So it has been a couple of months since I last posted. Much has happened in that time. Not only did I go back into the field – I took up an area of my own! It has been a fun experience with it’s own set of challenges of course. It has been great to see my plan set into action, but as always there will be stumbling and bumps along the road.

 

One of the major focuses I had when I took over in mid October was to get some of the territory’s metrics up. Something we did amazingly in November. But as always happens, when habits are not fully ingrained, your people will fall back to what they know.

 

In November, my market killed it with certain metric attach rate – so much so that one of my locations lead the company in never before seen numbers! Not to say my other locations were far behind – looking at the history, we were the only market to hit double digits with this particular metric! A metric that is highly important to our company and a metric that has recently gotten a lot of attention. Overall November was a huge success in that we showed what could be accomplished – not just to the company, but to ourselves. This was a month in which I had implemented ongoing in person training with my reps.

 

December has been a success so far – largely due to the holiday season. Not to say we didn’t have our troubles going into the month. We started the month second to last out of almost 70 markets! And it didn’t go smoothly for the first couple of weeks either! Not until almost mid-month did we pick it up. Going from 60% to trending over 100% to goal in a matter of 2 weeks!

 

There were a few reasons why it took a while for us to get going. From what my managers and reps had said, traffic was not all too great for our locations. This to me was nothing but lip service though as the traffic was there based on what I had seen personally and what our store trackers showed. It didn’t start picking up until I started my manager meetings again as I had set them to the back burner at the tail end of November so my team could better utilize their hours for sales. Once the manager meetings came back, the numbers followed suit. Impressive what a little direction will do to motivate and increase sales!

 

With my reps – even though we are still seeing double digits being sold for the aforementioned metric – we still trail what we did in November. This I believe is more so because the rep level training has seized and they have gone to their basic habits of going for the “low hanging fruit”; clerking our guests and not fully being the salespeople they actually are. Though this is the case, our market is still trending over 100% as a while with my lowest location trending above 95% to goal. Not bad – but can always be better.

 

As my team knows; I have a mission to make our district the standard for our company! From selling, training, down to the hiring process and in between.

 

We have a mission – and we will make it happen!

 

Stay tuned as we go through this journey together! Along the way more information will be shared into the habits that are formed within the district – and more importantly for you – how you can use these habit building techniques to help improve the lot you currently have in your employment!

It has been a few weeks since I last updated everyone on the happenings of my project.

 

Part of the reason is I took a few days off to go on vacation with my lovely fiance!

 

But the other reason has been the schedule I currently have. Right before going on vacation I was tapped and advised I would moving to a different location again. The day before I left I was told I was  being considered for a territory manager in one of our growing markets! The funny thing is it was the original position I had turned down before coming back to the field.

 

Needless to say it has been a very interesting week back!

 

On top of being at a new store and going through the interview process for the new position, I have been working and meeting with a few other managers on our new hire training program. We will be presenting it at the end of this month to the top brass!

 

The project is part of what I wanted to create, but it’s focusing mostly on the operational side – which can be taught easily. BUT it is a step in the right direction.

 

I have not stopped working on the sales training program I originally had set up. The idea has gone from idea to manifesting at a location to possibly rolling it out at a market!

 

Yeah, I’m pretty stoked!

 

The updates currently will come as soon as possible, but this month has been busier than I had originally thought. More to come, that is a promise!

Funny story… I got an email at the end of June asking me if I could fly out to a different market on short notice. I said sure. Next thing you know I’m in North Carolina for a couple of weeks. No passwords or logins for my site or related email… Yeah won’t be happening again!

 

North Carolina was fun – in the I worked the whole time and no I did not get to explore the area. But on the bright side I felt as though I was driving through the wilderness as there are trees everywhere there!

 

Spending time there helping with recruiting and staffing has only reaffirmed the stance I have taken with pushing forward with creating and modifying current organizational habits at the company.

 

In speaking with one of the area managers I was tasked to help, I asked him about his district and what he noticed with his employees and troubles he’s currently seeing. He tells me that he’s having trouble with staffing and numbers and is finding it hard to juggle both. Needless to say I interjected and asked him if his numbers would be better if he had more staff at his locations.

A simple yes.

 

I spoke with him about what changes I’m pushing to implement with the company and gave him insight into the root problem he’s currently having. It wasn’t of staffing and attaining his goals – it was staffing. I let him know that is his priority because without the appropriate head counts in his locations, he will continue to suffer with reaching his numbers. Plainly put – more employees = more numbers. How much more though?

 

We spoke a little about some of the trainings he has been implementing in his market specifically. I liked what I heard – but also let him know of areas to improve on. For instance when it comes to calling customers back to follow up on their experiences – never call a customer back to sell them. Call them back to offer assistance and then include a pitch at the end. But the pitch has to leave the customer asking more questions and inquiring about the promotion we have told them of.

 

Get them curious and get them to visit the location. That’s what the customer  follow ups should be – especially if we’re following up with a customer from 12 – 18 months back.

….

 

But I’ll be updating this with more info this week. It’s been an exhausting few weeks and have to get some rest before the start of this work week. Also there is a push by on of the regional VP’s to get me in his region managing either a store or district because of the success they’ve seen with my work – they want to have their region use some of the tools and possibly grow it from there with the whole company.

 

Needless to say it will definitely be interesting to see what happens in the next few weeks….