I had a manager once who said something which surprised me. Not the idea. Just that it came from him. He wasn’t that witty. Well, perhaps that is a bit harsh. Sorry. He said that (paraphrasing mind you), “where we must excel is involved in the 10% we do.” Now stop for a second and contemplate that. If you are an owner, you may want to sit down. Here is his brilliance. We try so hard to compete in areas of retail that everyone else has just “as good” as well. They have the same product, really. They have the same kind of cool merchandising, really. They do it, move it, staff it and provide it with the same operational mechanisms, right?
So what makes you special? The 10%. OK, here is what I mean. 90% of what we do…we all do. It is the same. So what is the differentiation? It is the little things. It is the small out of the box (sorry for using that cliché) stuff.
Recently, I went to Wisconsin. I went to speak at a client’s event. They do a great job. This is a very, well put-together company. I don’t mean they are full of themselves. They get it! But that is not the highlight. They put me in a hotel in Milwaukee. Not just any hotel. This was possibly the best hotel I have ever stayed in or at, or whatever may be the best word to use grammatically. Every hotel has a bed, they have a bathroom and they have amenities (all in various degrees for sure). I was having breakfast and the server walked by and I asked where I might find the washroom. Wait for it. She could have done what? NO. She walked me to the entrance and went on to her tasks. Nothing creepy here. She didn’t walk me into the washroom, she walked me two rooms over and down a hallway to the entrance. That is 10%. Small. Significant. Maybe even sublime. She had a choice given her day and the stuff she had to do. She provided what my manager was stating…we compete not in the 90 % of stuff we all have, it is the 10% we provide that makes a difference in the mind of the customer.
OK. Great Hotel (Iron Horse Hotel). Great moment. Great choice. How do you manufacture (select word choice) 10% type of stuff.
Hard answer: You can’t. It depends on the individual and their choice to do the 10%. Which begs me to say, how are you training your team? What is critical? What is being developed? The process or the moment?
Easy answer: You show it, live it, model it, speak to it…consistently every single day. They will learn the processes and procedures with relative ease and then will just do them. That is not the hard part. That is also not what we are discussing here. It is how to engage your team in doing a small thing which could be a huge thing for the customer. Things like:
- Take their bags from them and let them know you will keep them behind the register while they shop.
- If they sneeze, give them some tissue.
- Have something for the kids to play with while their parents agonize over making their purchases.
- Step outside your store and just look. Look at what one thing that might make the shopping experience one step, interaction, thing (can’t tell you what that might be) easier.
- And instead of telling someone where something is, walk them there.
- Oh yeah, saying thank you is very, very important.
When I was young in my career with that fashion company I often mention, something has always stuck with me. My mentor, whom I also mention often, was walking through a department store with a huge collection of my peers. About 80 plus people talking about merchandising trampling through a sales space. So I am walking and see a piece of paper on the floor. I pick it up and put into the trash. We gathered ourselves together to go back to our meeting location. We were all in the room. This mentor was talking about merchandising and then looked me in the eye and said “Kurt Reinhart gets it.” I was very happy to have that kind of recognition. Especially in front of my boss and peers. I smiled and felt great. But wasn’t sure what I got. He noticed and then he stated, “He was the only one in the entire group who gets retail. You all walked right over a piece of paper and he picked it up. That is what retailers need their people to do.”
In all fairness, does picking up a piece of paper make you a better retailer? At the end of the day, anyone might argue…probably not. And yet it absolutely does! I get what he was saying. It is clear now knowing what I know. How do we as managers and leaders teach the “picking up a piece of paper” mindset? In a way, we can’t teach it. Not really. We model it. We model it enough so that people see it as the right thing to do. We also talk about it and get our team to think about it and see it through the lens of the customer. So when in doubt, pick it up.
Cheers