I walked into a fully stocked and displayed upscale retailer.  There were four of us in the store but it seemed void of employees.

As I walked further into the store,  I saw an employee enter the cash wrap area; she had a clipboard.  As I looked at a display and its POP, I couldn’t find one of the items listed.

I got her attention, she came over over and I asked her my question.  She simply replied, “Out.” With that, she returned to walking by every display making notes on her clipboard.

As I started to leave, I spotter her at the front of the store talking on a walkie talkie to someone about what merch to bring out.  “Excuse me,” she said as she walked around me to another display that was missing one unit (on a display of about a dozen of the same thing.)

That’s when it it hit me that the big problem of not engaging with customers and gaining higher conversions stems from …

The people who are comfortable stacking merch have replaced the ones who are comfortable talking with customers.  

That’s good news if they are your competitor but bad news if you are the ones trying to drive sales in your store. 

I used to call them “pant stackers” from my days in western wear.  You could give the new guy or gal the task of straightening the wall of jeans, to stack them so the largest size was on the bottom and all the rest were in order in each stack. Or fill up the stack of jeans. Or just straighten.

But sometimes, you found you had hired a pant stacker.

You knew if you had a pant stacker because they were quite happy to stay there for hours taking the jeans off, refolding and stacking.  They didn’t say they were bored, they didn’t try to leave the job and go help customers; they just stacked pants. 

The salesmen, the people who liked other people, the ones who wanted to get ahead, to connect with others, were always trying to engage customers if they were put on stacking merchandise. They usually left the task to wait on customers.

I’ve seen retailers condemn employees who were so customer-focused, which is why those people left their job and seem to have left retail.

They’ve been replaced with the pant stackers. It’s not a black, white, young, old or any other physical attribute, it is their comfort level in the world.

And there is nothing wrong with that in a big box.

The trouble is these people are now managing major specialty shops and have brought all of their insecurity, fastidiousness with order, and lack of engaging the customer into better retailers.

Here’s my retail consultant tip for you: Higher sales are not a result from having tidy shelves of merch. For that you need salespeople.

Your takeaways:

• Hire people who need to engage other people.
• Limit your pant-stacking, cleaning and inventorying to times customers are not present.
• Give retail sales training to your entire crew to grow sales.
• Limit the number of pant stackers on your crew.
• Focus employees on customers in your store and find ways to engage those customers, not walk past them.

It’s not easy but neither is closing your store.

About Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor

Companies from some of the very largest, to some of the smallest, from luxury brands to startups, from franchises to regional chains contact me as a retail consultant because they are looking for results. An owner may have read one of my books, seen my videos, seen me on TV, heard me speak or read this blog to get a taste of my people-focused philosophy and my methods.

While every client and project is different, the ability to enlist me as a retail consultant who has a fresh set of eyes to look at the challenges you are facing results in a focused, effective and creative path to profitable sales.

No matter what your size, let’s see how I can help you; click the Take the first step button below to contact me.

The assumption is that the new hire better be able to do it or they won’t be hired because it “obviously” shows if they are a good salesperson.

Maybe….

Yes, this question can see how well someone thinks on their feet but there are a lot of articles on the web teaching people the “right” way to answer it.  Here is one and another.

But to me this question misses whether they are a good salesperson or not. Building the rapport, finding something in common and hearing why the customer needs or wants this pen are all assumed –  yet those parts of the process are what make or break a sale.

It also assumes you can “sell” anyone something. I believe it was Zig Ziglar who said it thirty years ago, “Customers hate to be sold but they love to buy.”

Analyze what questions you are asking of new hires and what both the question and their answers are really showing you.

Do you know what qualities you are trying to discover with each question?

Do you know what the “A,” “C,” and fail answers would look like?

Do you have a list of ten questions that you ask everyone so you can fairly judge their abilities?

If so then you are more likely to make a good hiring decision.  But that’s hardly the goal.

Why?

Because the chances of making a good hire are pretty much the same as a coin toss.  Until you get them on your sales floor working in your system with your people, you simply don’t know how they will respond.

So is the “sell me this pen” such a litmus test of someone’s ability on your floor? My guess is not so don’t cut them off if they can’t manufacture some “assumptive,” “porcupine” or alternate of choice” closing technique on you.

