Effective Leadership Styles for Retail businesses

Given the constrained levels of profitability in retail, the sheer significance of improved business fundamentals in the industry is high. In this context what usually gets spoken about is the need to generate increased business through repeat footfalls and efficient and productive teams that can grow margins as well as make the business customer centric. The sub text that often gets missed is about the kind of leadership style that can effectively enable the organization to achieve these objectives.

What differentiates great and effective leaders from ordinary Managers lies as much in the long term vision, focus and quality of decisions that they make as it does in how those decisions are arrived at or how those are implemented. The focus of this article is really on the latter two aspects or the leadership style.

Talk is usually focused on task centricity vs people centricity as an approach. One school of thought vouches for leaders who drive discipline, rigour and business programs incessantly. However, very often, task focus is confused for effectiveness! This school of thought favours leaders that drive their direct reports relentlessly who are then expected to drive the rest of their down-stream teams in a similar cascading fashion. Nothing wrong with it except that it doesn’t factor in the levels of knowledge, understanding or concerns and feedback that ground staff may have.

Democratic styles have their own drawbacks in retail situations where generally there tend to be too many loose and open ends. Speed of execution could suffer!

What needs to be remembered is that retail organizations in general depend a great deal on the energy and efficiency levels of front end consumer facing staff in the field as also of the lower down staff across functions. Ensuring their efficiency and passion on a day to day basis is of paramount importance especially if the business wishes to make a day to day connect with customers. This calls for an appropriate leadership style and an organization culture that can help the organization being perceived consistently as consumer friendly and efficient.

The kind of organization culture that encourages such an environment is often a silent contributor to the success of the business. Imagine walking into stores where you not only like the merchandise on offer but also value the staff for their ability to smile, connect, recommend and service your requirements efficiently. Such a culture and environment is in most cases not an accidental flash and it flows in the day to day working of the organization. It cascades down pretty much from its leadership and has some important tenets…like a team that understands its role, its goals, is empowered to take decisions in crucial / conflict situations and is confident that the management will back them in crunch situations.

Those who have been in retail understand that the success of retail businesses lies as much in their execution as in their strategy. The job at hand of running a retail business is a hectic, intense and energy sapping exercise. It requires a combination of not just deep analytical skills, or attention to detail but also genuine people skills, quick decisive action and the passion to give it your all. Given the 365 day nature of the job, it requires leaders who are available to their teams at all times and then who can back their teams when they most need it. For this reason alone, it has little or no place for either the 9 to 5 types or for those who can’t work well with large teams or have little concern for people in their teams.

It is important for leaders to understand and imbibe the fact that overly autocratic styles that emphasize the “do it as I say” or “only my way or the highway” approach could be deeply flawed in the context of retail. While they can ensure discipline and task orientation in the short run, they are more likely to lead to unhappiness and a serious feeling of demotivation and not being understood in the medium to long run, causing stress, burnout and eventually a higher level of attrition. Also willingness and openness to share facts with the leader can present a serious challenge for reportees. They are more likely to refrain from sharing issues, concerns and bad and awkward news rather than risk unpleasantness from leaders who believe they know best. This is tricky in situations where team members down the levels have better product, process and domain knowledge than their leaders.

Leadership styles that have relatively a higher probability of succeeding in retail business are collaborative, flexible and situational. Such styles encourage and create an environment of transparency and openness, where employees across levels feel happy to be empowered and to be a significant part of the system and therefore work efficiently on a day to day basis. The environment encourages and welcomes them to speak up on a day to day basis and share their issues and concerns with their direct superiors without feeling constrained about escalating issues when the need arises. The environment while keeping consumer facing employees energized enough to be giving off their best daily, also enables leaders to derive critical ground knowledge consistently. This added ground knowledge substantially improves their ability to make appropriate as well as fast decisions. And none of this comes at the expense of any loss of focus on tasks or business goals.

When it comes to goals and tasks – several Managers prefer to set goals, leaving the nitty-gritty of execution to the concerned teams. There is nothing wrong with that except in situations where the targets and goals are far removed and way too tough to comprehend or achieve. Here true leaders don’t abandon their colleagues. Instead, they lead the way by working with the teams and demonstrate “what to do and how to do it”.

