What happens when all the Get Up & Go, has Got Up & Gone?

There is no shortage of literature and analysis giving endless advice on our Gen Y challenge. Where do we find them? How do we attract them? How in heavens do we hang on to them once we’ve got them? Things are not helped by the fact that the weight of surveys tells us that throwing money at them isn’t going to help, with salary typically featuring mid table on a top ten of things Gen Y wants from their work life.

Does anyone really know what Gen Y wants? Does Gen Y know?

Generationally, ‘Boomers’ have often been considered the ‘work hard, move up’ generation, while Gen X sought more of a ‘work/life balance’. Gen Y it seems, are often characterised as constantly asking ‘why should I’?

If the answer isn’t good enough, then too often, what you hope is the ‘get up and go’ in your organisation is out the door.

So, what can we do about it? Again, there are a plethora of studies and surveys providing us with a bewildering array of tactics, from key words and ideas expressed in our recruitment advertising, to what colour to best paint the walls and how many cappuccino machines we should have. Where do we start?

The answer is actually a lot more straight forward than it seems. It’s also far more helpful towards a company’s financial health than many might think.

The Service Profit Chain

Put succinctly, the service profit chain is a tested model which demonstrates the link between a truly engaged workforce and an organisation’s increasing growth and profitability.

We have previously covered topics here discussing the relationship between customer service and sales revenue and the need to produce ‘delighted’ customers, not just customers that are merely ‘satisfied’ (see Jones & Sasser et al 1995). The retail world today in particular faces a double threat; a retail landscape that leaves ‘people’ as the only one of the 5 P’s that can effectively drive competitive advantage, and new employees that are too frequently characterised by the Gen Y trait of having low service levels and poor people skills.

If we can find a way to successfully engage Gen Y to the extent that ‘why should I?’ is replaced by ‘how can I?’ and in the process we ‘delight’ our customers, then the two biggest challenges facing retailers today are simultaneously addressed.

OK, so how do we engage our employees? Well, that journey is different for each business and one that must embrace all aspects of the organisation and its management. This blog article cannot do it justice to the process except to say it’s one that is understood and is already being successfully practiced. However, a useful ‘best practice’ summary was given by the Australian Institute of Management as follows:

• Give employees the feeling of working on useful and challenging tasks
  
• Genuinely trust and commit to employees
  
• Offer good training and development opportunities
  
• Reward and recognise
  
• Implement strategies that promote positive workplace relationships

As a checklist this is a good start. As a blueprint to a solution, it’s no more than a start. There can be no doubt, successfully implementing any initiative to engage and keep engaged Gen Y is a challenge – but the rewards are tangible, sustainable and unique.

As a closing thought on the prize to be had, consider this. Recent studies estimate that as much as 40 percent of a typical employee’s effort is discretionary. That is, nearly half of what they could potentially achieve is typically untapped and not required by an employer for an employee to keep their job and reach an ‘acceptable’ standard

Engaging that employee effectively and tapping that seam brings rich rewards.

Retail Sales – Avoid The Traps That Will Ruin Your Business!

Why is it that some retail staff delight us with their quality of service and some frustrate us to the point of anger? The work done by Prosell over 25 years have highlighted some of the reasons for the dreadful experiences we sometimes have. As we highlighted in a previous blog, the impact of poor service goes further quicker and can close down businesses almost overnight.

Below are the most common mistakes that retailers make in allowing their customer to have poor experience. They are in priority order and have been assessed in terms of their contribution to ‘consistently poor service’, as determined by mystery shopping.

1. No Consequence – letting staff get away with poor attitude, skill and behaviour. Of course, if you have not set clear standards of behaviour, then you will not have the will or process to reinforce it. Be aware, just telling people what is expected has little impact and has no relation at all to really setting and reinforcing standards. It is also important to be aware of what happens to all staff once they become aware that there is no consequence for doing the job well or badly. They stop trying.

2. Hopelessly inadequate induction – much induction in retail looks at the ‘must do’ things, such as processing card payments and stock control. It is possible (and critical) to do an on-site, cost effective induction that sets standards, trains people in key skills and inspires them to delight the customer.

