WHEN IT COMES to your store, there are four roles that must be played, and you need to have the right personalities assigned. With all four in place, your customers will enjoy an incredible in-store experience. The four are:
The Teacher
This person is a professional learner, and he enjoys sharing that information with others. The Teacher should be giving an hour-long weekly sales meeting on topics like store procedures, product knowledge and salesmanship. A strong Teacher will be adept in all of these areas. He’ll also be willing to share his knowledge to help others succeed, especially in areas where they are weak, and will not hold any information back so he can be smarter than someone else.
The Leader
This is someone who leads by example. Her attitude is always good, and she is always going the extra mile to make customers happy. Everyone wants to be around her, because without saying a word, the Leader has a way of making people feel good. She makes everyone else want to step up. Talk is cheap — action is priceless. And a Leader is a person of action.
The Motivator
This person has the ability to give people belief in themselves to accomplish their goals. If you wanted to reach $1 million in sales, the Motivator would make you believe you could do it — he’d be pushing you, talking to you, making you feel good about yourself. He’d tell you when he saw great teamwork in action or what an excellent add-on sale you made. A Motivator is constantly looking for the good in others, and thus brings out the best in them.
The Delegator
This person gives the right jobs to the right personalities to get them done in the best and quickest way. A great Delegator never micromanages, as that can ruin the trust between the Delegator and the employee. The Delegator is firm but fair — she sets standards for excellence and holds employees accountable to those standards.
If things aren’t getting done during the day, you don’t have a good Delegator. If people are in bad moods or are underperforming, you’re missing a strong Leader or Motivator. If people have been working in your store a long time and still don’t have the knowledge they need, there’s no Teacher.
A person can be two of these personalities, maybe even three, but no one can be all four. When all four exist, harmony reigns and customer expectations are exceeded.
This story is from the August 2008 edition of INSTORE.