In general, it is critical to treat team members in every industry with respect, especially so in retail organizations. This is so because the behavior of team members’ often mirrors that of their bosses. Any laxity here directly reflects in terms of a grumbling and sulking environment and couldn’t care less attitude of retail staff.

For leaders, looking or acting the part of a CEO is the easy part of leadership. The tougher part is knowing and understanding what works or what doesn’t. A combination of common sense acquired through experience and the ability to work towards a solution without ego in a manner that breaks barriers and builds natural connects just makes it easier. Simultaneously, leaders that allows team members to evolve and grow, pat them on the back every now and then, kick them hard when needed, set a vision and target, define the broad path but allow them freedom and flexibility to execute within given boundaries and importantly show them the path when they flounder, are likely to elicit a far greater sense of ownership, responsibility and desired outcomes from their teams as well as effectively lead their organisations towards higher order goals. 

Pushing high Quality Private label and Avoiding Common Mistakes

Private label products are clearly an important though not the only solution to improve profitability for retailers. Yet they represent an important tool to improve long term customer retention and value. Given this context, it is not a surprise to see this as having been a focus area for numerous retailers over the last couple of years… and yet, poor quality and sometimes poorly packaged products abound.

To ensure consistency and high quality results, it is imperative to avoid common pitfalls and mistakes during product development, while the products are in store and in their day to day management.

During development

·       

      Treat the PL brand as an independent entity not just an easy to sell rip off of a national brand.  Develop it with the same rigour and concern for consumer acceptance in every possible way including product testing. Also as a brand ensure that it has distinct USPs like every good brand must have.

·         Understand competition – in terms of competing brands, claims, perceived quality levels, product features, packaging aesthetics, pricing, et al. Some retailers do a packaging rip off of national brands. While it can help their consumers understand what the product stands for, it in no way elevates the product stand out on its own as a high quality product. The only reason why customers may prefer such a product would be a lower price tag and not product superiority.

·         Proportion of product name vs brand name – Given that PL brands – in general do not tend to be as well known as national brands, it makes sense to keep the proportion of the product category name bigger than or atleast equal to the brand name. This ensures that in no case the product is missed on the shelf by prospective customers. Only in a situation where the retail chain operates on predominantly PL brands and does not stock national brands, can the risk of the brand name being bigger -be taken.

                                             

Leading National Brand                                                 Private label brand

(More weightage to brand name)                                            (More weightage to product category)

·         Invest in good packaging – go looking for design / packaging agencies that can can truly add value. Don’t blindly ape national brands nor compromise on packaging quality. Aim to identify genuine need gaps in terms of product taste, form or packaging.

·         Never trade quality with price – Negotiate with your manufacturers with eyes and ears wide open. Ensure that product specifications are recorded and understood and not touched when pricing negotiations are underway. A lower negotiated price should not be at the expense of a lower product spec. While a national brand can, a PL brand that trades quality for a lower price is unlikely to succeed.

       In store

·         Superior Merchandising on the shelf is as key as the development of a high quality product. Placement of PL brands must be comparable or better than the leading brands from a visibility and easy to reach or pick perspective. Placement of PL products on the bottom 2 shelves completely defeats the objective. Similarly on online sites – PL brands must be upfronted better than national brands. 

National brands are usually well merchandised. PL products too could follow the same colour blocking approach.

·         Align with staff – For PL products to be upfronted effectively in stores, it is critical to ensure their consistent availability, superior merchandising and point of sales support at all times – actions that cannot happen without staff understanding, involvement and support. This requires ongoing engagement, dialogue and product understanding (between the PL or category teams at HO and the store teams) and Linkage of private label sales with the overall incentive programs as well.

      Ongoing

·         Collaborate with PL contract manufacturers and make them partners in your success. This clearly means understanding their strengths, constraints and motivations as much as you do your own organisatons’.  Streamlining of basic processes and Preferential treatment for PL partners will help elicit their support on a day to day basis and ensure faster growth for the ranges.

·         Invest in checking Quality  – all national brands have teams that ensure consistent quality output for consumers. PL brands that take this area lightly could suffer in terms of being taken for granted by suppliers. Results could range from differing appearance of the end product to poor quality of the end product or even external inclusions like hair, wires or sometimes even mosquitoes and flies contamination in the product. Having your own team to monitor production, packaging and checking quality at inward, in-process and outward level will help drive the desired focus on quality and process compliance.

