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HUMAN RESOURCES
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The most important asset of a company are its people, because without people there
is no business, this is more so in retail where the primary job is to sell and serve
customers. Every person you employee should have the job of selling and conveying your
vision of the business to your customers, if this does not happen then your business
is in trouble.
A sales representative or associate is a very important part of your business, if fact
that is how your business communicates with its customers. Not every body can do the
selling you need so choose your candidates very carefully, some people just do not make
good sales people, it takes a special person to be friendly all of the time and deal with
rejections well. We iterate how important it is to choose the right sales representative,
remember these are the people who are bringing money into your business.
Making a mistake in hiring that right sales associate is different to making a mistake
in choosing the mechanic to fix AC in the store. If the mechanic does a bad job you can
get another immediately without losing any customers, but if the sales representative
makes a mistake it could mean losing a life long customer for ever and that is a big loss,
lose too many of these customers and in no time you will be out of business.
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Hiring People
The first thing you should do when preparing to hire somebody is
to prepare a written job description, doing this in writing will help you to focus your
ideas about the ideal candidate and the necessary qualifications he or she must have.
Doing this in writing will show your professional attitude towards running the business
and that will in turn reflect on any potential employees. See below for a sample job
description.
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ABS American Floors
Available Job Description
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1) Job Title:
Sales Representative
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2) Job Description:
Successful candidate will be part of a team working in the sales room of a
carpet store and will deal with customers and serve their needs daily. He or she must understand
customer’s needs and try to match their needs with the right floor cover. Candidate must have
good knowledge in floor coverings and tiles.
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3) Job Duties:
- Welcome and Greet Customer
- Understand Customer Needs
- Take Customer Through Store Selection
- Suggest Products to Customers
- Suggest Complementary Products
- Suggest Home Visit
- Take Customer Information
- Close the Sale
- Perform Required Paperwork
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4) Characteristics:
- Team work
- Friendly
- Positive attitude
- Willing to learn
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5) Qualifications:
Experience in the floor coverings business and basic book keeping skills
The job description above can be broken down into the following parts:
- Title. It
important to give the person working for you a job a title, it
helps the person to identify what he is doing, it also sounds
better when friends ask what do you do, then you answer I am a
sales representative.
- Job description. This is a story like description of the general
position you are trying to fill. This kind of description can be
used as the first thing you inform an applicant who calls to
inquire about the job, you and the caller will immediately
determine if there is an interest in taking matters further.
- Job duties.
This is a detailed run down of the most important duties your
ideal candidate is going to perform. You need to think hard about
what exactly are the most important duties you need from you
employee because you cannot list everything your potential
employee is going to do in a typical day. These duties should be
clear and measurable as much as possible to avoid
misinterpretations, for example if you say I want my employee to
explain product information to the customer, that is not enough
you have to go on to say I want my employee to explain the
different manufacturers of the product, different products for
usages, different qualities, life time issues and so forth.
- Characteristic. Here you need to list the characteristics that a person must have in order to do the job.
This will vary depending on what kind of job you are trying to fill in, however for a sales representative
the following are important:
- Positive Attitude: People who have can
do way of thinking.
- Healthy ego: People who can deal with
being rejected.
- Empathy: People who understand other
peoples situations and can offer the best solution because they
listen.
- Follow-up: People take the extra mile to follow up matters.
- Qualification. Here you list all the
education requirements, certificates and professional requirement
etc.
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Building Long Term Relationships.
An employments relationship will only last if is offers a fair mutual benefits to both parties ie
it is a win-win relationship between the employer and the employee. Your business will benefit a lot from long term
mutually benefiting relations with your employees, it takes a lot of time and effort to hire and train new employees
and get them familiar with the ins and outs of the business and it is much cheaper to keep your existing employees.
The following are a few tips on how to build such long-term relationships:
- Offering employees’ benefits is an
important tool in building long-term relationships; it also breeds
loyalty in your employees. Benefits might come in other forms such
as: employee discounts, flexible hours, and opportunities to
learn. This is sometimes a difficult issue for small businesses
but we think it is going to pay off and your business will
benefit, in whatever you decide to do be honest with your
employees and try your best.
- Choose the right employees and pay more
than competitive wages for similar jobs. You will not find good
people for a low wage and for your business to grow you need good
people, you cannot do it all on your own, you need the help of
good people. If you cannot afford good people, you might want to
examine why are you in business altogether. Your customers will
also appreciate good employees and it gives the impression that
your business is doing well. But if you are turning over employees
fast your customers will think that your business is in trouble
because you cannot retain your people.
- Treat employees with respect, dignity and
make them feel part of it. Give employees a feeling of status and
pride for working for you, for example give them a title and
business card.
- Opportunities for career advancements.
Opportunities for a better position drives a lot of people do
better at their work and to give more of their efforts. For a
business owner this can be the most important thing you want from
your employees. This can be sometimes hard for small businesses,
be honest to your employees about any future
advancements.
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Interviewing People
Interviewing will enable you to pick the right person for the job, remember you do not want to be paying a good
wage for somebody who is not the right person for the job or not adding value to your business. The following
list are useful tips for the interviewing process:
- Select the best three or four candidates
for interviews from the responses you had.
- Allow for enough time for the interview,
an hour or so.
- Choose a good place to meet, quiet places
without interruptions.
- Make the candidate feel comfortable,
offer him or her a cup of coffee.
- Prepare your questions in advance and ask
productive questions. Know what are the most important skills for
the job (they should be on the job description which you prepared
for the job) and try to ask questions that produce the information
you need in order to make a decision.
- Ask behavioral questions, these question
deal with how the candidate dealt with real life situations.
- Hide your personal emotions, for example
if the candidate tells a story which happened in his or her last
job and you start to frown, the candidate will immediately switch
the story.
- Focus on listening. If you do most of the
talking you will know very little about the person you are
interviewing.
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Coaching Staff.
The people who work for you are your most important assets so you need to
teach and coach them on a continual basis to ensure the success of your business. You must
lead by example, in other words you need to demonstrate to your staff any skills which you
want them to pick up, after seeing you doing them you ask them to repeat it. This is the
most effective way for reaching out to your staff, ie they watch you doing the desired
action and you ask them to repeat it. You may have to repeat this process a few times
depending on how complex the idea you are trying to get across and the type of staff you
have.
If you are the owner of a retail business you need to be the master
craftsman, if you greet customers with “good morning sir, how are doing” then your staff
will do the same thing. The coaching process of your employees begins on day 1 and it
lasts throughout the employment life cycle. The following are tips on the
coaching process:
- Build a long-term professional
relationship with your staff based on trust. You should be fair
and honest.
- Demonstrate and teach the skills then ask
your staff to do it and remember to lead by example.
- Set measurable, observable and time
dependent goals. For example you can tell one of your staff that
he or she needs to increase the average transaction amount from 20
to 25 dollars within the next 4 weeks through suggestive selling.
- Motivate your people and give positive
feedback, reinforce positive actions immediately. Praising the
good actions of your staff will reinforce the bond between the
stimulus and appropriate response.
- Monitor performance against the goals you
set for your staff, and then provide feedback. Feedback
- might be in the form of additional
training.
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