  Do you demonstrate all the expected elements of the customer experience?  Most important of all, do you Love what you do?

While I believe that a Like owner or manager can run a good store, I'm not sure that person can create a store staffed with employees who Love their jobs and deliver an experience customers Love, not just Like.

So let me ask, are you finding the Love people you need to be a wildly successful store?

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Doug Fleener is a proven retail and customer experience expert that helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit our website or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create extraordinary results.

How to build a more effective team

The quality of your employee's work experience has a direct impact on the quality of your customer's experience.  Give me five minutes shopping in a store and I can usually tell you how the staff feels about working there.

One of the key drivers of the employee experience is how the staff feels about their colleagues. That's why teamwork at the store level is such a vital component of a store's success.  When a staff works well together and feels proud to be part of the team, and is lead by a customer-focused leader, the quality of both the employee and customer experience is superior to that of a weaker team.

The key to effective teamwork is leadership.  It's leadership that makes teamwork an expectation.  It's leadership that holds people accountable to contribute to the betterment of the team.  It's leadership that is able to take a group of individuals and make them one.

To that end, here are four actions that will create a more effective team.  You'll see that the list doesn't include a ropes course, walking over hot coals, or any other popular "team building" activities.  It's the day-to-day actions we take that truly determine a team's success.

1. Stop drama in its place.  Nothing tears apart a team more quickly - or more quietly - than drama. If people are complaining about someone, address it immediately. If two people aren't getting along, sit them down together and put a stop to it.  I find two words are very effective for dealing with drama: STOP IT.

2. Regularly communicate your assessment of your team's teamwork.  Share what you see are the strengths and areas of improvement needed in teamwork.  The more you talk about your teamwork, the better it will be.

3. Don't enable poor performance and unacceptable behavior.  Teams begin to splinter when the majority feels that one or more individuals aren't contributing to the team.  Most employees can look past someone who is struggling in their role.  What they can't accept is when those employees are allowed to continue to underperform, or act in a way that negatively impacts the others.

Of course you obviously can't discuss how you're working with/coaching one employee with the rest of the team, the team should be able to see that you're working with that person to create a stronger and more effective team.

4. Recognize and celebrate effective teamwork, behaviors, and results.  It's important to not only encourage teamwork from your staff, but to recognize and celebrate it when you see it.  Just as we coach individuals, be sure to call out the behaviors and actions you saw and heard that created the effective teamwork. Sometimes leaders label a successful day as "good teamwork" without being specific about why the teamwork was good, but the more we recognize positive behaviors and actions the more likely they are to be repeated.

So let me ask, how are you doing in building a more effective team?

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Doug Fleener is a proven retail and customer experience expert that helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit our website or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create extraordinary results.

How not to be an extraordinary boss

Here are eight things that can keep a good or great boss from being an Extraordinary one.  Fortunately, all of these traits are easily fixable by changing our own behaviors and actions.

1. You need everyone to love you.  While you need everyone on your team to respect you, and it is easier to lead people if they like you, if you need your team to love you, you will never be an Extraordinary boss.  Your need to be loved will keep you from setting expectations too high or delivering difficult feedback.  Be proud that you have a cohesive team that likes working with you. Leave the love for family, friends, your dog or your cat.

2. You don't walk your own talk. I once worked for a manager who told us we couldn't have friends visit us at work but he his friends would be in the store for hours at a time. This cost him both credibility and his team. Walk your talk and the team will follow.

3. You mitigate your praise. A lot of good bosses don't even realize they do this.  Here's a common example of mitigating praise. "Great sale, Danny, but you missed the chance to show the customer the new products."  Notice how the feedback on not showing the new products diminished the praise?  A better way to say it is, "Great sale Danny, and next time you want to be sure show the customer the new products."  I like to remind managers to keep their "but" out of their feedback.

4. You work in your office during peak times.  Every owner and manager has a lot of office work that needs to get done, but the Extraordinary bosses are almost always available during peak periods. They also tell their staff that when they get busy to ask for help. Unless you give the staff permission to interrupt your work most of them won't.

5. You have off-the-record conversations.  There are no off-the-record conversations with your staff.  The minute a boss says, "Just between us. . ." you're no longer an Extraordinary boss.

6. You don't give balanced feedback. Some bosses only praise their staff and some bosses only tell people what they did wrong.  Extraordinary bosses make sure they're giving all their employees a good balance of praise and instructional feedback.

7. You show favoritism.  There are people we like and there are people we like less.  As much as we'd like to think this doesn't happen, it does. The key is to keep those feelings to yourself. When I was a manager I thought I was pretty good at hiding my feelings until my assistant pointed out that I gave away my opinions with who I let hang out in the office off the floor. Ouch.

8. You don't have regular developmental conversations with employees.  One trait of an Extraordinary boss is his/her relentless focus on helping employees grow and develop. That doesn't happen through osmosis.  It requires regular conversations with employees about their strengths and areas of development.

So let me ask, is there anything holding you back from being an Extraordinary boss?

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Doug Fleener is a proven retail and customer experience expert that helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit our website or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create extraordinary results.

Moving towards your future success

I believe that we're always moving either toward or away from success.  This is true for companies and individuals.  Our challenge is that that success is also moving, driven forward by changes in market and industry conditions, technology, changing consumer preferences, and local and national events.

So not only do we need to make sure our strategy and tactics are moving us towards success, but we have to be moving as fast, if not faster, than the speed of change.  That was a lot easier fifteen or twenty years ago.

I see six key areas of focus in which a specialty retailer must develop and grow to create the necessary movement forward toward future success.

1. Leadership development.  It doesn't matter if you're an owner, executive, or manager - you need to be growing by leaps and bounds.  It doesn't matter if you're a single store, a national chain, or somewhere in-between - you need to be growing by leaps and bounds. This is the area that is probably receives the least attention in any size company.

2. Staff development.  Especially as it pertains to adding value to the customer's experience and maximizing the sales opportunities.  Specialty retailers who fail to do this and cannot compete on price stand a good chance of being insolvent before 2020.

3. Customer community marketing.  The specialty retailer's future success depends on the ability to emotionally connect with customers at the store and extend that connection into the customer's life.  Simply being transactional is like dragging an anchor while chasing future success.

4. Seeking out opportunity-centric vendor and product mixes.  Just a few years ago we advised retailers to select vendors and products based on their targeted customer. While that's still true, it's also vital that retailers select vendors that offer retailers the best opportunity to be successful. That means not only selecting the right companies and brands, but also removing those that don't properly support your path to success.

5. Leveraging technology. This is going to be a challenge for all retailers, but especially for smaller independents and regional chains.  As consumers, especially those under the age of 35, blur the line between online and brick and mortar retail, retailers need to integrate more technology into their customer experience. Greatest opportunities are with customer engagement tools and mobile point-of-sale. 

6. Proactively managing experience elements. We've said for years that retail is detail, and with today's finicky customers the details are the difference between winning and losing customers. From visual presentations to customer engagement, the ability to create and manage repeatable authentic experiences is essential.

Here's a quick exercise.  Score yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 in each one of these categories. 

So let me ask, how are you doing in the six areas? More important, are you moving forward fast enough?

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Doug Fleener is a proven retail and customer experience expert that helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit our website or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create extraordinary results.