·         Maintain samples of approved packaging and details of product quality in as much granular a manner as possible – or have it monitored by an external agency. Too often, in the absence of a quality team, these simple aspects tend to get ignored or overlooked and the PL products that hit the shelves month after month don’t necessarily bear a resemblance to when they were originally developed.

@Mohit Khattar

Why encouraging greater participation of women in modern food & grocery retail stores is a good idea?

A cursory look at any modern food & grocery retail store across formats and cities reveals a far greater percentage of men in the workforce than women. In most such stores and formats, women don’t seem to comprise more than 10-15% of the workforce when their number should be atleast 3 times higher, if not more!!

While this may have to do with some of the policies that have shaped modern retail in india and with the prevailing environment of perceived security threats to women’s safety and security, to my mind it also has to do equally with historical perceptions carried by decision makers who in most cases happen to be men on what women staff can or can’t do.

I guess elaborating these perceptions or policies is futile. It will suffice to say that for every perceived drawback and perception there is a robust rationale on why participation of women in food and grocery retail must be encouraged for this sector to move forward.

Context

The following 3 points need to be borne in mind to better understand the recommendation

a)        The end user: Most food and grocery formats stock a multitude of brands and skus – sometimes over 5000 to 7000 SKUs – in a single supermarket store and more than 20000 SKUs (food n grocery) in a hyper!! These are brands, products and SKUs that burgeoning India is familiar with and buys on a day to day basis. While most of such products are consumed by the household in general, there is greater connect that the products have with women – than with men. Think fruits and vegetables, daals and spices, attas, rice, sauces, cooking masalas and pastes, cosmetics, household cleaners, detergents, shampoos and skin creams and so on. For most such products the key end user is a woman.

b)        The decision maker: More than 75% of the shoppers in most such stores happen to be women on a consistent and ongoing basis. They come in, browse, engage, make their choices and then take the final call based on their past experience, recommendation from friends or store staff or basis shelf displays, POS material or by advertising that they may have seen.

c)        Intuitive knowledge: Most employees (incl men and women) that work in the front end as contract staff in retail stores come in from relatively weaker socio-economic segments. So their own first-hand experience with many of the products is likely to be low. In such cases, their intuitive knowledge on such products or their usage is always beneficial.

The Rationale

My view is built around 3 pegs – Intuitive Knowledge, Inherent skills and attitude.

1)        Knowledge: In a scenario where most users and most shoppers who engage with food and other fmcg products are women, as retailers, if we are serious about influencing choices, then one of the first questions that we must ask is  whether the predominant male staff – is aiding or actually becoming a hindrance to achieving the said objective.

How can someone with his own limited experience and intuitiveness (shaped by his gender and past experiences) and perfunctory knowledge of these products suddenly become effective in influencing the choice of consumers who in almost all cases are likely to know more about the product than him. In most such cases, experience shows that women staff members are able to bring their superior innate knowledge (shaped by their gender and experiences) to the fore more effectively and help increase store and format productivity.

2)        Skill: Many of the front end roles in retail stores involve merchandising, maintaining cleanliness and hygiene, cashiering, etc. Again from a larger and maybe traditional perspective, these are roles that have been the domain of women for years. The fact that they seem to enjoy these tasks better than men do, makes it easier for them to appreciate the rigour and  importance of the jobs and to excel in them. Ask a guy to spot dust and grime in the store and ask a woman employee to now do the same thing. The difference would be apparent when you notice the half a dozen areas highlighted by women employees that could be maintained better. Ditto for merchandising stuff on shelves. Women, thanks to their inherent skill tend to arrange and organize better as also maintain hygiene and cleanliness better than their male counterparts. They also tend to be more agile, skilled and in general dexterous with their hands. The fastest cashiers in Natures Basket for instance tend to be women. So more women would mean not just better presented stores but operationally more efficient stores as well – something that consumers are likely to notice and talk about as well as make front line Managers happy.

