Everyone is in Retail

There have been many times people asked me in the past “What do you do?”  When I replied I was in retail I got a lot of funny looks.  There were a lot of people that didn’t think retail was a career.  They look at it as only a minimum wage entry position with no future.  Well, after more than 40 years in the business, (Yes I started very young.  I was five working at my Grandfather’s store.)  I can tell you that yes there is a career.  I started as a cashier and worked my way to Executive Vice President and then to another company as COO.  I can’t say that I loved all of it but there were many good times.  So why did I stay in retail?  One word and that is people.  Retail is a people business.  Whether you are dealing with your team or your customers, they are all wonderful.  One book that a huge impact on me was Service America.  It spoke of the moment of truth when you exchange money for goods at the counter and how important both people on each side of the counter are.  This is why I tell everyone they are in retail.  In business, there is no business without the overlap of resources between two organizations, people etc.  I believe it was Drucker that drew the circles and said that this overlap is your market share.  So any and all business to me comes down to how do I take care of my customer?  What is their experience with my organization?  And how many businesses never really ask this question or give it a real answer?  I have been in so many long term strategy sessions in my career my head hurts.  Do you know what most of those meetings focused on?  Products and expenses.  I cannot remember when a real budget was allocated to finding out what our customers think of us and even more important, what do the people who are not our customers think of us?  The only way to increase sales is very basic.  You increase traffic or you increase average ticket.  All strategy is based on this.  So how do you increase traffic?  By taking market share from your competition.  Ah yes.  I remember that from biz school.  Crush the competition.  Drive them out of business.  Blah, blah, blah.  My philosophy is pretty simple.  Keep your customers happy.  I always talk to my team about happy stores.  Happy stores are locations when you walk in you feel good and you walk out feeling even better.  Happy stores are clean and well merchandised of course but more than anything, the people in them are happy to be there and that rubs off on everyone.  In “Good to Great”, they speak of having the right people on the bus.  That is so true.  So, the first question you have to ask yourself is do you have the right people?  Andrew Carnegie used to speak of universal accord and how he had one man that did nothing but get rid of the bad apples in his business.  Napoleon Hill speaks of the universal mind and getting a club together of people that think like you do.  I have to admit that there have been times in my career that I have been the bad apple.  I begin to think that no one knows better than I on how to run the business.  This can be a lethal attitude if you have a boss and that boss finds out.  Even worse, eventually it spills out to your customers and team members.  So, in your business, where are the attitudes?  You must be disciplined enough to deal with this every day and not just at review time.  You must insure that all your customers are happy, ecstatic with your product.  People buy solutions.  Every salesperson knows that.  Whether you are providing a major solution such as reorganization or a simple solution like a pack of gum, you have to make someone happy.  Try it this year and maybe it will even rub off on you.  Then you can be happy too….