Note to Managers...

What does giving our guest the best look like?

Before the store opens each day, a thorough walk through has been conducted to ensure:

All displays are neat, full, accurately priced in accordance to all current promotions
Books, Bibles, and Music are straightened and alphabetized
No projects are left undone or unattended
View the store as if YOU were the GUEST, what do you see?
Point of Sale or Guest Services – Retail is Detail – do these areas reflect this?
Every employee has read and fully understands ALL current promotions (no staff should be allowed on the sales floor without this knowledge.)

As store manager, there is a LOT you are responsible for. We understand this completely. However, ONE thing that is MOST important is that YOU are responsible for the experience of the guest. In this, we MUST be totally 100% committed to this experience by giving them our very best each day. Certainly, there are times when you are short staffed, etc. Still, our guest deserves and expects 100%.

In a previous retail life and in a department where we sold $12k in tee shirts in one day during sales events, one of my expectations throughout those BIG days was to make sure that the tee shirt table was always neat and full. This required constant attention and focus. When you sell that many tee shirts in one day, there is no doubt that it is going to get messed up and thoroughly shopped by the guest. But, we stayed on it by keeping it neat, full, as well as constantly folding and refolding the tee shirts.

Can you imagine selling that many tee shirts in one day?

But why? We were 100% committed to the experience of every single guest who walked through our doors.

It was not acceptable in that store to give anything less. It was always unacceptable to open the doors each day with both a sales floor and a backroom that was unorganized. The standards were high. And so they should be. The guest is the MOST important person on our staff. We lose them, we lose the game and therefore we will NOT meet our objectives.

Now there is another guest I need to speak of that is critical to this…

As a manager, there are essentially two people you must treat as the guest and give your all…

The guest who walks into your store to shop or browse and your employee.

In order to ensure the above occurs in a consistent manner is fully on the shoulders of YOU the manager. It is your responsibility that this gets done when you are or are not present. With this, it is absolutely 100% critical that our staff see the following three things in how we manage:

Vision
Clarity
Leadership

In offering this in our actions, it will make a HUGE impact on the success or un-success of each store location. With the effective modeling of these three, you WILL see increased morale, and when you have increased morale, you WILL have improved guest service expectations.

As a manager, are you providing vision for your store? Are you providing clarity for each employee with regards to their expectations? Are you providing leadership? Leadership is most evident when YOU the manager are not present. In this, we can see how well you have prepared your team.

Without vision, we perish.
Without clarity, there is anxiety.
Without leadership, there is chaos

To win in retail, you and we must own all three and always seek to give 100% to these areas. In this, we may discover that we are lacking on of these areas. If this is the case with you, that’s ok…just raise your flag. Communicate this with your supervisor, discuss it, set goals and benchmarks…simply evolve.

What are you modeling for your staff?

Are you present to both employee and the guest?
Are you accessible to both employee and the guest?
Would your staff know that GUEST SERVICE is top priority by watching you?
Would your staff know that GUEST SERVICE is top priority by how much time you spend on the sales floor completely focused on sales and not on putting fires out? (sidebar – if you are spending a lot of times in putting fires out, then perhaps there is not clarity present. Therefore additional training needs to occur.)
Do you set, expect, and reflect high standards for store presentation and organization?
How well do you know the product?

I know we have been sending out a barrage of emails on subjects such as these. We do this because we are 100% committed to these standards. In sending these out, we are simply further promoting clarity for what we do and expect here.

…For above all else, the greatest of what we do are these. It is not our desire to overwhelm you with more stuff to read or do. However, it is our desire to be completely clear with what we expect and where our heart is.

Please feel free to post your comments. I can be reached at: gunsim@msn.com