I observe most of my important business lessons when I go to market.
I love farmer's markets as they are filled with such interesting vendors. Most of them are pretty quirky and have strong personalities. It is pretty evident when you are speaking with the owner at one of these places. They are the ones who know what you ordered last week, that your toddler likes poppy seed bagels, who enthusiastically recommend the basil-lemon mustard to go with the sausage you just bought, point out the best head of broccoli, and always cut the ham just the right way. They just get it.
Then you come the next week and the owner is busy serving another client. No problem, except for the fact that the owner's nephew is helping out this week. The nephew does not get it. He reaches for the limp broccoli, fumbles with the credit card machine (or even worse, informs you that you cannot charge $13.11 worth of goods on the card because it contravenes the "no visa under $20 policy"), he slices instead of shaves the ham, and he fails to connect with you about anything. The exchange is a transaction vs an experience.
I return the following week. Again, the owner is swamped with other clients. "Uh oh", the nephew is eyeing me, looking to help. I pretend to continue shopping, all the while hoping that the owner will look up and take my order. No luck, I keep delaying ... keep avoiding the nephew. Eventually, I succeed and I place my order with the owner, the only one who gets it.
This situation is not uncommon in business. A passionate owner, recognizing they can't do it all, hires others to help grow the business. Suddenly, a new person starts answering the phone. Their voice is different, their disposition is different, their product knowledge is different, and they are pretty good at enforcing company policies that you were previously unaware of ... all told, you feel something is missing.
Of course, this is the ultimate challenge. How does a business owner empower the people around them to act like themselves - stamping their DNA onto the people who work with them, so to speak. I know of many amazing businesses that have done this very well, though I know of many others that fail miserably. Unless you are dealing with "Bob the owner", you walk. This is unfair to Bob as he is just too busy ... why won't my clients just deal with the "nephew"?
The companies that nail this concept end up winning. In my experience, training the people around you to "get it" is the most important thing you can do in growing your business. Yes, it is essential that you hire people that have a range of experiences, but if you can't bottle up what is special about your business (and you) and give it to these new hires, you will end up with an uphill battle on your hands.
I speak from experience. Right Sleeve is a very demanding place to work. We are fanatical about delivering a "wow" customer experience and those that do not get this, end up leaving very quickly. Unfortunately, more people end up NOT working out than the ones that do. Why is this? While growth is very important to us, we are not prepared to sacrifice a quality customer experience for anything. All of our staff have to connect with our clients.
If people think and act like this is a product business, their chances for success are limited. This is a people business first and a product business second. Come on - we sell branded promotional products!!! However, what is special about this place is the effect that these products have on the people who order them (making them look good in front of their boss or clients). This is powerful stuff ... and a hard concept to teach.
I feel like we have made some tremendous sacrifices in our quest for the perfect team. While I know deep down inside that we could quadruple overnight if we hired a small army of salespeople, I am not prepared to become the kind of company staffed by too many "nephews" and too few "Bobs". Why? While in the short/medium term, it would be brilliant strategy for growth, I'd pay the price in the long term. (do you think Howard Schultz may have been thinking this when he wrote his "Starbucks is becoming soulless" companywide email in Feb 2007)?
Growth is still very important to us. But it just takes time to find the right people. It takes time to hire them, train them, develop them. Our management team has been around for years and we have highly dedicated, passionate people who take ownership over what they do. These are the kind of people who genuinely say they have fun at work. I know they represent this company as well - if not better - than me.
The ones who don't work out have difficulty understanding the path to success involves patience, training, learning from setbacks, dealing with criticism, listening, and truly caring about their work and the impact it has on others (vendors, colleagues and clients). This is hardly an overnight process.
When done right, everyone acts like "Bob the owner" and the passion permeates the business meaning the experience is never diluted for the customer.
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2 comments:
One of the things I learned from my kids is that it takes a minimum of 6-8 weeks for a child to adapt to a change in their routine. Since I eventually also learned that children are actually miniature versions of adult humans, I realized that it also takes 6-8 weeks for grownups to adapt to a change in their routine.
My family business sells thousands of tiny little parts, plastic hardware. It takes a lot of time to discover that a plastic washer and a plastic spacer are often interchangeable in the manufacture of someone else's product, even though they're on different pages of the catelogue. And learning to identify a 10/24 from a 1/4-20 screw size is a bitch, never mind who the hell is Roberts and why couldn't Phillips use the same screw head. When new people were hired and in the training process, the rest of us there just told 'em to hang onto their hats. If they could force themselves to get past the 6-8 week mark, truly, they would stop crying and freaking out from the stress. And every one of them did.
If you have never been empowered before, it is very very frightening to jump off that platform the first, second, even third time. Eventually, you discover the rhythm of the company who gave you permission, and 98% of the time you will get it right, even if your heart thumps every time you have to do it. Cuz you just know that 2% is out there, waiting to bite you in the ass... But eventually, you also discover it's okay to screw up periodically. Everyone does; it's called being human.
All the info that Bob can give to his nephew about turning a sale into an experience doesn't do dick without Nephew gaining the personal experience and history of just "doing it". And actually, sometimes people don't necessarily want an experience, they just want a coffee and a sandwich. When you are trying to learn a new culture, when you are trying to learn hundreds of pieces of inventory, when you're learning the judgement call of when to create an experience and when to just sell a coffee, when you are new to a company trying desperately to find the place where you fit best, and not fuck up, those first 6-8 weeks can be pretty damn scary. Until you get it right. And sometimes, as a boss, or a teacher or a parent, you just have to catch someone doing something right...
Hire slowly and fire quickly. A great catch phrase. Has sold a lot of books for Verne Harnish, for the Smart bros @ Topgrading. But like anything else in the universe, it's not a 100% guarantee.
I agree with hire slowly but I would also emphasize that experience is only a small part of the picture. The most important element in hiring is matching values. Identify your corporate values and match all hires to those values. If your primary value is treating customers with respect, don't hire someone whose primary value is advancement. It takes time to train,yes; but more importantly, you have to start with the right basics and build on that. My mother is in a seniors home that does not hire skilled caregivers but rather hires personalities who love to care for people and they train the skills. The difference is remarkable.
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