3)        Attitude: The final point that I make is that of attitude and connect. The way women easily make friends, engage, converse or connect with other women is far superior than the way men connect with women or say even with other men. Observe women on trains, flights, salons, in markets or while exercising in the gym. There is a natural conversation almost always on! They are also likely to be part of many more whatsapp groups than men!! It is rare to find them coming out of any public place without having conversed with at-least one complete stranger. This is again something so intuitive, and so innate that it doesn’t seem to require any extra effort; nor does it seem to be limited to any socio economic class. Unfortunately for most men, forming such easy connects is going against their grain. This makes the job of front end male store staff who are mostly faced with women shoppers, that much more difficult and stressful. Conversely, more women as front end store staff is likely to have longer term benefits in terms of improved productivity as well as improved customer loyalty for the business.

None of the above is to suggest that men can’t do some of the things detailed above as good as women staff members can or that women are good only in the roles described above, or that external training inputs can’t change any of the above, it is just to point out that in certain areas, women are naturally more gifted and all things being equal, better equipped to perform and contribute to the business better.

Arguments from front line Managers ranging from perceived instability in the business due to attrition caused by marriage or pregnancy, in the case of female staff must be challenged with hard data. Surprisingly, attrition – which is in general high across retail businesses - tends to be lower for women than men!!

As retailers and marketeers, we need to be cognizant of this reality. The perceptions that our operations staff may be carrying about the alleged capability of women staff must be challenged by making them understand and appreciate the above. To begin with food retailers could experiment in catchments that are perceived to be safer. The argument to have an open mind and a willingness to experiment to make our retail workplaces more gender diverse stems from the understanding that no one gender can completely understand or appreciate the mindset and behavior of every consumer. By giving women an equal opportunity to showcase their natural skills, we as retailers would go a long way in improving consumer connect and make our stores more productive than what they are today.

****

Retail theatre can help brick and mortar retailers build repeat footfall

Why retail theatre is here to stay?

With increasing competition at one end and more retail points beginning to look like each other, the consumer has ever increasing choices of where to shop and what to expect in every category from retailers in general. The moot point for brick and mortar retailers is the need to not just bring back customers more frequently but also positively influence their in-store journey, and in general have the ability to influence choices through information, interesting forms of engagement or entertainment. All retailers will tell you that this is easier said than done. What with shrinking attention spans, time constrained lives, traffic overload on roads etc, it is tough to bring customers back to stores in any case. To top this, with increasing penetration and convenience of online retail, the scenario for brick and mortar retailers starts looking even tougher.

It is in the above context, that one needs to examine the significance of retail theatre.

To me, retail theatre is the essence of going beyond the mundane and infusing elements that breathe literally life into a physical store. These elements could be physical, audio-visual or digital or a combination of all of these.

The physical elements could be – product display led, engagement or activity led or even audio-visual led.

Imagine walking into a departmental store – first into the kids section to pick up something for your little star, before venturing into the evening wear section for ladies or for that matter men and then into the home furnishing section. What if, instead of standard uni-tonal music, the audio experience could be different in every section? The chirping of birds and animals in the kids department, followed by mellow music in the ladies wear section and then by a more aggressive sporty music in the men’s section. Would it not enhance the experience for customers and make every section seem real and lively.

Now imagine being in a food store with endless aisles of packaged food products all around you and yet you stand there confused, not sure of what to buy.  Imagine a kiosk in the midst of these aisles, where a cheerful promoter is happily demonstrating a new range of cooking sauces and pastes. Don’t you automatically gravitate towards it? Or a section where the product displays are not on the standard mid floor racks but are displayed loose like in an old style wholesale market? Does it suddenly not cue freshness better than any packaged product ever can. You can not only touch but smell, feel and sample too!

Now think of walking into a furniture store. Rows and rows of endless furniture and furnishings -neatly divided by sections. You start browsing when your eye falls on an oversized screen where you notice one of India’s foremost interior experts sharing practical tips to make your house more beautiful and engaging with customers live!

Or an apparel store with loads of clothes and a line of customers in front of the trial rooms awaiting their turn. Replace this scenario with a Magic Mirror (recently introduced by a leading department store chain in India where customers need not physically try on products. Agreed, It’s a novelty but more than that, its amazingly relevant for the category too.

Digital disruption is another way of grabbing consumer attention. But digital disruption done from the perspective of analytics is likely to be less successful for offline shoppers unless it is specific, in real time and customized for individual shoppers while they shop. For instance, getting personalized offers through the deployment of beacons in stores can be both informative and engaging. Similarly there could be other forms of digital intervention in stores that make the journey more pleasurable and remind a customer what they could be missing if they were shopping online.

