Be the best store manager

Chapter 5 Ability Gap: Ability Determines Performance

An authoritative data survey shows that an excellent store manager can help store sales double.As the soul of the store, the store manager assumes important responsibilities at the terminal and plays a pivotal role.

There will be huge performance differences in the same store, and the level of the store manager's ability can be said to be the main reason.There is a small store selling women's accessories downstairs in my house. According to the normal business rules, in summer, such a small store should have its peak sales at night, but this store is just the opposite. The sales performance at night is worse than during the day. , and much worse.The reason is that this period of time coincides with the World Cup. When I entered the shop at night, I saw four or five burly men, who were sunk in the soft sofa, with a few furry, unusually strong legs on the coffee table. , with a cigarette in his mouth, surrounded by smoke, and from time to time scolding the running players on TV.Many female customers immediately retreated as soon as they entered. I believe that no customer would like such an environment.

sales skills

The most critical part of store business activities is sales.To succeed in sales, you must have a thorough and in-depth understanding of customers, competitors and the market, investigate and predict the environment around the store, customer behavior, product sales trends, product prices, promotional effects, etc. Formulate business strategies and plans to meet customer needs during the store operation process.As an operator, the store manager can formulate effective marketing strategies and ensure the normal operation of the store only by conducting comprehensive market research and scientific forecasting.

Now the market competition is becoming more and more fierce, from product competition, advertising competition, and price competition to talent competition and management competition.Good products can only be sold through good salespeople.Novel product styles, unique store decorations, and wonderful POP will soon be imitated by competitors, but first-class sales skills and first-class talents are difficult to be cloned in a short period of time, so the current store manager has been deeply aware of To, you must forge your own excellent sales skills.We often encounter many franchisees who feel headaches because they do not have a good store manager. It can be seen that the future market will have a huge demand for store managers, especially first-class store managers who have mastered excellent sales skills.So how can we master excellent sales skills?

First of all, the store manager must be very familiar with the product being sold and be able to deeply understand the sales prospect of the product, which plays a vital role in business performance.Only with a relatively correct objective understanding and ability to judge the products sold in the store, can the store manager quickly deal with various problems encountered in the sales process.The store manager has to lead all the employees to charge forward in the market, so the requirements for the store manager in all aspects will be stricter than those of the grassroots employees.Their movements must be agile, their skills must be proficient, and their judgments must be accurate. Not only must their marksmanship be accurate, but they must also be able to see and listen to all directions, and keep an eye on subtle changes in the sales scene at any time.Especially when there are crowds of people during the promotion period, the store manager must be able to stay calm in the face of danger and not be surprised by changes, so as to lead the team to successfully complete tasks and achieve goals.

In the store, the store manager himself is also a clerk.The store manager is the representative of the entire store. If the store manager’s sales skills are not skilled enough or can’t convince the crowd, and other store employees have no example and confidence, then the sales volume will be quite bad.The sales skills of the store manager are very important. A store manager with good sales skills can attract more customers externally and serve as an example for employees to emulate internally.

Promotion is the main means for stores to improve sales performance, while some stores have become purely money-making places due to the lack of active atmosphere.Although these stores have a wealth of products and eloquent clerks, they can't make people feel happy shopping, so it is difficult to bring lasting sales performance.At this time, the ability of the store manager will determine the environment of the entire store.As a store, the impact of its products on customers is only one aspect, and the atmosphere of promotion is also very important. The store manager can play a role in activating the atmosphere of the promotion scene.

In a store in Guangzhou, in order to satisfy customers, most of the products displayed were removed and replaced with the most popular products at that time.In the beginning, a large number of customers came to the store every day, and the operating profit increased day by day.The achievement of these achievements made the store manager ignore the handling of the relationship between the clerk and the customer and the adjustment of the store atmosphere. As a result, in less than two weeks, its profit level dropped to the original level, although its products are attractive to the public. , but it is difficult to reach a deal.Therefore, in this promotional activity, this mall failed, and the store manager bears inescapable responsibility for this failure.

The store manager is the center of the store operation, and his ability directly affects the profitability of the entire store operation.

