One of the best resources a store-owner can bring to their business is a short morning meeting each day with the staff. Setting yourself up for what you want delivered from your staff can only happen if you know what it is you want and what you need to do to get there.
Unfortunately morning meetings are often one of the hardest things to get store managers to implement. To help we’ve prepared some guidelines and topic headings to cover when holding these meetings:
1. Plan your day. Know what your objectives are for the day and follow your plan.
2. Be consistent. Do what you say you will do. Keep control and stick to your plan. Lead by example. Be punctual, professional and enthusiastic. Remember, your main role is to coach and encourage your team to be better today than they were yesterday. Remind them that no matter how good any athlete is, he still has an open mind and a coach. They realize the greatest threat to their success is complacency. You will never hear them say, “I already know that” or “I’m already doing that.”
3. Set your meeting for 15 minutes before opening. Remember that these meetings are intended to inform, enlighten and reinforce the four attributes that all top salespeople have:
- An outstanding Attitude
- Great Technique
- The ability to apply their attitude and techniques with Consistency
- A great Love of Selling
4. From time to time, make the meeting light, fun and personal.
So what should you cover in your Morning Meetings?
1. Review and update the Monthly and Daily Budget.
The likelihood is that you will either be ahead of budget for the month or behind. If the daily budget was achieved the previous day, give praise and encouragement, i.e. if we could do it yesterday, we can certainly do it today.
Does everyone believe that today’s budget is realistic and achievable?
Are we working on any special orders that need to be followed up?
What about layaway payments?
All you need is $$ more sales a day to get back on track if you are behind budget. Knowing this amount and discussing it with staff can help you refocus on the sales you require.
Sometimes a salesperson will ask you a tricky question, trying to test you. Here’s how you can handle it:
a) Is it relevant? i.e. if the last time you faced that problem was back in 1983, don’t deal with it. It is not relevant. Don’t major on minors.
b) Are you qualified to answer the question? Don’t be tempted to give false or irrelevant advice. You are better to say, “I don’t know the right answer to that. Let me think about this and I will discuss it at tomorrow’s meeting.”
2. Get your team on board.
Just as we need to close a sale every time we make a sales presentation, we also need to sell the team on ideas discussed during a meeting. Ask them 3 yes questions and then ask for their 100% commitment and support:
“Do you agree that this is an area we can all improve on?”
“Can you see that by doing this consistently it will help us provide a better service to our clients and increase sales?”
“Do you consider this to be important?”
“Great, can I rely on you to give me your total support and commitment on this one?”
3. Motivation and clarity. Be positive and enthusiastic yourself. Be aware of good sales from the previous day and publicly praise performance. Ask for feedback on any magic moments. Get excited by them. Ask whether anyone felt they got a sale yesterday because of the added value or risk reversal strategies. In other words, get feedback on what is working and how you can make these things even more powerful.
4. Reinforce the basics. Choose a sales technique on which to focus. Once you have enrolled (item 2 above) your team on a particular technique, you then need to follow up with them to see that they are using that technique every single time, whether they feel like it or not. Only when they are at this stage should you move on to the next technique.
Don’t forget the little things; i.e. you must see the customer before they see you, you must smile, you must strive to create magic moments for customers, the customer is always right, add value to the product rather than discount the price, remember 80% of customers want value for money, not a discount, and so on.
In next month’s article we’ll cover 7 more areas that will add value to your Morning Meetings.
David Brown is President of the Edge Retail Academy, an organization devoted to the ongoing measurement and growth of jewelry store performance and profitability. For further information about the Academy’s management mentoring and industry benchmarking reports contact inquiries@edgeretailacademy.com or call 877-569-8657.