All of the above are real life instances where businesses are employing retail theatre to disrupt the journey of a customer inside the store and making it more engaging, more enjoyable and giving the customer a solid reason to return back. One can think of infinite more ways to create and enhance the customers’ journey in stores. But whatever is chosen needs to be scalable and relevant to the business one is so seeking to enhance. These are things that the customer is more likely to remember, talk about and then come back to the store again for.

7 things that retail must keep in mind to forge profitability

Over time, through trial and error, strategic and tactical shifts, many a retailer is now turning the all important corner, on their way to seeing sunshine at the end of the proverbial dark tunnel.

The first step for most retailers lies in achieving breakeven and profitability at the store level, followed by the same at the business level.

Here are a few pointers for those who may still be struggling :

a)      Remain consistent with your proposition – Do your home work right before you select and then execute the chosen proposition. Nothing confuses customers more than rapidly changing propositions and promises. Consistency in execution of your chosen proposition through stores, through the assortment mix, through communication and through staff is key. Frequent changes can hurt sales growth rates and set you back by a few months, if not years.

b)      Push like to like sales growth – (1) Look at a retail business granularly as a sum of individual parts and not always from the top through the prism of the brand name. Understand and review issues plaguing individual stores, unlock their potential by co-relating what issues may be preventing growth basis an understanding of their sales trends, their customer complaints, their category level sales, inventories, their manpower and attrition levels etc; work with downstream teams and form your own hypothesis of what ails the store or a specific catchment. Unlock growth potential by working on solutions that impact customers. (2) create positive network effects through multiple initiatives and engagement with diverse sections of the target audience who value the brand for completely different set of reasons and ongoing engagement with whom can unlock both positive buzz for the brand as well as enhanced sales. (3) Add new or missing links to the portfolio. These in most cases tend to be either obvious gaps that for reasons of brand fit / cultural fit / competitive differentiation are often left out of the portfolio or are completely new additions which add to true variety in the store and can have a dramatic effect in the way customers perceive the brand and buy from it.

c)       Enhance sales throughput across the business – this is essentially about enhancing productivity at each point of sale. Given the large proportion of rentals in the overall cost structure, it is important to ensure that space in the store is utilized well and turned around optimally. This means (1) that every store must carry the most optimal mix where each range serves a designated and predefined purpose (as say the mass mover / image enhancer / for the connoisseur etc) and achieves its desired velocity. (2) For ranges that are underperforming evaluate a change in visibility or position.  While every store does carry some additional range over and above what sells, it is critical to refine the mix being carried to better reflect the taste of the catchment where the store is located. (3) Add categories if required or give double facings to potentially large categories. (4) Ensure that random and thoughtless layout changes are minimized and changes that are made must be monitored for effectiveness. (5) And if everything seems fine while the sales throughput is still low, evaluate whether giving up a part of the store space could help save valuable rental outflow. Almost all successful retailers have optimized their store sizes over time. (6) Additionally evaluate multiple times a week deliveries into the stores for faster moving goods

d)      Nudge retained gross margins higher – (1) the first part is to push earned gross margins higher through fundamental programs like a planned change in the merchandising mix in favour of higher margin categories or change suppliers or negotiate better returns with existing suppliers (through higher margins, better supply fill rates, higher samplings and promotions, lower inventory holding  etc). (2) Enhance the proportion of private label in the portfolio has been a favourite for many of the retailers as have been (3) avenues to earn more through in-store advertising, events, promotions and even listing of new products. (4) Moving from an owned stock to a concessionaire model in key categories could also greatly help shore up margins. (5) Identifying stores where margin mix is relatively lower will help you understand and develop specific initiatives to push margins there and help the overall business.

e)      Monitor and plug leakages, wastages, et all. Just as it is important to nudge earned margins upwards, it is also critical to establish all potential sources of margin leakages. There could be potentially several areas to look at. These include – pilferage by customers and employees, cash points where cashiers get away by not punching a few bills or not punching all items in every bill but collecting the money from customers; deliberate in-warding of stock in excess of what is physically received on the shop floor to the benefit of the supplier;  outward movement of material for home delivery in excess of what is ordered by customers or even outward movement of good stock in the guise of garbage disposal are just some of the potential leakage sources of revenue and margins. In-accurate counting and collating of stock remains one of the big bugbears of the retail industry in general and identifying sub categories that contribute to greater Wastages and inaccuracy can help plug some of the gaps through more frequent and continuous counts and checks. Dump especially of fresh produce can add up to potentially huge numbers and optimizing that loss by reviewing order and sales patterns and having specific programs to enhance daily sales to reduce wastages could work wonders.

