In the great blogging tradition, I’m going to use my little corner of the blogosphere to rant for a topic near and dear to me.  If you’re in retail, you’re going to be more than familiar with this rant.  In fact, if you own any kind of business at all that hires young people, everything I’m going to say will resonate with you!

Let me start this out by saying that over the past 33 years, I’ve hired more people than you could ever imagine.  Hundreds and hundreds of people –  many of whom are on the younger side.

Lately, I’ve discovered that I’m not just hiring the young people.  I’ve got their parents on board, too!

99% of the young people we hire are GREAT!  They work hard and they do a good job.  But there’s always teh employee who just isn’t right for our store, for whatever reason.  They might not understand the importance of customer service.  They might be incapable of running the cash register properly, no matter how many times we train them.  They might, frankly, rather be anywhere else but working — and it shows.

Then we have to let those people go. 

That’s when the phone calls start.  Angry parents who cannot believe we’ve fired their child.  They call, confident in their knowledge that their child is an absolute perfect angel and that we’re the biggest jerks on the planet for firing their kid.

What are you supposed to say at that point?  I can tell you this: if I’d gone home as a young man and told my father I’d gotten myself fired, he would have been angry too — at me!  Clearly, if I got fired, I did something to deserve it.  No one fires employees for the fun of it!

I’m a parent too.  I know how much we love our kids.  I also know that sometimes the best thing we can do as parents is to step back and let our kids stand on our own two feet.  We don’t help them by interfering in their jobs!  Somehow that message has gotten lost along the way.

We get a lot of parents who tell us, “My kid needs a job.”  Now we say, “We don’t hire parents.  If your kid is looking for a job, have them come in and pick up an application!”

Last time, I talked about a challenge we had in our store.  Rest assured that the situation didn’t stop when I was done blogging about it: I knew we had to do more training.

Some times, as retailers, we wind up training on the type of things that just seem like regular, ordinary common sense.  The truth is we have to train on this kind of stuff — because we can’t afford to take common sense for granted.

What happens if we do?

Your crew will make mistakes.  Big mistakes.  And when you ask your crew member why they didn’t do the proper procedure, they’ll look at you with this vacant, clueless stare: “I never knew we were supposed to do that!”

If you want a fool-proof, guaranteed way to eliminate this problem, just keep reading.

Write out the procedure you want your employees to follow.  Keep it short and to the point: you only want to focus on one issue at a time.

Include the procedure in your employees paycheck.  Before they get their NEXT paycheck from you, they have to read and SIGN the paper and return it to you to be kept in thier employee file.

That way when you’re faced with the “I never knew that..” scenario, you can say, “Well, according to this paper you signed, you did know that.”

Since we’ve started this policy at our stores (and it’s been in place for years now) the whole “I never knew” situation has virtually disappeared.  This is a quick, simple, and effective way to start improving your employees performance — TODAY!

You’ve heard of a tempest in a teapot?  Recently we had a dust up in the litter box — litter box aisle, that is!

I was standing in our North Hampton store, and saw a customer walking out empty handed.  That’s pretty unusual.  Generally when someone comes to our store, they’ve come with a purpose.  They have a mission in mind, and they come to us because they know we can help them achieve their mission.

I asked one of our cashiers what the story was.

“Oh,” she replied.  “She was looking for a LitterMaid.  We didn’t have one, but I told her it’s an item we regularly carry, and that it will be in on Monday.”

I looked around the store and discovered that we did INDEED have the LitterMaid on the shelves.

I counted to ten, and then went back to that cashier.  “Of course, you’ve got the lady’s name and phone number.”

“Oh, no,” she said.  “She’s a regular.  She’ll be back.”

This type of thing happens all the time and it drives me NUTS.  There’s two ways to handle this situation, the CORRECT way and the LAZY way.

The LAZY way was to do exactly what my cashier did: tell the customer we don’t have the merchandise, and when it would be in, and when the customer should come back.

What’s wrong with that, you ask?  Well, it leaves out the whole customer service part of the transaction.  Where in this model are we actually taking care of the customer?  You’re shifting the burden of monitoring when your inventory arrives onto the customer.  If they want to deal with that, why don’t they sit home and order their merchandise online?  They don’t need us for that!

The CORRECT way to handle the situation is this: (Assuming you’ve actually checked for the merchandise, and it’s really, actually not in stock!) Get the customer’s name and number, so you can call the customer back when the merchandise arrives, and when it would be convenient for the customer to pick it up!

