Just Looking

Hiring Passionate Employees

Church of the customer has a great quick post talking about hiring Hiring for Attitude, Not Just for Skill.

A sign in a store window is what Ben saw during a walk down the street. It is a help wanted sign from a Tea company store in Chicago which asks "Are you passionate about tea"

The sign effectively communicates that if you don't have a passion for what we are selling, then you probably won't be a good fit for the job.    And I bet those trying to fake passion during the interview are quickly exposed.   Passion can't be faked.

What sort of message do you send to your potential applicants?  Are you just looking for someone to take over an empty position or are you trying to find a Brand Champion to help drive your business to the next level?   

In my years of hiring in Retail I always hired passion first and knowledge second.    Even now I tend to hire people who have tons of enthusiasm, a general excitement about working with the public and that are passionate about the products I am representing.     I can train anyone to be successful in retail sales, but I can't teach passion, enthusiasm or a love for your fellow man.   

Walk into any retail outlet (even Starbucks on occasion) and you will find people who are just "doing time" until they find a better job.    The managers who hired them were hiring to fill a spot.    Unfortunately for the manager, they will eventually have to hire for that spot again, or ultimately not have to worry about hiring for that spot due to their business closing.

I challenge you to rethink the way you are interviewing and hiring for your retail staff.   The people you hire are directly responsible for how the public views your business.     Passionate people are contagious and will rub off on your customer, creating passionate customers.    Passionate people are fun to listen to and are amazing to watch in action.    Retail is all about the experience these days and your people are a big part of the experience.

Or you could just keep hiring the people you are hiring now and retire early as your competition grows bigger and the door bell on your shop door stops ringing.

Oh and if you don't look at Church of the Customer daily, start today.   Great Blog!

Effective Team Conference Calls

In the age of technology and locations that are spread across the country, the telephone confence call has become a key tool in the arsenal of the sales manager.    I recently had the opportunity to help my team improve their confernce call managment skills.   Following is the text from a quick email I sent out to my team.

These are tips I have used (or try to use) when leading my calls. 

Stand Up When You are Giving Your Call

By standing up or even walking around during the call, you will come across with more energy and enthusiasm.    The content of these calls is not the most exciting information in the world, so it is up to you to bring the enthusiasm and excitement to the call.    

Your team will emulate about ½ the energy you demonstrate on the phone call.  So if you are quite and monotone I can guarantee most of your team has hit the snooze alarm and rolled back over asleep.    

Praise Publicly and Coach Privately

Always talk positively and use these calls to motivate your team to do better.   Don’t use these calls to manage the team’s performance as a group.     If you have performance issues, focus on them with each individual sales specialist.  When you bring up performance issues to the team, it tends to demoralize those people who are performing well.    Always talk about the good things that are happening in your district and leave the negative to individual calls.    Trust in the fact that they already are well aware of what they are doing wrong and don't need to be publicly reminded of it.

A better way to manage group performance, if you absolutely need to cover a topic, is to recognize the outstanding performance of a member of your team and have them comment on how they do it.  You send a message to the rest of your team that the topic is important and you also get the benefit of enhancing someone’s self esteem by giving them public recognition.   

Do Not Feed the Animals

Take issues which are volatile and likely to spark into a group “bitch fest” offline and handle them one on one.  If you are cornered into discussing a touchy subject, then talk about it briefly and offer to answer questions after the call with anyone who has concerns. End the discussion quickly and move on to the next topic.   The longer you let the discussion go on, the more likely you will lose control of the call.    If you lose control of a call, you have lost control of our team.   

Don’t bring up issues on the call that you know will cause problems.  It is better and more effective to handle group communication of potential volatile topics in email if they have to be communicated to the whole group.   Pay and hour reductions are examples of topics that should be avoided on your call and are better handled individually.    

Make the Call More about THEM and Less about YOU.

You are the boss and are an expert in the topic you are covering.  Assume they already know it and don’t spend time on the call trying to prove it to the group.

