How to Manage Your Most Valuable Asset
Want your employees to grow with your business? Train them carefully and treat them right!
No matter how well you watch cash flow, manage inventory, or make your store attractive to customers, you will lose business if you don’t work to develop your employees.
In a high-service industry like specialty-store retail, contact between the salesperson and the customer can make or break the bond between your business and your customers. Many retail owners, however, fail to recognize how important that connection is.
In too many independent retail shops, training sessions consist of showing new employees how to punch the time clock, how to run the cash register, and where to take breaks. Once these skills have been mastered, employees are pretty much on their own. But to be as effective as they can be, your employees need much more.
Employees need a thorough knowledge of the merchandise they’re expected to sell.
They need to know basic retail selling techniques and details about who their targeted customers are.
And they need to know the principles of good human relations.
Doing a poor job of developing employees’ potential can generate a high turnover rate among employees along with a general lack of motivation and bad customer relations. Employees will be more interested in coffee breaks, texting their friends, and quitting time than in taking care of customers. As a result, they will produce far less than they would if they were highly motivated and trained.