This puts the customer service back in the deal.  You’re demonstrating concern for the customer’s needs, and demonstrating that you want to take care of them. 

Yes, it’s a teeny, tiny bit more work.  We’re talking about what?  Five minutes, maybe? To get the name and number and make the follow up call when the merchandise arrives? 

That’s five minutes that will make all the difference to the customer.  That’s the five minutes that will make the customer feel cared about and important.  That’s five minutes that’s critical in CREATING CUSTOMER LOVE.

Last time, we talked about the value of marketing to and retaining your existing customer base.  This is one example of this concept in action: we keep our customers five minutes at a time.

Earlier this week, my phone rang. It was not an angry customer calling. Worse — it was an angry would-be customer calling, a woman who I am sure will never shop at our store.

Here’s what happened:

She called our store to discover if we carried Doggie Diapers. My cashier said, “Absolutely! We do carry Doggie Diapers.” The would-be customer, thrilled, asked another question: “Can you tell me how much they are?”

Here’s what my crew member said:

“I’m at the register and it’s really busy right now, so I can’t tell you that right now.”

That was the extent of the call — leaving our would-be caller furious!

In an ideal world, our crew member might still have been busy. It happens. However, he could have said, “I’m really busy at the register right now, but if you give me your name and number, I’ll call you right back with that information in just a minute.”

Chances are, the would-be customer would have been a LOT happier with that answer!

Who was at fault in this scenario?

It was my fault. Clearly, I should have provided training on this issue: this is EXACTLY the reason I’m working on an employee training manual. There is one thing every retailer needs, and that’s a common sense training manual that spells out When X happens, you do Y!

For all the bosses or managers who might be reading this, I want you to know one thing: when our employees make a bone-headed blunder like the one you just read about, it’s not malicious. They’re not trying to hurt your store. They just didn’t have the proper answer to the situation readily at hand.

It’s our job to make sure they have the answers in place. We have to spell it out: when you’re faced with this situation, you need to take these actions. This should be part of every employee manual!

In fact, if you want to make covering this type of topic a fun part of your employee training, you should test newly trained employees on the concept. When they pass the test, give them a prize. Make it fun. This is something we can do that the larger retailers simply can’t!

“You know,” the customer told me, as she stood at the register, “online, you can buy Wellness for 41 cents a can.” We sell Wellness for 46 cents a can, a nickel more. She glared at me. “Are you going to meet their price?”

If you’re a retailer, chances are you’ve experienced this same scene — or something very similar. With the economy the way it is, news outlets all across the nation are encouraging customers to get over any shy side they may have and start negotiating for lower prices. Lower prices on anything and everything, from a new car to cat food. After all, the public is assured, it doesn’t hurt to ask.

The question isn’t painful. But the answer could be — especially if you’re the retailer!

Like many situations you face in your store there is no one cut and dried answer. There are a number of factors that go into the decision to match prices. These include:

Are you a good customer? If I’ve never ever seen you in my store before and you’re coming in asking me to match prices on the loss-leader sale the chain discounter is running, you’re out of luck. I know you’re just cherry picking prices — and once I give you the deal, I’m never going to see you again! What’s in it for me?

Does the deal make sense? I’m not going to drop my prices so much that it costs me money! Let me give you an example.

Years and years ago, there was a store called Edwards. Some of you might remember Edwards — they were the first to run super deep discounts on national products. They were so cheap, they didn’t even have bags! We’re talking real bare bones here.

At the time, we were selling 9 Lives Cat Food four cans for a dollar. A case of 9 Lives cost us $5.50, and we were making $6.00. Not a great margin, but we sell a LOT of 9 Lives.

A customer came in and told me that Edwards had 9 Lives five cans for a dollar. That’s $4.75 a case — less than my cost. She asked if I would match the price.

I couldn’t — and I told her that. So I was absolutely totally dumbfounded to see this same woman over at my shelves, picking out 9 Lives!

I had to ask her why.

Her answer: “They don’t have the flavor I like.”

I told her, “Then when we don’t have the flavor you like, we’re six for a dollar!” She laughed — because she knew the basic rule of negotiation: For a deal to truly be a good deal, both parties have to be happy with it. You’ve got to leave some money on the table — otherwise, the retailer’s never going to go for it! The trick is finding the balance where the customer gets a good deal and you’ve realized at least some profit.

That’s a good negotiation.

Later this week, we’ll be talking about empowering your employees, so they’re prepared when your customers come in and say “What can you do for me?”