Leadership
General Motors Vice President Mark Hogan described leaders this way: “Remember, people make things happen, and the best plan in the world is nothing if it’s not executed by people. I strive to surround myself with the brightest and most creative people. My goal is to always create the work environment that the best and most talented people want. If you respect people and always keep your word, you Will be a leader no matter how high or low you are in the company."

Warren Bennis said, "Leadership is like beauty. It's hard to define, but you know it when you see it."

"Leadership is the ability to grasp an organization's mission and mobilize people around it. The basic principles of leadership are:
Leadership is the art of how to be a person, rather than the art of how to do things. In the end, it is the quality and personality of the individual that determine the ability of a leader.

Leaders succeed through the efforts of those they lead.The basic task of the leader is to build a highly self-conscious, high-productivity work team.

Leaders need to build bridges of communication.Drucker Foundation on "Leadership Conversations"

It can be seen from the above that leadership is a specialized skill, which is different from technology and business, and its core element is to handle various relationships with people well.Leadership includes systematic thinking and planning skills, the ability to propose goals for the team, the ability to provide support to members, the ability to coach members to solve problems, the ability to give feedback on members' performance and skills, the ability to motivate members through institutional arrangements, and the ability to develop and train members The ability to communicate effectively with members.

Leadership is endowed by the masses, and the level of leadership is not determined by the level of rank. Therefore, in an enterprise, there may be such a phenomenon: the leadership of a leader with a lower rank is higher than that of a leader with a higher rank.A leader who holds wrong ideas is prone to deviations in work or behavior, and will involuntarily show the attitude of "I am the leader, so you should listen to me". As a result, in daily work, subordinates He ruined his leadership bit by bit in his conversation and getting along without knowing it.

As a store manager, you must have strong leadership, and the most important thing is to pay attention to the needs of employees.Today's employees need to get more from the job itself, from the store manager, and from the company. They hope that their work value can be reflected, they are eager to be recognized, they want to have opportunities to show themselves, they need to be able to give full play to their abilities and A job that develops one's own potential.At the same time, an excellent store manager will also look for various ways to stimulate the potential of employees.The potential of employees is an important resource to maintain a competitive advantage.How to tap the potential of employees is an important manifestation of leadership. This is like having a powerful engine in your car. If it is restricted by the brakes, it will not be able to exert its power.What happens to your car when you let off the brakes?It's bound to go fast.This is the problem that many stores are facing now. It is obvious that employees have huge energy, but the store manager cannot fully stimulate that energy and cannot find a way to release the brakes.

An excellent store manager will provide employees with a good working environment, so that they can develop their strengths, have ample learning opportunities, and share their talents.As employees, they are unwilling to work for leaders who only know how to give orders and evaluate performance. What they are willing to follow are leaders who have strong leadership and know how to show leadership at work.

The store manager’s leadership is mainly manifested in the following three aspects:

1 The store manager has a strong sense of responsibility for the store's policies, orders, instructions, and the realization of goals, and has a strong endurance in the face of difficulties, so that he can exert the leadership of the store manager and successfully promote the work in the store .

2 Communicate information to all levels of the store, listen to reports or proposals from subordinates, abide by the system and discipline in the store, and reward all levels, etc., give full play to the leadership of the store manager, and do a good job in the unity and coordination of the store.

3. The most important thing is to have a clear understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of employees, recognize the contributions of employees, assign tasks to employees, etc., and give full play to leadership so that employees have a positive attitude.

With effective leadership, the store manager can stimulate the enthusiasm of the store staff, keep their morale high, stimulate their initiative, sense of responsibility and mission, and add vitality to the store.

Clerk training
The overall business level of employees is one of the important factors related to the operation effect of stores.Therefore, the store manager must not only enrich his practical experience and related skills from time to time, but also continuously conduct on-the-job training for his employees to improve the overall operation level of the store.The store manager should also authorize appropriately to cultivate the independent working ability and working skills of the subordinates, and guide them patiently during the work process.

Today's stores are highly competitive, customers have higher and higher requirements for stores, and stores are facing more and more challenges.Therefore, the store manager must do a good job in the training of employees so that the employees can provide first-class services to customers in the store. Only in this way can the store win in the fierce competition.

To require employee training to receive good results, you must work hard to instill the effect you require into the minds of employees and penetrate into his actions.

