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The Retail Employer

The Retail EmployerSeptember 2007

Sharing a Sense of Ownership—Keys to Investing Employees in Your Success

In a highly competitive business environment, the performance, attitudes and customer service of your employees can truly make or break a business. Each employee, regardless of their job title or position, can have a huge impact on the quality of your product, the work environment and how customers and clients view your company. As Sam Walton once said, "There’s only one boss – the customer. He or she can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending their money somewhere else."

However, in today’s work environment, many workers don’t feel a sense of loyalty or obligation to their employers. The typical worker job hops frequently, works in a zone of mediocrity and isn’t overly concerned with providing decent, let alone excellent, customer service. Most employees don’t see how their jobs are important in the grand scheme of things, or there’s no system in place to help them care that they are a part of the big picture.

That’s why it’s critical to help employees see their roles in the success of your business. As Glenn Shepard put it in his book How to Be the Employee Your Company Can’t Live Without, you have to help employees act like they own the place. Now, many people may think that owning a business is about working whenever you want, making a high salary, and being the head honcho. But, most business owners know that the risks of failure are immense and it takes long hours, financial sacrifices and a servant’s attitude to make any business truly successful. Creating employees who are willing to work with these principles will set your company apart and help it truly thrive. To do this, you must enable employees to share your sense of ownership in the company.

You can make the connection between each employee’s personal performance and your company’s success, if you’re willing to invest the time and attention it takes. Here are a few tips to help you understand how:

  • Connect the dots. Tie each employee to the company’s success. Help employees understand how their performance, attitude and customer service affects the company’s profits and supports the company’s goals. You can do this through profit sharing or offering bonuses to productive employees who help the company hit its goals, increase production or develop new ideas.
  • Be stingy with gold stars. Don’t reward mediocrity. Show productive and highly-valued employees that their contributions make a difference by not rewarding unproductive employees.
  • Reward with responsibility. Assign entire projects to productive employees and give them creative freedom and control. Then, let them receive the recognition for the finished product. Ownership in a project will foster s feeling of ownership in your organization.
  • Allow failure. Don’t micromanage employees once you’ve given them the reigns on a project. Let them learn by making some mistakes, just like you’ve had to do. Don’t criticize their efforts, because this can squelch their desire to grow. Offer feedback, advice and encouragement to keep them from failing miserably, but don’t control the process.
  • Give some “free” time. Organizations can spark innovation and create strong ties of loyalty by allowing employees to use their creativity and imagination. At Google, employees can use 20% of their time developing ideas that fall outside their job descriptions. This 20% time has launched some of Google’s most successful new endeavors, such as Gmail, Google News and AdSense. In fact, Google representatives have said that half of their new product launches have stemmed from this initiative.
  • Be the model employee. Make sure that employees have someone to emulate by providing the ultimate example of how you expect your employees to behave. Realize no job—from picking up trash to answering phones to unloading shipments—is beneath you. By acting like a model employee, you can inspire your employees to do the same.

These tips are only a sampling of how you can help employees invest in the success of your company. Through sharing a sense of ownership in your company’s success with each employee, you can create a positive, highly productive, customer service-oriented workforce.

This article is reprinted with permission of www.ExpressPersonnel.com. Contact Mr. Lars Nordin at Lars.Nordin@ExpressPersonnel.com if you would like to be added to their distribution list. Express Personnel now offers RMA members a Retail Staffing Program. More information is available online through www.retailmerchants.com.

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What Are You Doing for Existing Customers?

It is true that basic marketing tells you to develop new customers in order to succeed. Often new customer development is done at the expense of your existing customers. Think about the time and effort given to identifying your existing customers so you can find more of them.

If you believe in the 80/20 rule that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customer base it would seem appropriate to invest more time and energy into this profitable customer base with promotions that are more to their liking.

Here are some thoughts on existing customers:

  • They already know your products and your people.
  • They must be happy or they would go elsewhere.
  • They have neighbors, friends and relatives to bring to you.

Before you spend money to find new customers, ask yourself:

  • What am I doing for my existing customers?
  • Can I increase the frequency of their visits?
  • Are there incremental products or services which they seek?
  • Are there opportunities to satisfy existing customers that build my revenue?

Here are some ideas for existing customers:

  • Send news about product changes, benefits, special dates or promotions.
  • Send a “Special” promotion to increase sales on a special day or event.
  • Send a “birthday” promotion as a personal sales event.
  • Survey your customers about an important aspect of your business.
    • Service
    • Satisfaction
    • Improvements

Outside services are available to economically assist, conduct and measure their effectiveness for you.

This article is reprinted with permission of Mike Dunleavey, Executive Associate —Business Support Center—Retail Merchants Association.

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Copyright ©2007 Retail Merchants Association. All Rights Reserved.