Beauty Store Business

AUG 2013

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but you never say how much or by when, then your words are simply drifting lazily to the floor with no real definite need for timeliness or even effort from your employees. As you have shift meetings or team meetings, try to make sure you have attached a time frame or deadline to each goal you establish. Keep these in front of your associates by mentioning them repeatedly in meetings and posting them on all internal communications. Of course, be realistic with your deadlines. Targets and times that are impossible to reach adversely affect morale and frustrate employees and you alike. COACH, DEVELOP & GROW It's easy to simply go to your team and say "increase sales and cut costs." But for the average associate, that's very difficult to fully grasp. What does that really mean? For you, you want every incremental sale you can possibly garner. And you're probably counting dimes, nickels and even pennies when it comes to your expense lines. But for hourly workers, telling them in very general terms to drive sales and watch spending means very little. Instead, provide them with specific goals and show them how to achieve those goals. Perhaps one month you set a target of a 4% increase in each associate's sales. That is a very precise amount and one that can be measured with ease. Associates know that some tickets will be less than their usual sales and some will be more. However, if they can strive for higher overall sales that help them achieve the 4% goal, they'll have something to focus on. To help them, demonstrate or remind them what it takes to incrementally increase sales. Engage them in quick role-play that emphasizes suggestive selling. Show them how to pair one product with another. Invite your manufacturers reps to come in and highlight features and benefits to your employees on your higher-priced items. Specific, attainable goals are important for holding your employees accountable. It puts you and each associate on the same page of expectations. If your associates know that you're monitoring their performance and you have provided Holding employees accountable and responsible is an important management function that teaches them to be better at what they do. a target that is realistic, they can put together personal game plans to get the job done. And this works for not only increasing sales, but keeping an eye on costs (i.e., reduce cleaning supply costs by 5% during the fourth quarter), building a customer database (i.e., collect 25 new customer emails per month), merchandising (i.e., create two new in-store displays during the month), and so forth. 84 August 2013 | beautystorebusiness.com ESTABLISH DEADLINES Part of setting specific goals is providing a time frame for your employees. As just mentioned, you could use a period of time—such as a month, a week, a day or a quarter—or you could utilize an end date (i.e., by June 30th). Deadlines foster a sense of urgency that may be missing from your team. If you're constantly harping on wanting more store traffic ASSIGN TASKS TO INDIVIDUALS As tempting as it is to tell your associates that they are all responsible for how the store looks to customers, rarely do they Thinkstockphoto.com MAKE SPECIFIC GOALS It should be pointed out that holding employees accountable and assigning responsibility is not a matter of dumping additional work on the team or taking the opportunity to say "Ah ha! Gotcha!" when they don't complete tasks. Rather, it is an important management function. It's teaching employees to be better at what they do. It's sharing best practices between one associate and another. It's imparting your years of experience with the new hire. All of these embody how holding employees accountable is a means to coach, grow and develop each one of them. One way to think of it is to approach each associate from the standpoint of his resume. You might even say something along the lines of, "My job as your manager is to make sure your resume looks great." That's not to say that you want the associate to leave or that you're encouraging him to leave. It means that you are helping him attain new knowledge, skills and abilities. If he feels challenged in a good way by working for you, he'll likely continue to stay despite an ever-improving resume. Accountability should be viewed as more than just a checklist of "he did this" or "he didn't do that." It's still getting the tasks and jobs done that have to get done to keep the store running smoothly. Accountability encompasses all those efforts that take your store to the next level so that you shine above the competition.

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