 f)       Be frugal in your expenses – retail businesses in general have struggled to make money and in this context it is pertinent to understand that controlling expenses of all kinds and being frugal in the way the business is conducted helps send the right signals to the rank and file across the organisation. Simple structures is the need of the hour where employees must be encouraged to multi-task. This means controlled or no hiring at the store and at the business level unless absolutely necessary in the interest of generating higher revenue; negotiating hard for every rupee to be spent including for repair and maintenance; evaluating models from the perspective of reducing long term expense outflow where you pick up the entire fixed cost vs only the variable cost and evaluating whether feel-good programs pushed by different individuals or functions need to be acted upon at all. Marketing expenses unless absolutely necessary from the perspective of adding value to the business fall in this category.

g)      Speed of decision making – For day to day decisions, - efficient retail businesses are somewhat partial to faster decision making not just because the response can be almost immediate but also because decision points are several and speed in thinking and in execution really sets the pace for everyone down the chain and more often than not results in visible and discernible differences for regular consumers, something that they appreciate and keeps bringing them back.

My experiments and experiences with a wonderfood

My experiments & experiences with a Wonderfood 

As the list of super-foods and the interest in them continues to grow at the consumer and at the media level, i am increasingly getting drawn to an older yet relatively under hyped ingredient that we as indians have known for long. Unfortunately, an entire generation of consumers like me have spent a lot more time admiring, experimenting with and promoting ingredients of foreign origin than we have on such relatively humble and locally available ingredients.

One of such ingredients that i am specifically referring to here is the Indian gooseberry, or "Amla" more colloquially.

My most recent fascination with Amla began after i reluctantly started off on amla juice shots a couple of months ago. The trigger for this tryst was my continuously and embarrassingly  receding hairline which i would always try and camouflage, sometimes unsuccessfully so. Almost everyday i would notice hair strands on the pillow when i woke up, on the bathroom floor and on my shirt as well. This was inspite of my ongoing and unflinching belief in assorted shampoos. In the process, i believed in the charms of Kareena and Saif, fell for the advocacy of Shilpa Shetty and her promises for a hair free - hair brush; the almost arrogant appeal of Aishwarya for her brand being the only solution and finally our desi Doctor, Baba Ramdev's brand as well. Only to discover to my horror that shampoos seemed to have zero co-relation and effect in controlling hair-fall. I even started oiling my hair more often listening to the screaming voices in my head that un-oiled hair was rough and under-nourished and therefore prone to fall. (this has been my mom's constant refrain). The only issue was that everytime i oiled, i lost nearly twice the daily quantum and i am not quite sure whether it helped hair become any stronger at all.

The problem seemed to be compounded by the fact that i had also been coloring my hair, for the last couple of years. I could vouch for the inadequacy of each hair colour brand in effectively addressing this hair fall issue irrespective of their origin, brand name, celebrity endorser or not. One had been warned by friends and well-wishers galore of the intense damage the chemicals in these colors could cause. But the decision to give up coloring and maintaining a natural salt n pepper mop or living with a heavily receded hairline was literally like choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea. My desire was more in line with the "yeh dil maange more" anthem.

It is in this context and the desire to protect my hair, that i took the advice of having amla shots - the freshly squeezed juice of 3-4 amlas every morning. Honestly, i didn't find it half as unpalatable as i had imagined. In fact, with a wee bit of black salt, it was surprisingly good.

One shot every morning along with my breakfast started working wonders within the first 7-10 days. i noticed a significant reduction in hairfall within about a month or so, and now a couple of months later i am actually surprised if i actually see a fallen hair strand at all. Given that i had suffered this condition for the last 5 years, the quickness of impact of the new treatment surprised me as much as it provided relief that finally someone up there does listen! If I still continue with my morning amla juice shot ritual, many months later, it is as much to ensure that the hair avalanche is not triggered all over again as it is to maintain good health in general. Additionally, my wife tells me that my morning shot is great for tighter, younger looking skin !! I know it sounds vain, but when you are on the wrong side of 40's, this promise of eternal youth is indeed fancifully utopian. Whether or not this will happen, time will tell but i am surely onto that journey as well!!

