Communication for the Retail Coach.
is fundamental. The Retail Coaching invitation .
is to exchange the roles of who asks (salesperson) and who answers the questions (supervisor, store manager). This change of scheme, from employee-child to employee-adult, responsible and committed, requires a transition. It implies cutting habits and visualizing a new possible reality. 
“Delegating decision making involves first ensuring that the employee has the necessary skills to do so.”
Achieving autonomy allows the supervisor to free up time and conserve energy. But on this road to autonomy and commitment, the Retail Coach.
The essence of Retail Coaching.
is a weekly (bi-weekly or monthly) one-on-one meeting, which is essential to listen and talk to salespeople about store issues or concerns. Because retail is so dynamic that it is not possible to wait for months to get feedback and make adjustments. Hence the interest of short individual coaching sessions (between 5 and 10 minutes). The basis of the Retail Coaching session.
are the individual Key Success Indicators.
expressed in the scorecard. Communication is bidirectional. The Retail Coach.
ensure that the employee has at least 70% of the speaking time. This type of meeting should be prepared in advance and take into account a number of aspects:CONTEXT.
. The cell phone is turned off and a place is found behind closed doors. It is held at a fixed time each week, so that the participants prepare themselves mentally and emotionally for it. It is important to carry out the session in a seated position, since in commerce one normally lives standing up. The mere fact of sitting enhances the value of the moment and takes care of the quality of the relationship and the ritual to be experienced. The Retail Coach creates the context with the look, the voice, the empathy. The session can be started with the question “How are you doing? CURRENT SITUATION.
It starts with open-ended questions such as “What do you think? The employee himself is the one who comments, focusing on the figures in the scorecard that he himself provides.IDEAL SITUATION.
Questions of the style “What is your main challenge for this week/month?” are asked, implying a projection towards the next period, thus outlining a new reality.FEEDBACK LEARNING.
In this phase, the Retail Coach must challenge the employee, invite him/her to look for new ways and new commitments.ACTION PLAN.
“What exactly are you committing to?”. The goal of this process is to generate proud employees. The action plan should have clear compliance dates and should be set in writing.FOLLOW-UP.
An individual Retail Coaching session ends with the phrase “Anything else?” to ensure that the most important emotions are on the table. In addition, this question allows the employee to share some difficulty (conflict with a colleague, scheduling problem, etc.).This phase of the Caoching session can be summarized in 6 questions and 21 words that vertebrate it:
“Just like the soccer coach’s words just before a game, the pre-opening talk occurs minutes before opening the shutter. Its main interest is to generate common energy to get out on the field.”
Another type of meeting is quarterly or semi-annual.
In this type of meeting, the supervisor communicates the store’s situation. It is based on figures and the content is objective. It should also be a motivational meeting in addition to celebrating successes. Even if sales are not very good, it is good to identify some positive indicator of the group or of a member. In addition, this type of team meeting can be used to reinforce some aspect of training by role-playing, etc. Attention and concentration.
The entire team, in order for the meeting to be effective, must be total. It is necessary to focus and be present “here and now”. We must take care of our “know-how”, to demonstrate a quality “know-how” and transmit an effective “know-how”. “After a few seconds of distraction, the brain needs 30 seconds to refocus 50% on the interrupted conversation and 3 minutes to focus 100%.”
COMMUNICATION AND TYPES OF FEEDBACK.
Two-way communication.
l is fundamental to achieving the objectives set. If in communication, the selection of words and formulations are key to its effectiveness and the effective taking of actions, in feedback they are no less so. In Coaching, feedback is a gift. The other person’s feedback helps us to continue to improve. Normally, we get defensive when a person talks to us about ourselves. So it is important to generate the right context so that feedback can be given and received. Feedback is an opinion, not a fact and for that reason, the RetailCoach.
The report will be given using formulas such as “it seems to me” or “as I have observed”. The language should be simple, specific and factual. In addition, positive feedback.
should be given often, and in public, with the added value of highlighting, in the eyes of others, the facts worthy of congratulations.Unlike positive feedback,negative or improvement fEedback.
should always be given in private, and only talk about doing, not being: “You have made a clumsy mistake” instead of “You are clumsy”. Negative feedback.
is more valuable if it is supported by concrete facts such as key success indicators. In addition, constructive words will be favored (replace “problem” with “challenge”). A complete negative feedback opens the door for the salesperson to speak and explain his or her appreciation of the difficulty. In this way, it is more effective to accompany him. To do this, the Retail Coach uses open questions such as “what do you think”, “how do you see it? “Knowing how to give negative feedback, calmly and unemotionally, communicates to staff peace of mind that if something happens, it will be talked about, offering confidence to work.”
Much of the management difficulties in Retail and elsewhere stem from the feeling that there are“under the table” issues.
. Hence, the need for the coach, whose role is to invite us to put things “on the table”, assuming that we will understand each other among responsible adults; in any case, the person receiving the feedback is not obliged to agree. It is important, in any case, to thank the person who goes to the trouble of giving it and to indicate that we understand why he/she is saying it, even if we do not share it.The management of a store or a chain necessarily goes through moments in which it is necessary to exercise discipline. It can be applied with verbal or written reprimands, such as yellow or red cards, and in a progressive manner. The weekly coaching session is an opportunity to “put things on the table” and anticipate difficult situations.TRAINING IN RETAIL COACHING AND THE GOOD SALESMAN.
The objective of Retail Training.
consists of developing unconscious sales, management, customer service, etc. skills. This training allows you to develop your own culture with your own stamp. Retail training can make it possible to communicate more effectively the content of operations manuals, which generally nobody reads. Training that lasts over time and allows you to carry out tasks between sessions facilitates small achievements, which, as the training program progresses, in a controlled and progressive manner, becomes a cultural change. “They told me and I forgot it; I saw it and I understood it; I did it and I learned it.”
Confucius.
In order to become a good salesperson, apart from proper training, it is necessary to put aside the ego and concentrate on that mission. In Retail, many events happen by chance and can neither be controlled nor anticipated. What can be worked on is the attitude, the mental approach to work, the commitment to certain values and the capacity for creativity in urgent and unprecedented situations.In the effort to transmit esteem and consideration to the teams, it is relevant to take care of the way the salesperson is named. We are talking about giving him/her a status, recognition and dignity far superior to the usual and debilitating term “clerk” or “salesperson”, which is not always well perceived. “Because of the dynamics of the store itself, with a strong coexistence and permanent interactions, it is key to take care of the energy, that is, the strength and spirit with which salespeople react to the challenges.
The desire to try again despite the “no” counts more than rational intelligence in some cases. When choosing salesmen and saleswomen, we believe that optimism represents a differential strength when it comes to hiring. According to Alain Cardon,.
“Beyond the good management of the team structure, there needs to be good individual and collective energy, and it needs to be mobilized and implemented in an effective and sufficiently focused way to achieve or exceed the objectives”.In addition, the balance of the profiles that make up the team also provides for the necessary room for progression to undertake growth. .
