One of the questions I am asked most often is how can I improve retail business. This discussion could take many circuitous routes. Therefore I am going to focus this discussion on leveraging retail sales people. If you successfully improve their performance you will most certainly improve retail business.
Evaluate your staff through these four filters to improve retail business.
Hire the right people! This is an elementary premise but one of the most important in determining the success of your ability to improve retail business. Jim Collins, in his book “Good to Great” spoke about putting the right people on the bus. His clever analogy detailed that it’s very important to have a course charted for the bus, the bus being your business, but it’s just as important, perhaps even more important to make sure that the bus is filled with the right people. One of the old cliches that is often bantered about is “hire for attitude and train for skill”. That may be the way to look at hiring, but given the unemployment rate and state of employee opportunities it could well be that you can have both of those qualities now.
Train, Train, Train!
When athletic teams are competing, providing that skill levels of the participants are similar, the contest is usually one by the team that has trained the hardest. Your store is not an athletic event, but it is very much a competition. If you expect to win, and you must expect to win, it is imperative that you continue training.
You should train for product knowledge and train for selling skills but it is also critical that you cross-train. By doing so, when your retail sales clerks are not actively involved in a selling process they have knowledge to accomplish other tasks. Success of this group of personnel is not measured by sales alone but rather by a productivity quotient. In exchange for the wages you pay these people how much do they produce in tangible results.
Directing personnel to improve retail business.
Remember that the title of this discussion is one of improving retail business and not just improving retail sales. When we discuss improving business we are speaking about improving the bottom line. When the right employees are on the bus and they have been trained properly the next step is to ensure that they clearly understand what is expected of them. This means that a broad outline that includes instructions of what they are to do when they see nothing to do. You know as a store owner or manager that there are always things to do, but you employees may not see that as clearly as you do. Communicate your desires to them…direct them.
Supervise and follow up.
The final step is to make sure the right people on the bus, who are trained repeatedly and who have been clearly directed are monitored for compliance. I often see operations where the first three steps are completed only to fall short at this final step “where the rubber meets the road”. Ultimately one person must assure that all of these steps are complied with regularly and religiously.
As I said there are many different directions that a discussion to improve retail business can take, but this is one that can pay huge dividends.