Our calls were created as a way for your team to interact and learn from each other.    They are a tool that helps the sales specialist learn from those who are doing it best.   Make sure the content and tone of your call is one that encourages group interaction.    My recommendation is that if you need to cover a piece of information to the team, get one of your best associates to cover it for you.   They can review information as well as you can, but the benefit is that they get the personal recognition as a leader in your team.     At the least, encourage interaction and get people talking instead of just listening.

In the beginning of any project, you may need to talk more because you are passing along the information to them for the first time.   Overtime, you should be doing less talking and more facilitation of the discussion. 

And always leave about 15 minutes of each call with room for a roundtable discussion.    You can provide a topic to get them started (What is the best way to greet a customer, what are the reason why our product is better than the compeitor's) or you can open up the floor to topics they would like to discuss.  Either way, give them the opportunity to interact.

Interaction; It’s a Good Thing.

Your sales specialist's phone works both ways.  Let’s make sure they are doing more than just sitting there and listening to you talk.    If you go more than 7 to 10 minutes without any interaction from your team, then you probably have a lot of people not paying attention.  Be sure to break up your stream of information download by asking for some responses from your team.   Simple questions like “Does this make sense?” or “Does anyone have anything to add to that topic?’ can go a long way to making your calls more enjoyable.   

I would also recommend calling out to those sales specialists who do not talk much on the call.   We all have people who can and will dominate the conversation of our calls but it is important that we get the interaction of everyone on the call.   One of the benefits of more participation is more people will pay attention if they know you might call on them during the call.    The other benefit is that you might get a gem of an idea out of someone who doesn’t normally speak up.   

Content of Calls Should Enhance Other Information Mediums, Not Replace Them.

If the information you are providing could be easily communicated in an email or a post on New and Information page, then why are we holding a conference call?   Our weekly Conference calls are there for you to reinforce messages and add to the topics we discuss in documents we send out.    They are not there for you to download information the sales specialist has read in other places.     If it has to be read, have one of the participants do it, but try your best to bring new information to the topic or discuss something that is entirely new.

And never forget this important point:

The goal of our calls is for our sales specialist to walk away with a new idea that will help them be more successful.

If your team doesn’t walk away with something new from each call that helps them be more successful, then there is a good chance that they might walk away from more than just your phone call.    Conference calls can get long and boring so do your best to make them interesting and educational.   We hold the calls every other week so you get a chance to spark the enthusiasm of those people who you don’t get to see each week

Have fun, interact, play some music, do what ever you can to make people look forward to the next call.    Make your call something they make sure they don’t miss rather than a source of noise in the background as they finish their laundry.

Creating a Sales Compensation program

My biggest frustration with retail these says is the move away from a commission oriented sales structure.    Big box retail (Circuity City, CompUSA, Best Buy)  have moved to an hourly based commission and in very few cases providing small spiffs as incentive to sell specific products.    Best Buy was never commission and made it a point to stress that to each and every customer that shopped there.

What is wrong with a commission based sales person?   In my experience, commission based sales staff contribute more than the average hourly based sales person.    They have more incentive to increase the average order and to make sure the customer purchases today. 

I managed many sales people in my career and always found that sales people on a commission structure always performed at a higher level than those on an hourly basis.   While I did find some great hourly employees, most of them eventually left for higher paying positions.  A commission based compensation structure provided a built in motivation system for my teams.   Do better at your job and see immediately rewards.    

Here is commission based is better than hourly based:

• Less turnover.  Fewer employees leaving for better pay due to the fact their pay is limitless
• Easier performance management.    It is easier to manage someone to higher performance when you can immediately point to an increase or decrease in their paycheck.   
• Better results in Average Sales Value, Items per ticket and Close rate.  A commission sales person realizes that the quality of the sale results in a higher income for less effort.