As a Driver personality, if you did that to me, I’d be insulted and walk out. And Drivers are the most likely to be able to make the sale for you.

What say you?

For more tips on the best way to interview someone, pickup a copy of The Retail Doctor’s Guide to Growing Your Business (Wiley).

She answered, “Because when we visited stores yesterday in the City, they were out and willing to tell anyone in a matter-of-fact way. They were personable, fun, you just wanted to buy from them.” I understood from her descriptions of several of these guys why she would want them to work for her.

Of course, for various reasons like EEOC commissions and how a sign would look in a shop window, we all know this isn’t practical. And not all gay people are that personable – just like straight people.

What intrigued me about this comment was all the qualities she had attributed to gay men, were really true of the Expressive personality type I discuss in my new book from Wiley & Sons, The Retail Doctor’s Guide To Growing Your Business.

Expressives tend to be extroverts who occasionally tend to make their private business public and sharing information without boundaries.   An opposite of the Analytical, the Expressive is the Grasshopper living for today. Expressives worry about being like everybody else instead of being recognized for their uniqueness. Again, their enthusiasm and energy are the spark plugs for your team.  Their showiness can be compared to a Peacock.

Their enthusiasm can make them feel a bit invincible at times; and can overwhelm Analyticals who want  “just the facts.”

Expressive personalities have to process externally while Driver and Analytical personalities don’t.  The downside to an Expressives’ natural inclination to show multiple possibilities might require the customer to bring them back to the product the customer is considering, not all of the other possibilities.  Their natural enthusiasm can also inflate products’ benefits without devoting time to adequately explaining why.

Is that a gay thing? I don’t think so.

It all stems from the basic Expressive personality. What this owner identified was the personality type that happened to be gay; not a gay person. With me?

The Expressives I think are the most challenging of all the personalities. Their very energy is what keeps many from hiring them. Their creativity, individualism and self-assuredness can be threatening. And when you’re trying to teach them a rigid process your Analtyical employees can easily take to, this personality will constantly challenge why they have to do it “that way.”  They will complain their creativity is being stifled – they feel like robots.

What we have to remember is the Expressive is the spark-plug to your crew. They are the one that adds color, excitement and fun.

Is that a gay thing? No, its an Expressive personality thing.

Should you recruit gay men to sell your merch? If they are Expressives – yes. If they are straight men who are Expressives – yes. If they are lesbians who are Expressives – yes. If they are straight women who are Expressives – yes.

You don’t need a lot of Expressives on your sales floor but at least one keeps things interesting and fun for your crew and your customers.

Not sure which of the four personality styles are on your floor? Have them take the quiz

Want to learn more about managing the four personality types and growing your sales by speaking to each’s very different needs? Steve Strauss, Mr. All Biz gave this tip in his column in USA Today, “Are you in retail? If so, then you should pick up a copy of a great new book: The Retail Doctor’s Guide to Growing Your Business. In this book, Bob Phibbs, the “Retail Doctor,” helps you with any issue your retail business may have – from marketing more effectively, to mark-ups and price points, increasing profit and much more. Steve says check it out!”

Thanks Steve!

With that he disappeared. I tweeted what happened and got a direct message from Toddr who was traveling on the opposite northbound train.

The conductor came back, said it would be longer, they had to get a new crew. He didn’t want to guess but figure another hour.  With that he left to the back of the train.  He returned in ten minutes with cookies and water.  “I went to the train behind us and got some snacks for you all.”  He continued to walk through the entire train passing his supplies to everyone.

After the second hour I asked how likely it would be I would make an 8:00 curtain to see Jane Fonda in her play 33 Variations.  “It depends, we should have a straight-shot in but if there are other trains in our way – we share tracks with MetroNorth – it will be longer.”

After the third hour, I called Telecharge who graciously let me out of the ticket.  The conductor returned again to say there were too many conflicting stories to update, they were doing the best they could to get us through the mess.

He updated us for the following hour until we again were bound for NYC at 7:48pm.  He came back, “Well, I guess you can see we’re moving.”  People told him how grateful they were for his good humor about it all.

