OK, part one dealt with the awareness of the score in retail. This led us to the next part sharing some of the most common scores in retail. This one deals with the question I posed and what to do with the score.
Perhaps the most important element of our three parts is that the score is a result of behavior. What a team member did or did not do created an outcome. That outcome is the score. Having stated this, what are your first thoughts?
Linger, linger, linger…
This means the score is just a series of numbers and metrics highlighting someone’s behavioral choice. This does not diminish our first two parts which placed a huge amount of importance on keeping score and knowing your score. It now turns a corner. It is suggesting the number is merely a flag, a ways and means to be objective when discussing a team member’s performance. Ultimately, the discussion, or coaching, must lead to what caused it. Good or bad, a team chose to do something causing a score. This is rooted in something called Causality. Causality is the relationship between an event (the cause) and a second event (the effect), where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first (Wikipedia).
For example, if Skippy’s attachment ratio (add-ons) was below target. What caused that? Behaviorally speaking, it could be a myriad of things. It could have been:
- Lack of product knowledge
- Not enough discovery-based questions
- Did not want to be pushy
- New at sales and just didn’t think of it – just happy to get the sale
- Out of stock of the add-on the customer wanted
- Simply, didn’t want to
Conversely, if Mary’s same metric exceeded target and praise is the course of action, what do you praise? The number or the behavior? How many of you have ever been told “you did great” and not told exactly what you did that fostered the statement?
You see, the secret sauce in effective coaching is to always isolate the behavior and coach to that. Skippy needs to specifically know what to correct and Mary needs to know what to replicate. The goal is always to exceed targets (the score) and means to get there rest squarely in choice (behavior). Our job as manager is to influence and stimulate that choice machine within every team member.
In my experience, I have found four things impacting choice when someone is deficient in their performance (or non-compliant or not completing what was asked).
- “I don’t know how” (needs training)
- “I can’t” (please remove the obstacle)
- “I’m not there yet” (not habit yet)
- “I don’t want to” (willingness issue)
I could simplify the four things into either skill or will. Maybe that is a better way or easier way to go. Are you the type of manager who just coaches the score or are you digging into root cause and uncovering the causality regarding the score? I did not turn this corner at first. I coached my team on the score and assumed they would connect their own dots. This is common, especially with newer managers coming right off the sales floor. The understanding of the score is one thing. What caused it is quite another and in some cases, a tricky thing to uncover.
For instance, what if Skippy performed well in the past and then had a down turn in some of his numbers. You think it might be skill. He says he will work harder on his score. You ask if he needs more training or maybe he should shadow Mary since she is pretty good at hitting that metric. Then he says he is having troubles at home and he has been distracted. Wowza, what do you coach now? You will have to call me if you want the answer.
To summarize, the score is a flag; a critically important flag in any retail business (well, any business for that matter). It identifies the opportunity to correct or congratulate. Now you have to think causality. What caused the effect? What did Skippy do? What is influencing his choice? And maybe it is personal, not professional. Fun, huh?
What is your score and why?
Cheers