3. Being happy with ‘satisfied’ customers – unless you have no competition, there is little or no relationship between ‘satisfied’ customers and customer loyalty or customer spend. It is only when customers are ‘delighted’ that they come back and also recommend to others. Some companies spend large amounts of money asking customers if they are satisfied, or very satisfied and wonder why the ratings make no difference to their revenues

4. Trying to buy loyalty rather than earn it – loyalty schemes have to be reinforced with very clear practices that earn the customers respect. Otherwise they are very expensive ways of giving discounts to people who have no desire to return and take away margin for no benefit. There are far too many schemes in every retailer for them to stand out on their own – surveys show customers don’t even know which schemes they have signed up to.

If you recognize these things in your world, but lack the resources to fix them; there are government schemes that will contribute $4000 per employee for skill and service development. Let us know if this is something you would want to discuss.

How to improve sales results in the retail industry!

I’d like to continue to develop the theme of sales results in retail and invite comment on some conclusions on how to be better than the rest.

To add some value to our readers I want to share both research and evidence as to how to improve revenues in retail.

The reality of retail environments is that there is not the time or money to spend days on training and development to develop advanced selling skills. This article looks at four simple and ‘free’ things that have been proven to improve results.

1. Recognise you are the expert - people want advice and guidance, not just friendly faces. Experts are more engaged, ask more questions and make enthusiastic recommendations. Give your people the knowledge to be experts in what they are selling. Encourage them to look at competition. Discuss with them the differences between your offering and theirs.


2. Be interested – make sure everyone understands the attitude, facial expression and words that need to be used to show genuine interest in the customer. Did you know that the customer makes up their mind about the salesperson in the first 6 – 9 seconds? Quite often this is before they speak. One company in our group that tried new practices had store staff rate each other on their level of engagement, using a simple form. In two weeks revenues were up by 16%.


3. Really simple skills go a long way – as stated, in retail the initial engagement is key. Far too often we see untalented and boring approaches being used. How often have you heard a salesperson say to you, ‘you OK?’ or, ‘can I help?’ These have to be the most poorly phrased and disengaged statements that we hear, but we hear them all the time. With another retailer, we asked their staff to change one simple thing, the initial phrase they used. We asked them to walk up to the customer smile. Say hello and ask, ‘what brings you into our store today?’ This got the customer talking and engaged, and as a result sales were up over the pilot period by 28%.


4. Test properly at interview – if we accept that store staff are not going to attend lengthy induction and training, then we must make sure the raw material has an aptitude for the job. Not only should you get the person to show you how they would deal with a customer, but there are a range of other tests available that will let you know if the person is right for the job. We use, as an example, a software tool that evaluates whether people enjoy talking to others. Simple and cheap, but essential if you want people who have an aptitude for the job.

The Connection between Customer Service & Sales Revenues in the Retail Market

We have all heard the anecdotal clichés about customer service – ‘have a good experience and you tell three people, have a poor experience and you tell twenty’ etc. what is now happening in retail is even more significant.

Feedback from mystery shopping groups and from work completed by Prosell tells us that three things have changed that show an even higher relationship between customer service and sales revenues:

1. Customer expectations have changed and they no longer tolerate poor service. Customers are more impatient and will wait less time to be served. They expect higher levels of product knowledge and want expertise, not just smiley faces (and some don’t even get that.

2. Far greater choice means they will not come back because they don’t have to. This is a major change over the last 10 years. If you are a retailer you will know the competitive landscape has changed beyond recognition in this time.

3. This is the big one. The internet allows feedback to be immediate and all encompassing. We know a restaurant chain that went from profit to loss in just three weeks because the customer service rating on www.eatability.com.au was so poor. This type of customer feedback is also extending beyond restaurants (http://www.shopping.yahoo.com.au/). So it is no longer 20 people knowing about a bad experience over a period of months. It is many thousands and it is overnight.

