When is the right time to bring on temp sales staff for the holiday season?
Soon! Line up your hires in early- to mid-October, with a plan to bring them on board no later than Nov. 1. The early start gives you a better chance of finding quality people and allows for a reasonable amount of training time as well as team assimilation. The additional payroll up front to cover their hours before they are really needed is a small investment when compared with the potential sales gain brought by well-trained associates during peak selling weeks.
Before you hire anyone — at any time — take an inventory of the skills and abilities you have and determine what you really need. Ask yourself what your best people do best. Set up a schedule that puts them in position to do those things and hire help for the rest. This is also a good time to review the way things are done in your store, says consultant Andrea Hill. If people are doing one task multiple ways, it doesn’t just ring alarm bells for quality, it also means you’re spending more time and money training new people. “Make sure your staff agrees on one way to do things and do each task that one way,” says Hill. “Don’t confuse new people by exposing them to two or three different ways to do each task.”
I had an excruciatingly embarrassing encounter with a customer earlier this week and now can’t get it out of my mind. It’s tormenting me. Help!
The old-school psychoanalyst in us would say we need to revisit this in punishing detail (“these thoughts of perfection, where do they come from?”), but it doesn’t sound like you want to go there. In place of that approach, we recommend substitution (come up with a funny version of the story) or distraction. The latter gets a bad rap, but recent studies have shown it’s actually pretty effective. Want to forget that screw-up on the sales floor? Go polish silverware for 30 minutes. Or start plotting a complex dinner tonight. Your brain has trouble focusing on more than one thing at a time, so a new action interferes nicely with recollection. And running the same movie reel over and over in your head helps no one.
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What is the best way to sell a business without letting your current customers know that you are planning to retire within a certain period of time?
If you feel your customers’ loyalty and trust would be hurt by the news that you are planning to sell, then your best option would probably be to work with a confidential business broker. These professionals specialize in discreetly marketing your store to qualified buyers without revealing your personal intentions or timelines while you carry on with business as normal. If you sell to relatives or a store insider like a current or former manager, then the issue is more about messaging. And even if you work through a broker, the communication is still going to require careful handling and lots of planning. There shouldn’t be anything inherently worrying to customers about a change of ownership if you make it clear you have their interests at heart. And you can do that by keeping it positive, emphasizing continuity and commitment to customer service. As time gets closer to your exit, thank your customers for their support over the years and share your excitement about this new chapter, emphasizing that the store’s core values and commitment to their satisfaction will continue. Emphasize that you welcome their feedback, and — if approprate — introduce the new owner personally or through a letter, highlighting their experience and dedication to serving the community.
Regarding your recent Daily Tip not to use so much jargon, I’d like to push back. I’m partial to using buzz words. Isn’t the whole reason they take off because they capture something about the times or the issue at hand?
To be sure, jargon, even the corporate variety, is not always a bad thing. Specialized language can add precision to business communication and foster “in group” feelings, such as when you throw inside jewelry terms around in the shop or at Vegas. The secret is in choosing your audience and not letting jargon make you sound cold or even inhuman, says Stanford Business professor Huggy Rao, co-author of the Friction Project. “You don’t need an arsenal of tactics to beat jargon monoxide,” says Rao. “Every time you say something, ask yourself: Can a 10-year-old understand this easily? If the answer is yes, it will scale across a company of 10,000 people.” A good rule of thumb is to most of the time use concrete, descriptive language. “Say one boss told you to ‘Deliver superior customer service,’ and another said, ‘Your job is to put a smile on the customer’s face,’” says Rao. “Which phrase is easier to understand?”
