Riding the Recovery Wave - December 2009

By Jim Dion

We can now expect that the worst recession since the Great Depression of the early 1930s is finally over. However, the recovery is not likely to be a perfect V in the sense that we will not return to 2006 levels in the next five or six months but the return to those consumption levels will likely be a little slower.

Some economists are predicting a U type of recovery, which says that it will take months for the upturn to really begin. Then there are some real pessimists who are even talking about the possibility of the terrible W which is a return to the recession after a weak rebound, also called a “double dip,” or even worse, the pessimist’s L, which says that we’ll be in this for years.

It really doesn’t make that much difference what letter we’re going to see in the next six months. You have a business to run and there are a number of things that you should focus on now that will put you ahead, no matter what letter we are facing. I’m assuming that you have had a very tough year and there is not much “fat” left in your company. You’ve trimmed inventories to the bone, rationalized staff, turned off unnecessary lights and controlled every expense you can, and the question you now have is, “Okay, I have done all that, now what do I do?”

I believe that the answer to that is twofold. One, there has never been a better time to create the perfect team and, two, now is the time to once and for all “get real at retail” and turn your showroom into a sales room.

Creating a Dream Team
About three years ago, Terri Kabachnick wrote a book titled “I Quit, But Forgot To Tell You,” in which she describes how many employees today show up for work and yet are not really there. Be honest, when you just read the title of the book above, didn’t a face pop into your head? Or even worse, didn’t a few faces pop into your head?

With a shrinking pool of companies willing and able to hire, more and more people have been forced to make career changes and are now considering fields and jobs that they might have shunned before the recession. Among the new career options, retail selling (and your showroom is really a sell room!!) has been seriously considered and pursued by a lot of job seekers, including highly talented and qualified individuals. They not only feel that there might be more openings in retail than in marketing, they also feel that they might enjoy a retailing career better than a finance or a marketing job that was not very stable for them.

As a result, the pool of highly qualified candidates you can draw from to fill open positions in your company is growing larger every day. And even if you have no open positions at the moment, this is the time for you to consider replacing members of your team who are so-so, or have quit and forgot to tell you, with highly skilled individuals. And if you’re afraid that when the economy finally bounces fully back, they will leave, just think about the cost in lost sales of an associate who doesn’t meet your expectations for excellence right now and for the next three plus years. As well, you can minimize the risk of talented associates leaving your sales room by creating an environment for them to thrive in, make money and have fun. Remember, particularly with the Millennials, it’s more about enjoying their job, learning new things and skills, and working for a company that listens to them, cares about the environment and social causes than making lots of money and having a fancy job title. But understand that Gen Xers and Boomers and Matures all have very different sets of expectations on the job.

For example, today GenX and GenY are putting aside their sometime 20-hour work-week ethic and are now working to protect themselves. Retailers everywhere have noted how, after having been held over a barrel for the past 20 years, they are now finally finding some great people who are looking for safety and security in their job. So, now is the time for you to get serious about your team and build a sales staff that will help you capitalize on the recovery.

The multi-generational workplace

For the first time in history we have four generations in the workforce at the same time. We now have people born between 1927 and 1945 that we call “The Silent Generation,” the youngest of them are now 64 and the oldest are 82. There may not be many of the 82 year olds in the work force but there are quite a few of the under 70s still working. This group, which has been called The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw, has the most traditional work ethic and they respect authority and conformity.

The next group is the Baby Boomers, people who were born between 1946 and 1964. The oldest are now 63 and some started receiving Social Security last year, but the youngest are just 45 and will be working for quite a few years. This group is highly competitive, very optimistic, and loves to be involved.

The next generation, children of the boomers (Generation X), were born between 1965 and 1983 and the oldest Xers are now 44 and the youngest are just turning 26. Xers are skeptical, informal and love fun. The youngest generation, born between 1984 and 2002 with the youngest just being seven and the oldest being 25, are GenY, also called the Millennials, and they are a unique generation because some of them are children of Generation X and some are children of Boomers who delayed childbearing until well into their 30s and late 40s.

GenY are confident realists who can be extremely social. If you want to talk to a GenY, text them—they don’t read email. Add to all of this the fact that “cusp” people, those born a few years before or after the beginning or end of a generation, can have traits that are similar to both generations.

Get Real at Retail
The other opportunity that should occupy you for the next few months as you build your “dream team” is your visual presentation. How does your sales room stack up as a retail experience? I have taught for years the fact that consumers shop ‘horizontally,’ not vertically, which means that the consumer who’s looking to buy a new bathroom or kitchen is expecting the same experience as they have in buying a TV or a dress for an event. Customers compare their experience in your sales room with all the retail experiences that they’ve had over the past six months, and not necessarily at another tile or flooring store. Knowing this, how is the experience shopping in your sales room?

A good exercise is to take your entire team to a local mall and just spend an hour or so going from store to store, not all as a group, but as individuals. Walk the stores you enter and notice if anyone greets you, asks you questions, or engages you in any way. Get your team together after they have all been into five or ten stores and put on a large flip chart or whiteboard all the comments that you can about what your team experienced. What did you like about the stores you were in, what did you not like? What lessons can you learn about: customer service (greeting, demeanor, product knowledge, assortment knowledge, recommendations), merchandise presentation, lighting, fixtures, aisle width, housekeeping (cleanliness), signs (easy to read, informative, selling benefits not features), return policies, location of cash wrap/service area, pricing, amenities (coffee, bathrooms, etc.), and “secret sauce” (the one thing that makes that store special)?

My belief is that in doing this very simple exercise you’ll come up with lots of great ideas to improve the look and feel of your sales room. For example, I believe that what you’re really selling is not tile or stone or carpet, but rather an investment in the home, a fashion statement, a way to make a customer’s life easier by a maintenance free floor, etc. And this means that you need to present solutions to your customers with vignettes of bathrooms, kitchens and other rooms complete with all the accessories.

So, partner with companies that sell plumbing fixtures, kitchen appliances and home theaters to ensure that the customer is seeing the complete solution (and make sure to share customer lists and to exchange business cards to give to customers from those partner businesses). And don’t forget your kitchen has to have a coffee maker (espresso is even better!), so that your customers can relax and spend time in the store. Even taking a page from real estate agents and baking some cookies so your sales room smells wonderful is also a great idea. Also, don’t forget your store’s customer bathrooms—you have to have the most spectacular bathroom in the world and it has to be surgically clean. Simple but so often overlooked.

With your dream team in place and your sales room at a retail specialty store level, no matter what kind of recovery we experience, you will be way ahead of any of your competitors!

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