Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from the Retail Doctor’s blog.
Just because someone knows how to sell your merchandise doesn’t mean they know how to motivate a crew and manage your store.
Unfortunately, many retail employees are not used to having an effective boss, or being called on the carpet for bonehead mistakes, or even seeing people being fired. So, with little knowledge of what it takes, they fall on their face when put in charge of others.
Here are five ways to develop store managers:
- Know the difference between managing people and managing tasks. Managers are often overwhelmed managing tasks, which often only takes continually asking, “Did this get done?” That’s not hard. Managers must be trained to ask, “How can I get my employees to achieve more sales?” That takes thinking, planning and execution skills. Managers need to understand they have a level of responsibility and accountability they didn’t have as an employee.
- Train the why more than the how. Managing isn’t just about creating raving customers, it’s more about creating raving employees. It takes spending enough time with your shift leads so they understand why what they are doing is important.
- Set clear expectations of their role and responsibilities and how you’ll hold them accountable. All the manager descriptions I’ve created over the past three decades begin with “achieve” and exceed monthly revenue goals. Everything else can wait. With the goal of increasing sales, managers understand their role is coming up with ways to deliver associate training, reward those engaging shoppers and, most importantly, letting laggards go quickly.
- Teach how to give feedback. Teach managers how to recognize correct behaviors, ask permission to give feedback, explain that their intention is only to help, be specific on what was seen, discuss why it happened and give next steps. Understanding when to write an employee up also needs to be taught.
- Have a path of learning. If they’re tasked with growing your sales, managers need more than an “attaboy!” Create a path for employees who want to accept more management responsibilities and become more valuable to receive more money and promotions.