...looking back, i also recalled a few incidences from my childhood.  I had had a history of poor digestion and something that caused intestinal malfunctioning, causing intense bouts of pain. I recalled that my mom would give me a spoonful of some coarse, dried flakes to chew to help alleviate my condition. ..and it unfailingly worked. I understood much later that this was nothing but coarsely grated and sun-dried amla with no other adulteration. It has ever since remained a faithful companion not just at home but also an important part of my travelkit. The fact that it lasts for ever and doesn't spoil easily helps. I somehow trust it infinitely more as a digestive than all those sweet n yummy amla based products (sold by local grocery stores) that are perhaps better as meal enders and mouth fresheners.

It is also said to have multiple other benefits ranging from improving metabolism to helping control diabetes to being the elixir of youth. Given that exotic berries, avacadoes, chia seeds, kale leaves and goji berries etc seem to be generating great curiosity and attention in india currently, bringing in amla into the equation seems quite un-appetising and un-glamorous in comparison. If you were to look at its rich anti-oxidants, nutrients, fibre and vitamin c contents etc at one level, its easy local availability and affordably low prices at another level and the sheer width of its benefits, you will recognise that it is perhaps more handy and more effective in comparison. Now only if the social elite and the media could talk about it in the same breath as all those exotic imports, amla could certainly benefit with an added aura of greatness. Also its relatively under marketed status, provides a wonderful opportunity to national marketeers and retailers to introduce an amla-centric, do good brand that is packaged well and offers the convenience of use and promise of aid in improving basic medical and lifestyle issues through assorted variants targeted at different conditions.

Making Front end Retail store staff critical differentiators for the business

Making Front end retail staff  critical differentiators for the business

Disinterested and indifferent sales personnel in retail stores is a common sight. Staff members who are plain bored of their jobs or complete misfits in roles that demand presence and engagement, can often be that critical underperforming link in such stores. In such instances, when a customer makes a purchase it is usually inspite of them. Customers increasingly have the option to buy online, if they so desire. Brick and mortar retailers therefore need to use the opportunity provided by the visit of the customer to their store as an opportunity to leave a positive influence on them.

One of the most significant and easiest ways to leave that positive influence on customers is through front end store staff. Their contribution can be immense in converting customers from browsers to shoppers, impressing them with their knowledge and attention to detail and in general giving them a superior experience that online will always find tough to match.

This has implications for retail businesses in terms of the kind of people that must be recruited, the kind of behaviour and learning that should be encouraged specifically in the store teams – and the kind of behavior that should be consistently rewarded.

While recruiting, front end Operations Managers often juggle the demands of the job in their own heads. This means potential recruits must be good at organizing, managing the back end, indenting for stocks, making reports, creating rosters at one end; and simultaneously have endless energy to interact with customers at the front end. Of-course the first part is a hard core nuts and bolts operation at the heart of the retail business and without which the store can’t function, while the other is an equally energy sapping and perhaps tougher aspect of dealing with customers, day in and day out.

At the heart of this dilemma is the quest for that perfect retail employee who can do it all; be valuable for the business through his hardwork and diligence and also ensure that he leaves a positive impression on the customers that he interacts with, such that customers begin to prefer their outlet over others. To make this possible, rather than blandly recruiting store staff basis historical patterns or basis individual needs of front end managers, the question that HR and front end Operations Managers must answer is  (a) what kind of profile should they consistently recruit that can add value to their business? What kind of behavior should they train employees for? And what attitude or skills should be encouraged, valued and rewarded on a day to day basis?

A section of Retail Managers speak about the importance of discipline in store teams and look at those who will always come in time (and before time if possible), work late hours, can multi task in the store when required and unquestioningly accept the diktats of the Store Chief or Store Manager. While these are important, desirable and must have qualities, they are by no means sufficient to make an employee -a great team member and a valuable resource or qualities that will help elevate the store from an average business to one that is loved by its customers.

