Well, here we are in the fall season, and just when you have a good, young employee trained efficiently, they’re off to college, and the training starts all over again.
As an owner I’m sure you are involved in overseeing all training, but more than likely your manager is the key person and the first person with whom that new employee interacts. The new employee is possibly a totally different creature from your last employee and perhaps has a different personality or learning style, but that doesn’t stop the onslaught of the “trampling rental elephants” (and trust me, you want to be trampled). So when one busy season follows another, and it’s back to school instead of a busy summer season, there is one way to stay sane when you are the owner, and that is the quality of your right-hand man – the manager.
Reason #1: An owner can’t be everywhere all the time, and there are many times when the quality of the person closest to you defines your reality.
An environment of teamwork is created though respect.
Any owner worth his salt is consistently building relationships every minute of every day. This is what good owners do, which means the details and follow-ups to multiple interactions are likely to have more than one set of hands on them, so your right hand man will be the first to get the detail calls.
Do me a favor and read that sentence twice. You need respect from him/her and the way you get it is to give it first. Currently, in my world, my manager is the poster child for how to do the job right, and I do my best to show him personal regard and professional respect at every possible opportunity. A good suggestion would be to have your right-hand man introduced and recognized at any of your major events or simply on the showroom floor.
Reason #2: The biggest problems become smaller when handled by a great team.
When was the last time you went to work and there were no problems? How about never! That is just the reality of retail and service. When customers are frustrated or confused by your policies, it takes extra care to smooth out the wrinkles. It is your manager who inherits those problems first, and a great manager resolves those before those problems become yours to deal with. I find it more refreshing to share the joy of how a potentially big problem was headed off by my manager; I would much rather laugh with him than experience stress because someone on our team didn’t use the skill set to consider productive solutions to escalating problems.
Reason #3: The front man of “your band” is THE MANAGER.
Recently I had a horrendous back to school online experience: As a first time buyer you received a healthy fake “discount” for setting up your new account. The only problem was when you clicked through, the fake “discount” wasn’t applied, and of course the truth of the infamous online reality is … NO CONTACT PERSON.
You already know how this story goes, because it has happened to you, and you know how many steps must be taken to redirect the outcome.
Enter the front man of your band, the manager…not just any manager, a great manager. Problems still occasionally happen, but the relationships he/she has put into place are immediately exercised. For example, the trust he has established with the manufacturers, the relationships he has with the customers, his rapport with his staff, and as simple as this sounds, the flow he has in his relationship with you, the owner, all factor into the successful solution to any situation.
Immediately a good manager knows how to access the “red” level of the problem, and in brick and mortar that can be as simple as a leak, or as complex as a child fainting and needing immediate medical assistance. A great manager anticipates those problems; he can foresee them before they happen, and that applies to online sales as well.
Great managers, no matter what they manage, visualize possible outcomes and consider the impact of every detail, and that’s no easy task, I promise you.
A final thought.
The retail landscape is changing, and the service landscape is changing as well. Not a single person I know can completely wrap his or her head around where we are, much less where we are going. While Joe Walsh reminds us on “Daryl’s House” that we are in a strange new world, the app developers think this is the best time ever. However Joe makes one salient point, “There’s no mojo” and “No one is testifying.”
Joe hasn’t met my manager, but if he ever did, he would say, “That guy… that guy has your back.”
Menzie Pittman is the founder and owner of Contemporary Music Center. Since 1989, he remains CMC’s only director of education. Contemporary Music Center has two locations in Virginia – one in Chantilly and one in Haymarket. CMC has won NAMM’s Top 100 Award five consecutive years since 2011. Menzie is a frequent speaker at NAMM’s Idea Center on music education and has been invited to speak at the Whitman School of Business, Syracuse University in N.Y. He serves on the steering committee for the Support-Music Coalition and also serves on the Hylton Center’s Education Committee. Menzie was appointed to NAMM’s Board of Directors and served from 2012-2015.
