What’s holding your business back: people or mindset?

Over the years, in countless conversations, I have heard business owners, human resource managers, store supervisors, and operations managers discuss in frustration how they, in their respective jobs and the companies they work for, could accomplish so much. more if only they had the personal rights store. Comments like, “Finding good store managers and CSRs is stopping our company from taking our business to the next level” Prayed, “We have great locations and store layouts. It’s the quality of our employees and our inability to execute that is causing many of our stores to underperform.” Sounds familiar? Have you had similar conversations within your company? If so, you are certainly not alone.

Ticket price vs. Differentiator:

Having a great store location, such as a far corner, high traffic count, lots of roofs, and limited competition, coupled with great architectural design, does not in and of itself make your store unique or give you a competitive advantage. The reason is that their competitors also have great store locations and layouts. Therefore, the playing field is level. The way you win is not by playing on a level playing field, but by tilting the playing field in your favor. And how do you do that? Through the people! Not real estate, design, products or services, but through people. Don’t get me wrong, real estate, store design, products and services are really important. But in today’s highly competitive market, these things are simply the ante to get into the game: the price of entry; it’s not a competitive advantage, unless of course you don’t have competition, and what are the chances of that?

Also, real estate, store design, products and services don’t run themselves, people do. Think of the investment you make to acquire the land, construction, and complete supply of the store. Big number right? And unfortunately that number is growing at the moment. But nothing happens until you add the final piece to the puzzle: people. You’ve just spent a fortune and now you’re handing over the keys to your store supervisor, whose job it is to install a store manager who will then hire the store’s employees. Are you feeling a little anxious right now? God knows you should be. How much did that baby cost you again?

Redefining Employee Expectations:

So now your new store is ready to go. What are your expectations of your store manager and his employees? I’ll answer that question for you, since I’ve asked it thousands of times and the answers are all more or less the same:

1) show up,
2) be in uniform, and
3) do not steal. Admit it: That’s about how low we’ve set the bar on job performance expectations for store associates.

You keep getting what you keep waiting for! So if leaders within your company have low expectations of the people who work in their stores, who is to blame for poor performance?

Discretionary effort:

Discretionary effort is the gap between how much effort, energy Y creativity an employee is contributing, and how much the employee “could” contribute if they wanted to. Most employees just try hard enough not to get fired. In a recent research study my company conducted, we asked store associates to “honestly” rate their job performance effort on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 representing maximum effort. The mean score was six. When we asked the question again, but added the definition of discretionary effort, the average score increased by two points, from six to eight. Statistical analysis will tell me that your company is no different. At your next administrative staff meeting, ask your leaders why. With fierce competition, you either act or perish.