A rotten retail manager shows up in nine behaviors: not knowing what is happening on their own floor, not being able to change employee behavior, not being able to let anyone go, ignoring KPIs, making excuses, tolerating a dirty store, hiding off the sales floor, micromanaging, and correcting people in front of others. Every one costs you sales. Every one is learned, which means it can be unlearned.
When salespeople are given a terrible manager who has no clue about employee performance management, they can eliminate all opportunities to make a sales team's work meaningful and engaging.
All those employees will ever get out of their jobs is a paycheck.
When managers come up with busy work to occupy their employees' time and not to drive store sales, they are disengaging the minds of the great employees and welcoming the mindless to work each day.
Terrible managers love mindless, task-oriented drones because few will challenge their rules.
Drones exist to make their managers look as though they are managing employees well.
At the height of the '70s recession, I was the manager of a shoe store. Sales were slipping, and my district manager demoted me without warning.
My new team leader made changes. Effective immediately, if a customer asked anything other than about the shoes we had in stock, we were to answer I don't know.
Even if we did.
Even if it had nothing to do with shoes.
Instead, I was to go to the stockroom and reprice the thousands of boxes by removing the price sticker on the front of each box and repricing with the same information but on the side of each box so that customers wouldn't see the price as easily. It would take weeks. It also would make price changes and inventory a time-suck.
When I gave notice two days later, the team leader was genuinely shocked. That's one of the first ways you know bad retail managers. They don't know what's happening.
What are the signs of a bad retail manager?
They don't know what is going on. As I mentioned in the story above, if your managers are clueless about their effect on their crew, you're sunk. That's because the best managers at every level are keen to monitor their crew's emotional temperature. If a person, a situation, or a policy causes the team to be upset, good managers know they have to deal with it, especially if it is something they have responsibility for.
They can't get people to change their behavior. If managers are unable or unwilling to inspect what you expect, you'll have a broken culture. If there is a new policy, let's say to implement my online retail sales training program, managers must ask questions until they understand the policy. Next, they need to consider their employees' potential questions and then develop a plan to implement and follow through. Many retailers have task-based managers who, when given a project like moving a department, can excel, but when told to drive sales performance up by changing employee behavior, have no clue how to do it.
Jill Reicks, who owns Inspired to Sew, put the cost of that in one line: "I'm spending more time trying to ask people to adult and step into the role."
They can't fire people. There's giving someone a second chance, and then there's being taken advantage of. You don't want managers so emotionally invested in losing an employee that they are paralyzed at letting them go. When the bad apples get to stay, it drags the whole team down until all the good employees have left. You want team leaders who are compassionate but who also have the greater good in mind. They must help those sales clerks whose minds and hearts have already left to move on.
They don't take an interest in their KPIs. Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the proverbial canary in the coal mine that can warn of correctable problems. When the average number of units drops, it is the first sign of a crew not doing their job. You want someone who looks at reports as a valuable tool to move sales.
They are an excuse magnet. Have you ever seen a character in a movie say, "I'm not a racist BUT," and you know they are about to say something racist? Well, a person who says, "I'm not making an excuse BUT," you know, and they know too, that they are about to give you an excuse. You want someone who says upfront, "I know we have some work to do; here's my plan."
They allow a dirty store. While many retailers have cleaning services, the daily upkeep of the store reflects the pride the manager holds in working there. If they allow trash on the counter, dirty windows, or half-taken down promotions, they allow staff to turn a blind eye in customer-facing areas of the store and behind the scenes. Vigilant managers keep the store ship-shape, which also cuts down on worker theft.
They are invisible on the sales floor. They stay in their office or stay on their smartphones. They delegate everything and don't put the work in themselves. This is why employees think their bosses live in a fictional world separate from the realities their salespeople face with customers, an ivory tower. Dismissive instructions like, Deal with it or Get it done when they have no idea of staffing levels, how busy their employees are, or the unexpected arrival of shipments make employees despise their managers.
They micromanage. When no decision can be made without their input, when their first response is to correct something minor, when, as one employee told me, his boss had to piss on anything he suggested, it makes employees' hearts cold and causes their brains to turn off, the last outcome a real merchant would ever want. You want someone who can delegate and inspect afterward, then coach as necessary.
Garret Cleversley at MacSolutions Plus found the opposite happens once a team is trained to a standard. "Through the training, [they] have held each other accountable to those high standards." Peer accountability does work a manager cannot do alone.
They criticize staff in front of others. Worse are those who do this in front of customers. They don't provide constructive criticism because they don't know how to communicate well. They don't help staff improve because they are reactive instead of proactive. You want a team leader who is hardwired to follow the classic mantra: Praise in public and correct in private.
Why do good retail employees quit because of a manager?
Because the work stops meaning anything. Employees are happy when they have work they want to do with fair oversight. When they are happy, their work is better, and it always shows up in the company's bottom line. Take the meaning out and the paycheck is all that is left, and a paycheck is available anywhere.
Reicks named the fix after her team went through training: "The biggest change that I saw was when we started holding people accountable in a kind manner." Accountability and kindness are not opposites. A rotten manager treats them as if they were, and picks one.
Can a bad retail manager be trained?
Yes, if the standard is written down and everyone is held to it. Most of these nine behaviors are not character flaws. They are what happens when nobody ever showed the manager what good looks like on a sales floor, and then handed them a team.
That is what SalesRX online retail sales training is for: a defined sequence your managers take first, then coach from. If you would rather have someone walk your floor and tell you which of the nine you have, start with a conversation.
See also, What's Important To Train A Retail Manager
Frequently asked questions
What are the signs of a bad retail manager?
Nine: they do not know what is happening on their floor, they cannot change employee behavior, they cannot let anyone go, they ignore their KPIs, they make excuses, they tolerate a dirty store, they stay off the sales floor, they micromanage, and they correct people in front of others.
Why do retail employees quit their manager rather than the job?
Because a manager controls whether the work means anything. Busy work, public criticism, and no say in how the job gets done leave the paycheck as the only reason to show up, and a paycheck is available anywhere.
How do you know if your retail manager is effective?
Watch behavior, not reports. An effective manager is on the floor, knows the crew's emotional temperature, reads the KPIs as a tool rather than a scorecard, praises in public, and corrects in private.
Can a bad retail manager improve?
Yes. Most of these behaviors come from never being taught what good management looks like in a store. A written selling standard the manager takes first, then coaches from, changes the behavior.
What should you do first with a manager who micromanages?
Give them a standard to inspect against. Micromanaging fills the gap where a standard should be, and a trained team starts holding each other to it instead.
Great managers give their teams more of a say in how they can contribute and do their jobs; they offer opportunities to learn and grow. Great managers encourage employees to suggest ideas for improving retail sales and then listen to what they say.
Those employees want to get to work because of the time their managers have put into making their day.
The good news is that even if one or two of these describe your behavior, you can change, starting today. Retail training for managers has to start somewhere.
Oh, and about the shoe store manager I mentioned earlier? I visited that store with the owner of a new company I was working for. The district manager stopped us and told my boss, "Take good care of him. He was the best manager we ever had."
Great praise was delivered too late.
A terrible district manager.
