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Home / Business / Ask an Expert
Passion….Does Your Retail Team Have It?
By:John Stanley
According to the dictionary, passion is defined as: A powerful emotion, such as love, joy, hatred, or anger.
Are you and your team passionate about the retail game and the garden industry? I know you will argue the answer is yes and that is why you are in the industry, but traveling the globe working with garden centres over recent months has forced me to question where the passion has gone in many teams in our industry.
Over the last few months I have been involved in carrying out a number of audits for garden centers in a number of different countries. Whatever the country, I see a pattern emerging. Businesses that are passionate about retailing, the customer and the product, have a higher average sale than those that do not. In one situation we analysed, the passionate retailer had a stock turn of 9 while the non passionate retailer in the same town had a stock turn of 4.
What is Passion?
Passion starts with the business owner. If the owner does not have passion then the rest of the team cannot be expected to be passionate. But, what does the owner need to be passionate about? In our survey of garden centers I would argue that they need to be passionate about their business and their team.
A passionate owner, we have observed, needs to care deeply about internal customers over external customers. If that occurs, then the internal customers, that is the team, will automatically look after the external customers.
One of the most passionate retailers I’m aware of is Julian Richer the owner of the Richer stores in the United Kingdom. The Richer stores sell white and brown goods, not garden products. But Julian is passionate about his business and his team. As a result his business often features in the Guiness Book of records as one of the most profitable retail businesses per square foot in the world. What is his secret?
Julian has a clear picture of the mission for his business. Once he has shared his vision with his team, he then has a comprehensive empowerment policy with his internal customers.
Compare your empowerment policy with Julian Richer’s. I’m not suggesting you should adopt this policy word for word, because it has been created for Richer stores and may not work for you. I am suggesting though that empowerment policies are critical to developing a passionate team.
The Julian Richer Empowerment Policy
• Receive a complimentary customer letter and receive a £5 bonus
• Introduce a colleague to the team and that person is accepted by the team as a new team member and you receive a bonus
• Give up smoking and receive a £200 bonus
• Ride a bike to work and receive a one off payment of £50
• Use of Julian Richer’s holiday home – at completion send £10 to HQ to go to the company selected charity
• Annual day out for all team members
• Long service awards
• Young person’s rail card to ease travel costs of getting to work
• Hardship fund if you have a genuine crisis in your life
• Bonuses are allowed to be taken from the till
• Mystery shopper bonus if you score high on this assessment
• Loyalty bonus for reporting dishonesty within the team
• 50% off an overseas trip if you write a report on a customer service experience that is implemented in the Richer business.
• £50 for a celebrity photograph taken in store with the team member – to go on shop wall hall of fame
Ref: The Richer Way, Julian Richer
Be Passionate about Plants
I recently upgraded my computer. We selected a store that had the laptop we needed and went with the intention of purchasing the computer from that store. We went in, met the salesperson and asked him, what we thought were some basic questions. His response was that he did not know how to operate the laptop as he only knew enough to sell the machine. At that point we made a hasty retreat, as it was clear we had a salesperson who only had a limited knowledge.
In the garden industry we have the opportunity to be story tellers. Every plant sold has a story attached to it and the top salesperson is passionate about plants and knows when and how to tell the story connected to that plant . Many of the garden centers we visited on our survey had no product knowledge training sessions and assumed that sales team members would learn plant knowledge at home.
This may be the case with some team members, but the stimulation to learn about the product stories should start in the work place.
The Story Challenge
Ask yourself if your team could answer the following questions if asked by a consumer in your garden centre.
1 What is the top selling plant in each category sold and why is that plant the top seller in the category?
2 What are the top plants being promoted in the media this month and will they be suitable for local growing conditions
3 Do you have a ‘MY Favourites’ policy in your garden center where every team members favourite plant is promoted with point of purchase signage. Are the reasons provided to the consumer as to why this is a favourite
4 Does the team know the stories associated with key plants in your range and are these stories shared amongst the team? These stories could include the plant origin ,its historical use, herbal properties and associated events that make the plant interesting.
5 Are the team aware of the garden trends in the neighbourhood and what plants work well with that trend?
In a recent meeting with a major nursery association director, one of his comments was that, yes, as retailers we need to be aware of sales per square foot and how products are performing, but if we were not careful , we would end up concentrating on sundry lines that were more profitable rather than the plants with a result the industry would lose focus. It is a careful balance that we have to get right.
Are we recruiting for Passion?
Pete Luckett of Pete’s Frootique in Halifax ,Nova Scotia in Canada has a passionate team of retailers .He puts this down to his recruitment policy. His belief is that as an owner you should recruit for personality, train for confidence and then empower the person to make decisions. He feels the last thing he wants is a product bore when dealing with customers.
This puts a lot of pressure on the interviewing team when a new recruit is required. We have one client who believes the best approach is to basically allow the team to recruit new people as they know the dynamics of the team better than anyone else.
When the candidate is successful in getting an interview, the owner invites them to the business and on arrival they are met by a team member who takes them through their department. Once they have discussed that department with this individual, they pass the candidate onto another departmental supervisor. The owner then checks with the supervisors to see if they feel if the candidate is suitable to join the team. The formal interview is often only a confirmation process that the team have come to the right decision.
Benchmarking Passion
In our survey, the more passionate businesses also knew the benchmark figures for their business. Team members could talk average sale per customer, sales per square foot, shrinkage percentage and stock turn for key categories.
Where ever I go I find the industry is being squeezed by retailers from other sectors who are chasing the same dollar, as a result we need to open garden center team eyes to what is happening in the market place. Teams need to be aware of other leisure retailers and what they are doing to grow there business. Encourage your team to get out the box and critically examine what other retail stores are doing in a competitive market .The chances are it is not the box store or other garden retailers who are taking sales away from your business, it is the other leisure retailers in the catchment area who are taking a major slice of the action.
This really hit home on my last visit to South Africa when I studied what the paint retail industry is doing. Plascon has about 60% of the paint market in that country. Their new concept store contains no paint, but is operated by passionate consultants who can advise on indoor fashion. Yes, this is a brave move for a retailer, but it is also a signal of what is to come. Perhaps it will not be to long before we have garden centers that don’t have plants for take away sales, but enthusiastic advisors who can put the picture together for the consumer.
Who knows what the future holds?
Article Source: http://www.dailynewarticles.com
John Stanley is a conference speaker and retail consultant with over 20 years experience in 15 countries. John works with retailers around the world assisting them with their merchandising, staff and management training, customer flow, customer service and image. http://www.johnstanley.cc
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