The more you talk to your employees, the better they'll perform, because how you coach is how they'll play. Two formats do the coaching: the daily huddle and the store meeting.
The huddle is two to three minutes before doors open, and the best retailers never skip it. One focus per day: a new product, a customer service story that went well yesterday, one way to add on to a sale.
That single point of concentration changes what the crew watches for all shift. Sports teams huddle before every play for a reason, and your floor is no different. Make a huddle a standing part of your schedule and every day opens pointed at the two numbers that matter, converting lookers to buyers and adding on to every sale.
The morning store meeting goes deeper, and it lives or dies on the agenda. Here's mine:
Introduce everybody, because there's usually somebody new.
Have food if you can; food builds a team faster than a memo ever will.
Share something good about where sales are, then one honest area to do better.
Teach one new product: how to sell it and who the customer for it is.
Then make them interact, a role play or a game, something they do with each other rather than sit through.
Close by going around the room: "What's one thing you got out of today?" That last question tells you what actually landed.
What the agenda prevents matters as much as what it includes. No blathering, no list of everything they shouldn't do.
Keep it positive and keep it about selling, because the quiet message of a good meeting is this: in our store, we spend our time on selling, not just on tasks.
Say it every week and the floor starts to believe it.