For those of you looking to create a commission based compensation plan, I found a great link here.    Leon Frank discusses how to create a compensation program that really motivates your sales force.   He brings up some great points including:

• Making it clear and easy to understand so that it truly motivates, not confuses your staff.
• Making income unlimited.   
• Consistency in the compensation plan so that no one is treated more favorably and you create moral issue which will lower sales performance

If you are not currently offering a commission or bonus structure to your sales staff, I would suggest researching how you might be able to implement with your employees.  Mr. Franks article provides a great first step but don't be afraid to search for help in creating your program.  No compensation/bonus program is better than a poorly managed one.     I am currently experiencing that problem in my current job and I can tell you it is a painful situation.    The worst thing you can do to an employee is screw up their paycheck.   And there is no better way of screwing up someones paycheck than rolling out a poorly planned compensation plans.

Anybody have any other input on how to create a great compensation program?

Success Secrets

During my browsing today I came across a great blurb on the Entrepreneur website.  The following comes from the listing of the Top 100 Fastest Growing companies.   It is the success secret for Promoworks LLC a marketing company in Schaumburg, IL.

"Follow your passion, and then take the lead. Stay focused, stay humble, and have fun. Realize companies don't succeed, people do. Make sure everyone shares in the victories."

I just thought it was something worth posting here to my readers.  I particularly liked the "realized companies don't succeed, people do:"   Its something that we sometimes forget in our passion to be successful.

Walmart, the biggest retailer in the US, is touted for its awesome distribution system,locations and price negotiating strategy.    What analysts forget is that all of these were the result of the hard work of some amazing people.     Its the people stupid.

Today, I think you should take a few moments to recognize and thank the people who work on your sales team.   Thank them for making your job easier.   Thank them for making your company successful.  I do it frequently with my teams and I can tell you that a simple email or phone call will result in better moral, increased loyalty to you and a boost in productivity.

Some other success secrets worth reading:

TechTarget Inc.   -   Needham, MA
Hire great people, and give them the resources and training to be successful, Then get out of the way, and let them do their jobs.

Southampton Group LLC   -   Charlotte, NC
Integrity and ethics matter in everything we do. How we treat the people we work with is as important as how we treat our customers.

Martin Capital   -   Clayton, GA
Personal relationships are the most valuable asset in our business. Whether it's a customer or a strategic partner, we look beyond the single transaction to a long-term, win-win partnership.

Vision Technologies Inc.   -   Glen Burnie, MD
There is no magic formula. Create the right vision for your target market, hire the best people and execute at 100 percent, 100 percent of the time, and luck will find you.

Read the list here

It's The People Stupid

Rumor has is it that Clinton's Election Campaign had a big sign that hung up in their offices to remind them what was important in his Presidential Campaign against George Bush.   The sign said "It's the Economy Stupid".  That sign helped them keep focused on what the American Public was really concerned about.   If you are a sales manager in retail, you need to go out and find a big piece of paper and make a sign that says "It's the People Stupid" and hang it on your wall.

Why?  Because you need to keep focused on what you are really managing instead of falling into the numbers trap.

It's the People Stupid.

Retail management often forgets that the role of a manager is to manage people.   Because District Managers have a tendency to focus on the numbers during their visits, sales manager think this is the right thing to do.  District Managers do this, because they don't have a relationship with your people.  They don't know them, so they can only look at the results of their hard work.    They focus on the numbers and hire you to focus on the people.    Your job isn't to manage the numbers. 

It's the People Stupid.

Never forget that you manage people and the numbers are only the results of how well you are managing those people.     Your job is to find a way to manage your teams behavior and to find a way to motivate them to achieve the numbers you need to present to your boss.    Your job is to teach, train and develop the people to reach their potential or help those that can't do that to find another career path.  Your job is to lead them to success not just spout off the results and what you expect.  If you have poor numbers then you probably have poor people.   And if you have poor people, you are probably focusing on just the numbers.

It's the People Stupid

If you pull out your latest report card or monthly report and start wondering how you are going to increase your volume by 10% and don't think about the people, you will fail.  You need to look at what result you want to achieve, then look at each one of your people and find a way to help them improve their sales behavior.    