If you are interested in the change of the Customer Buying Cycle, please click on the link here.

Retail Stores Could Have a Happier Xmas!

One of the biggest contradictions in the world of retail becomes even more acute at Xmas. All retailers know the relationship between the sales and service skills of their staff and the level of customer spend and customer loyalty.

Many however, invest little to get this right. I work with companies to improve effectiveness in this area and am always amazed by the Xmas ‘blind spot’.

We as consumers have our own worries and stresses and therefore are more aware of (and talk about) good service and helpful people – even more so when we are shopping to a deadline in crowded spaces. We are also very sensitive to poor service and unhelpful people.

Even with companies that do spend some time developing the skills of their people, the Xmas ‘blind spot’ can exist.

It goes like this: “we are so busy at Xmas and have to put on temporary staff, so we have no time to give people the skills to capture more business and delight the customer.”

I believe this has an impact on people’s desire to go back to the shop for the next 11 months and to recommend it to others.

I would like to hear from people about their Xmas shopping experiences, either positive or negative, that supports this and also the effect is has on where they choose to spend their money.

Generation Y Reject The Treadmill

As part of my work I complete diagnosis of work patterns and behaviours in a range of organisations. Generation Y has been criticized for its lack of loyalty and effort in the workplace. I believe it is wrong to generalize and I have certainly seen a lot of quality people doing great things.

When I interviewed people in this age group about work aspirations, I find their views are strongly coloured by the working lives and experiences of their parents and their parents’ friends and peers.

So what impression do Gen Y get of this group? It is mostly negative and this has a huge impact on how they view work in general. The points below are a brief summary of the key things that they see:


1. People tolerating managers that are aggressive and apply pressure rather than provide support
2. People working with a lack of resources and the subsequent stress (this is largely seen as the ‘profit before people’ culture that we live in, where shareholders and investors expect returns of 12 – 15% per annum when the economy is growing at 3%)
3. Conflict between the ‘people are our greatest asset’ mantras of many companies and their actual day to day behaviour
4. The human fall out:

1. Working long (mostly unpaid) hour
2. Ill health
3. Depression
4. Stress
5. Fractured relationships
6. Regret

It is no surprise that Gen Y reject this as a life style choice and has different attitudes to work. Sometimes this attitude is reflected in their intolerance of the way in which they are being asked to work and subsequent job shifting, sometimes it is impatience with poor management practices. There is also the desire to have input and change things for the better.

Whatever the reaction, positive or infuriating, we must accept it will not be the same and forcing people to comply with a ‘treadmill’ existence will create conflict.

So, is this a healthy rejection of the extremes of capitalism, or just a lazy ‘have it all on a plate’ generation?

If you would like to find out the best methods for managers to manage Generation Y watch our video "How to manage Generation Y".

The Management Key to Improved Performance

Based on my work with many organisations, there is a clear and high correlation between management behaviour and commercial success.

Whilst this is not surprising, what is interesting is the level to which this is true. Management and specifically senior management determine culture, behaviour, attitude and discretionary effort* by the things they do, irrespective of other, conflicting messages.

A brief example is this; many organisations talk about an inclusive and coaching culture, as opposed to the old 'command and rule', which most recognise as corrosive to long term motivation. In our studies, we found that unless management modeled these behaviours and more importantly, had the underlying beliefs that drove this behaviour, the companies efforts at 'culture change' were wasted. This was irrespective of the quality of the employees and the 'change agent' activities.

It is true to say that management show what they believe to be important by the questions they ask. No manager will consistently show concern for people and use 'coaching style' interventions to involve and resolve unless their values and beliefs are aligned to this behaviour.

Equally as interesting is the development of this trend. The figures are different compared to 1988. This is mainly because of the characteristics of Gen Y having more influence on the workplace. Gen Y place value in managers who help them to be better at their jobs, not those who tell them what to do.

*Studies have shown that 40% of effort in the workplace is discretionary and that people can exist on 60% contribution if they are not engaged and motivated. In most organisations this is the difference between poor /average performance and beating the competition.