“This wasn’t so bad – I’ve been through much worse, like the time in Boston.  It’s different when you have cars at 45 degree angles tipping toward a big drop to a river.  This was just like a derailment.”

Twenty minutes later we stopped, after five minutes he came on the PA, “Folks sorry, we’re the in the dark why we’re stopped as well.  Once I know something, you’ll know something.”  We looked at each other shrugged and returned to our iPhones and laptops.  It had been five hours we had been on the train already.

I was struck with how important crisis management is in every job.  You can’t train for every disaster or circumstance but the people you hire make all the difference.  Our conductor exhibited my Seven Tips For Managing A Crisis Or Disaster.

Contrast that to the debacles of Domino’s burying their heads after the YouTube video in NC surfaced, the Popeye’s Chicken franchisees closing after they ran out of chicken or the KFC Oprah free chicken promotion last week.

Here are my Seven Tips For Managing A Crisis Or Disaster:
- Put yourself in your customers’ shoes
- Be proactive. Alert people as soon as you know something is wrong.
- Don’t sugar coat but don’t catastrophize.  Just the facts.
- Tell what you know, don’t hypothesize.
- Keep people updated with status.
- If appropriate, give the steps necessary to restore normalcy.
- Respond to questions with truth.

What potential crisis or disaster could hit your business that may have happened before?  A death in a family? Someone injured at work? A fire?  Earthquake?

The more you teach the general ways to handle a crisis, the more you’ll make it a stepping stone instead of a cliff.  Something your customers and employees will be able to get through hopefully saying, “That wasn’t so bad.”

I had watched it all the way to the start of Season 6, when they came to LA and made the losers sleep in tents on the lawn. The boardroom cat fights grew in length and the “reality” kept ebbing.   It seemed to become ways to pitch product placements by the seat of your pants.

Anyway it came down to Annie Duke, the world champion poker player and comedy legend Joan Rivers.  Don’t worry, I won’t give the end away.  I will say it was interesting, after a design firm pulled out of Annie’s plans and said it was due to Joan’s abuse of their designer, that Annie repeated that fact to everyone she talked to -all the way up to the final moments of the finale.  Implying that if the designer hadn’t quit, she would have done better.

I flashed on the scene in Rocky Horror Picture show when Janet Wise says three times, “If only we hadn’t ______” and the audience would yell back each time at the screen “but you did!’

For Annie, the obstacle became a badge of honor.  She may have thought of it as a way to get people to her side but it made her look weak.  In sports they call it a “losers limp.”

How many employees do you know who blame the customer for them not making a sale?  I used to hear it from salespeople on my team. The customer was a “jerk,” “too cheap,” “not ready to buy,” the list goes on and on.

The important thing to take away from this is to hire people that can take responsibility for their own actions.  And if an employee screws up, it is up to us to make sure they 1) are able to admit it, 2)they know it is better to accept that responsibility and 3) not reward blame.

To change the dialogue after a missed sale, I would ask the salesperson, “Do you think you could have done anything better?”  Many times, by asking this question, they were able to focus on the harder work of taking responsibility for the things they could change, not the easy way out of blame and “if only.”

Once the salesperson does that though, they have to let it go.  Encourage them to learn from it, but not beat themselves up over it; just prepare to do better the next time the door opens.

United shares traded at one cent in late morning on the New York Stock Exchange, down 99.92 percent, or $12.29. Trading in United shares was halted. The rumor occurred when the Web site of a Florida newspaper posted a six-year-old story from The Chicago Tribune archives about United’s previous bankruptcy filing. Trading resumed and by early afternoon, shares had nearly recovered.

The report was picked up by several news organizations and industry Web sites.  It seems that hysterical is the new calm.  

Why is it that such a rumor could devastate a major airline?  People want to believe the worst.  Reality shows have ramped up the hysteria about everything.

Everything is big drama – that seems to be the norm in our politics, banking system, our weather – “worst storm ever.”  Hysteria is the new calm.

Don’t add to it by allowing people on your payroll to bring added drama to your door. We don’t need the “Oh my God!” moments or “I have to leave right now.”  Fire these people. Or you could end up losing your business for real.