• You need to be thinking how your going to get John increase his average sales per ticket by $300 because he tends to sell lower priced items.   
• You need to work with Jennifer and help her learn how to recognize buying signals so she will close more sales and create more revenue.
• You need to work with Steve to help him learn how to better greet customers so he has more opportunities to sell.
• You need to work with Dustin to improve his qualifying skills so he has less returns each month that create negative revenue.
• You need to help the entire team find a way to increase their average items per ticket so you have more add-on sales to every order.

What you don't have to do is tell your team that they have to sell more so you can hit your 10% increase in revenue this month and then walk away feeling like you've done your managing.    Or even worse, sit down during a coaching session and tell someone they need to increase their sales by 10% and not show them how to do that. That's managing numbers, and that's not what you manage.

It's the People Stupid.

And don't think there is an ever ending supply of people who are standing in line waiting for an opportunity to work with you.  Oh sure, if you place an ad, you will get 100's of applicants, but you will end up paying for those new hires.  The people you have working for you today are far more qualified than any new hire you can find to replace them.  Unless they were a bad hire in the first place, someone thought they had potential.  It is your job to find help the people find their potential. 

The cost in time and money to hire a new person can never be recouped if you don't take the time to train, develop, coach and mentor the employees you have.    A real sales manager knows his people are resource to be nurtured and grown.   They are not a bunch of numbers that add up to the end results at the end of the month.   Great sales manager don't manage numbers. 

It's the People Stupid.

So the next time you are given a goal by your manager or a directive by the District Manager during his next visit,  take some time and look at the your people.  Decide how you are going to manage them to help you accomplish that goal.   Find ways to train and develop and lead them to success.    The more you manage your people, the easier it will be to achieve the numbers.

And go out and make that sign and hang it up on the wall.  And when you start mentoring your replacement on your way to District Management, point to it and say:

It's the People Stupid.

Teaching Your Sales Staff to Care about the Customer

Kathy Sierra over at Creating Passionate Users has another great post today.  (Make her blog a daily read) In Can You Teach Someone to Care?  Kathy discusses the process of creating a "Culture of Caring" in a business as the best way to insure everyone cares about the customer.

I think we have forgotten how to care about the customer in retail today. Retail sales people care more about hitting their sales goals or not making their manager mad then caring about the customers needs.    How can you truly care about the customer if that isn't your primary motivation?   And no I am not saying that you shouldn't care about add-on sales and selling the most profitable product. I just think it is in the best interest of the company (an their bottom line) if the sales people on the front-line care about the customer first and try to achieve their goals as a result

Here are the benefits of caring for the customer:

Are you Really Rewarding Customer Loyalty?

What is Your Brand Mantra by Jennifer Rice has a great post on Loyalty programs here.

I would recommend any retailer considering starting a Loyalty program to read this post. It does a good job of explaining why a Loyalty Program doesn't really exist or work.

From the post:

American Airlines' frequent-flier program birthed the misleading idea that companies could buy loyalty. Because it appeared to work, companies in all industries started creating their own versions. IMO, there is no such thing as a "customer loyalty program." Look at any company that has true customer loyalty and you'll find that they don't need a loyalty program. Starbuck's has enough loyal customers that they don't need to distribute "buy 10 and get 1 free" punchcards.

I agree. I have an Albertsons Loyalty Card. It entitles me to special prices if I shop in their store. Their store is only 1 mile from me and is the primary place I shop. Does the location of the store keep me coming back or the deals I get from the Loyalty Card? Is Albertson's losing money by providing me a discount for shopping, when I would probably shop their anyway? And what is even funnier, if I forget my card, I can just ask the cashier to use theirs and they often offer it willingly. I bet this isn't what Alberston's had in mind.

What does this have to do with you?