The code of conduct of store employees is a direct manifestation of the corporate image. If there are employees who deviate from this image, it will be difficult to manage.Therefore, it is very important to train the talents needed by your own stores.The biggest purpose of training is to bring out the abilities of employees, so that employees can try their best to improve their performance at work.Training should primarily start at the workplace.

Of course, there are many topics in the training, especially for a newcomer, it is absolutely impossible to implement it all in one go and achieve good results.Therefore, the first step in training is to familiarize employees with the workplace.

Next, employees must be made aware of their store's practices.In other words, it starts with store preparation, cleaning, store tidying, etc., and adopts a method of making the best use of the situation, so that it can gradually get used to the various practices of its own store.

One of the main topics in the initial training was to make every employee understand that the store is an organizational entity and that what each employee does is only part of the overall work of the store.In addition to fully understanding the rules of the work, it is also necessary to understand the work objectives of the store, the development plan of the entire store and even the entire company.

An important purpose of store training is to enable employees to have good etiquette, awareness of saving and pay great attention to everything.

Then there is the training of knowledge, system and technology.Knowledge, system, and technology must be trained in a good environment.In other words, no matter how much energy the store manager puts into training, if he can't do a good job in service skills, he won't be able to cultivate first-class shop assistants.

Today, when customers are very picky about the quality of goods and the service of shop assistants, the quality of employees in all aspects has improved, and the operation and management of stores will naturally be handy, work efficiency has been improved, and performance will naturally increase.

Training the on-the-job personnel is a long-term systematic work.In order to achieve the expected training goals, the store manager should combine the store's own development strategy, formulate a long-term plan for training talents, draw up specific training plans for each period and stage, and clarify the training objects, content and requirements.When training shop assistants, the shop manager should adhere to the principle of adapting quality to development, work hard to improve the pertinence, practicality and scientificity of education and training, and combine education and training with use.

The store manager's attitude and grasp of employee training are so important, and it is directly reflected in performance in the end.

Once, I went to a local optical shop in Guangzhou to do research. As soon as I entered the store, an extremely enthusiastic lady began to recommend glasses to me non-stop.I asked, "Why don't you check me?" She looked puzzled at first, but she responded quickly and said, "We will check after we pay."

I think people who often wear contact lenses know that a regular optical shop needs to check two aspects for the fitting of contact lenses:
1 Routine eye examination, including checking the conjunctiva, sclera, and cornea on the surface of the eye with a slit lamp to determine whether contact lenses can be worn, and checking the size and curvature of the eye with a keratometer to determine what contact lenses should be worn.

2 Optometry, which is a common degree check.

Generally speaking, wearing contact lenses is divided into long-term wear and short-term wear.Long-term wearers have higher requirements on the eyes, and if they are not suitable, they are not recommended to wear them; short-term wearers can choose suitable contact lenses according to the actual situation of the eyes, but must strictly abide by the wearing time and method.It is these common-sense things that the salesperson who works in a professional optical shop does not know.

Later, I asked related questions about after-sales service, wondering what to do if my eyes were uncomfortable, but she also gave vague answers.

After I paid the payment, the store manager came and took me to the optometry room to check my prescription and check whether there were any eye diseases that were not suitable for wearing contact lenses.

I asked: "Hello, why are you checking me now? I have already bought it, what should I do if it doesn't fit?"

"I'm sorry, sir. The lady just now is not familiar with the procedures. In fact, I have been doing the contact lens business myself. I was busy just now, so I couldn't serve you. I'm sorry. If it's not suitable, I'll return it to you. I am sorry."

I asked again: "Since she doesn't know the procedure, why does she recommend glasses to me? If something goes wrong, it will cause a lot of loss to your store."

"We are worried that you have waited too long. It is our job that has not been done well. I am sorry."

For a customer, the store manager's apology is so powerless, no one is willing to waste time and energy like this.The store manager works very hard, but neglects the training of the store staff. If no improvement is made, the performance of the store will be greatly affected.You know, untrained employees are the biggest cost of the store.

As a store manager, it is very necessary to establish a complete set of training plans. It is also necessary to actively implement the staff post qualification training certificate and certificate-holding system, enhance the enthusiasm of the store staff to participate in the training, and gradually train the store staff to understand both theoretical knowledge and superb professional knowledge. Technical compound talents.

(End of this chapter)