Smile Factor in Retail

Many people ask me why I ended up in retail.  With all the craziness that goes with the business, sometimes I ask myself that.  Being called out in the middle of the night, personnel not showing up and when they did show up, they either stole or did not do the work.  They stole time from me instead of cash.  Same difference at the end of the day.  I was missing the money from my bank account.  So why did I stay in retail?

When I look back on all my fun times I think the things I loved the most were the smiles.  Whether or not it was the people I worked with or the customers I took care of, smiles were better than money in the long run.  Money would only last from day to day but smiles you could take home with you.  Smiles came in varying amounts:

• A small smile from a child when mom let them pick out something.
• A BIG smile from a child when they actually get to eat it.
• A smile from one of your employees when they actually get what you are trying to teach them.
• A smile from your customers when you have their order ready before they ask for it.
• A smile from your family when you make it home on time.

Every smile is precious.  They bring with them their own little ha- rah when you get them.  Sometimes there were days that it did not matter how much I was being paid.  That was it, the final day.  I was going to resign no matter what happened.  The Lucky Charms elf could have dropped down from the sky and given me the pot of gold but it would not have mattered.  And then, I get the smile fairy instead.  A smile from an employee when I helped them with a task.  A smile from a new customer when I was nice to him after a bad day and of course, the best one is when I see my children at night.  All of those helped make the world not such a bad place.  I always like the song from Mary Poppins when they sing about a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.  Great advice for anyone and especially for the people you work with or take care of.

So why is this being discussed in an article on retail?  There have been many businesses started over the centuries past.  Multitudes of service, retail, manufacturing and everything else you could imagine have been the effort of sweat, blood and tears.  How many of those have crashed and burned?  I was reading about a convenience store retailer that has closed as many locations as it currently has open.  Many chains are too reluctant to pull the plug on business segments that are draining off valuable resources that are really needed in other parts of the company.  Just because they are the result of blood sweat and tears.  Or the frustration that we can’t figure out why the division is not performing.  It is the same box, the same model, the same everything we use in our other markets but this one stinks.  Maybe because we don’t have the smile factor in our business.  I can’t tell you how many times a change in personnel has changed the performance of a store.  How many times I have taken a manager from a small town and put them in a metro location only to fail miserably until I reversed the decision.  Why did they fail?  They hated the city and that showed in their work.  The smiling, pleasant manager I had suddenly is stressed and frustrated and now that has spilled into the entire store.  I lost the smile factor.  When you walk into your stores, are they happy stores?  That is one of my favorite descriptors for a store.  Very simple but to the point.  I want a store that I can take my family into and they will feel happier than before they went in.  Of course, this has to be done in the twenty second speed of service window you have to take care of your customer.  Talk about a smile!  It has to be natural and then you will have the business you are looking for.  Good sales, happy employees and happy customers.