Are you spending all your time as a retailer developing a fancy Customer Loyalty program when you should be better off spending the time doing simpler things to keep customer coming back? Read Jennifer's post and concentrate on #3 and see how you can change to become that sort of retailer. Better staff, simple programs like Thank You cards and phone follow with customers and maybe even thanking the customer for their business can go a lot farther and cost a lot less.

The Science of Retail Lines

A great article over at washingtonpost.com on the Science of Retail Lines. Link viewing requires that you log into website.

A quote from the article:

The fact is, shoppers are intensely interested in their time and often approach a line with a eye toward minimizing how long they'll spend in it. Is that cashier fast or slow? Is there a bagger in that line? Is that person in line buying more than that other one?

It is a great read for any retailer who is struggling how customers line up for service. The author points out the fact that many retailers just don't understand how customers think when it comes to setting up the path to the register.

My big question: Instead of trying to figure out how to control customer lines, can you change the way you do business to remove them?

The moment a customer is ready to hand over money for your product or service is a critical point in your relationship with them. Handle it incorrectly, or make them wait in long lines, and you could end up with someone walking out the door without your product.

Skill or Will - Managing your Team

Rob over at Business Pundit is having an issue with an employee.

I have an employee who doesn't want to change. He is absolutely awesome at the 50% of his job that he loves, and getting him to do the other 50% is like pulling teeth. I hate to lose him, but anytime I focus on the more mundane parts of his job he does just enough to get by and get me off his back.

Sound familiar? Ever had a great salesperson that you "hated to lose" but wasn't peforming good customer followup, helping the team maintain the salesfloor or taking excessive breaks? His sales make you look good to your manager but his other issues make you look bad to your team.

To prevent this problem you need to set the right level of expectation when you hire and during their first few weeks of training. Assigning stocking and floor maintenance duties along with their initial sales orientation helps reinforce that it is all part of the job. Of course, you need to continue to hold them accountable and "Inspect what you Expect". Constant attention to the details on your part, will help set the right expectation. And it wouldn't hurt if you recognized a few of your team members for non-sales efforts instead of focusing on the numbers all the time.

Now if you didn't set the right expectation during the new hire phase or are still having issues, then you need to evaluate whether it is Skill or Will.

Skill - It is a skill issue? Does the employee not have the skill to do the job? In this case they need more training and coaching from yourself in order to succeed. Coaching and development is your primary job as a sales manager.

Will - It is a will issue? Are they not willing to do the job? In this case you need to identify what the mental barrier is to completing the task. If you can help the employee remove the barrier, then work with them to help them adjust their behavior. This is the tougher part of the Skill/Will style but can be the most rewarding. Help someone overcome a will issue and they will follow you for life.

And if that doesn't solve the problem, then it is time for a personnel change and a re-evaluation on how you are hiring and developing your people.

My question to Rob would be, is it Skill or is it Will?

A Peter Drucker perspective on Retail Sales Management

On my wall is a quote that goes with me whenever I take over a new group of sales people. It is by Peter Drucker and it helps me keep my perspective when working with a sales team.

Here is the Quote

"No organization can depend on genius; the supply is always scare and unreliable. It is the test of an organization to make ordinary human beings perform better than they seem capable of, to bring out whatever strength there is in it's members, and to use each man's strength to help all the others perform. The purpose of an organization is to enable common men to do uncommon things."

Peter Drucker - In Search of Excellence

What does this quote mean to me?

- Don't rely on the superstar sales person to hit my budgets.
- The average sales person is the one requires most of my attention and who will deliver most of my success. It is my responsibility to help them succeed.
- Everyone has the potential to succeed if given the support of the team.

I have seen far to many sales managers place the success of their department on the back of that superstar sales person. When they do this, the same thing always happens. They see some great successes in the short term. Eventually the other sales people begin to resent the favoritism the superstar receives and begin to peform lower than normal or quit. Ulitimately the superstar moves on because he can make more money elsewhere. The grass is always greener in a superstars eyes.

Are you relying to much on your superstar? How many people on your team could rise to the next level if you focused your enthusiasm and coaching on their peformance?