A reminder from Making Money Is Not Illegal, Immoral or Fattening:
"What do retailers tend to do when a bill comes in for a dollar and there isn't a dollar in the bank? In many cases, the retailer takes money that should have been used to replenish inventory and pays expenses with it. Next in line is likely to be cutting payroll, and then slashing away at training and advertising. The four things that we absolutely need to do to compete when we have cash flow problems, we don't do.
"If you don't have it, you can't sell it. You must be in stock. That's a top priority. There's very little in the business that's more important than staying in stock once the store is up and running out of the ground. Very close behind that, and this is where I would get you to start to think, is the interaction between your customers and your employees. I mean right there where they interact, where they're talking on the floor. So how much of your time do you spend every day coaching the people who work for you in your store to do a better job taking care of the customers?
"Is your answer, 'Well, I trained each of them when I hired them'? If you said that to me, I'd fall down on the floor laughing. How in the world can you train an hourly employee once and think they are going to go out on the floor and do it right all the time? It isn't going to happen. So I want to convince you to spend enough time out on the floor coaching the people who work for you to do a better job dealing with the customers."
For more details, see page 18 of the book.
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