Another section of retail Managers rightly point in the direction of staff who handle the back end and I would be more inclined to agree with them for the sheer importance of the work done by these team members in ensuring that the stores run efficiently in terms of stock indenting, product availability, hygiene and cleanliness, stocking accuracy, reporting etc. The skills required here are an ability to work with numbers and the discipline to do it diligently at the prescribed frequency. When one considers this in light of the question whether this quality is enough to bring a smile to the customers face or if it is sufficient to bring a customer back to the store, I would not be so sure.

This brings me to team members who work in the front end engaging with customers of all hues. Their key role is to ensure customers find what they are looking for, make their experience in the store pleasurable and achieve targets that they may have, through upselling or cross selling etc. At the outset this doesn’t look like a great skill and can easily be dismissed as too generic. But to my mind if between the 3 sets of store staff any one has the power to bring a customer back into the store, it is this set.

It is also obvious that we need all 3 kinds of people and their respective skill sets and experience in a retail store to be able to run it well. But seen in the backdrop of increasing incidence of online sales, chaotic roads with limited parking on high streets, malls overflowing with customers on weekends, and stores in general beginning to look like each other, Retail Managers need to be clearer about the profiles of employees that they are entrusting to run their stores. The business needs to be clear about the kind of behaviour that differentiates them from other competitor stores, or the kind that ensures customers have a genuinely good experience or simply encourages customers to come back to their stores in the future as well.

To my mind, quite unequivocally, the team members who should be most valued are those, who are trusted by customers. These are colleagues who can engage with customers in the most authentic and appropriate way. Customers don’t think twice before sharing their contact numbers with them. These team members never seem to be over pushy when it comes to sales. Observations regarding such team members over the years have thrown up a couple of important pointers that recruiters and front end Managers must be cognizant of:

·         Their confidence is just at the right level. They are neither over nor under confident. Their quiet confidence does not stem from arrogance or mere bluster. It stems from their superior knowledge of products that they are entrusted to handle. And this knowledge in turn is an offshoot and consequence of their desire and keen-ness to learn and absorb in all situations.

·         They have relatively higher EQ than the rest. They intuitively understand from their knowledge and experience what works or does not work for a customer. They are able to tailor their recommendation basis actual customer need vs sounding overly promotional in a bookish or theoretical kind of way.

·         Their cheerful and friendly demeanor makes them the go-to people for customers in the store rather than those employees who are always too busy or too enraged or too distant in their behaviour.

·         They are charming and able to converse easily with customers – going beyond the “Yes”, “No”, “I don’t know” routine. When asked a question, their answer is more likely to be in a paragraph rather than in monosyllables.

·         They are emotionally stable and have great temperament through both easy and tough days. They are able to better handle all kind of situations more calmly.

Here, it is important to understand that – when faced with the challenge of recruitment – preference is often given to those who have worked in similar contexts or industries before. What also needs to be remembered is that – while such candidates may have contextual knowledge, they still may make for poor choices if the above criteria are not met. Given the fast changing shopping and customer contexts, the crying need for offline businesses is to be superlative in their service orientation and it is not necessary that people from similar industries always fit the bill.

This is what retail businesses could strive to get better at:

1)       Clearly define the skill sets that they are looking for in front end retail stores.

2)       Drive alignment across the business especially amongst those who recruit and train them to spot the right skill sets and behavioral traits.

3)       Have a clear program and focus to train front end store staff in the desired skills that will get your front end staff get perceived as experts by consumers. Customers look forward to interacting with experts and not with clueless team members or those that can’t add value to them.

4)       Staff members who do not demonstrate the flair for front end roles must be either retrained or relocated to more appropriate positions commensurate with their skillsets.

5)       Training of front end Managers to recognize signs of desired skills, attitude and behavior is key. This is something that they need to consistently mentor and encourage their staff for as also demonstrate it themselves. Those team members who can engage effortlessly with customers and get seen as experts must be rewarded and recognized more frequently so that the message to the rest of the team percolates down faster.

Importantly, most of this requires a perceptible change in organizational culture, and is unlikely to succeed if it doesn’t flow from the top or is not encouraged by more than one department.

Having the right skilled staff in the front end can be that one big differentiator for brick and mortar/ physical retail vs online players and greater sensitivity in this regard across levels and departments in the organization can only be helpful.