#69 CHOOSING A MANAGER * part three (revised 6/3) "face time"

A Floor Manager

“My friend Peter has owned and operated a large successful garden store in northwest Washington State. He, like so many of us, as owners, is burned out with retail customers; year after year, the same old questions, the same old problems. Recently, a consultant hired by Peter and his wife Emily to look over their place spotted Peter right away and realized how bad it had gotten. He looked at Peter straight in the eye and said “Peter, I want you to never wait on a customer in your store ever again as long as you live. Go to the back and stay on your tractor and don’t come out until closing time.”

Jack Skiller

Garden store owner

California

So many of us have just been overloaded and finished with retail customers. We can hardly keep a civil tongue and we give the shortest answer possible just to shoo them away. Quite often, as the business gets more complex, the most talented people in the organization in solving problems and selling products have worked themselves into a job description where they can hide from the customer all day long and especially in the busy hectic spring season. Take a look around. They are not on the floor any longer. Go to any McDonalds and try to find the store manager. He or she is nearly always looking right at you in the peak hours, taking the order, dishing out the hamburgers, and directing traffic.

The managers at green garden gates are truly working floor managers. They are in the mix when the money must come in. They are selling the products and fielding those repetitive, often dismally boring questions, from gardeners. They are out there with the troops watching the flow, the cadence of the operation, improving, correcting, training, and evaluating hour after hour, day after day. This is not a position at a desk with the door closed. This is face time and lots of it. We cannot accept a manager who is invisible to the gardeners.

We understand, however, that the emotional health of the manager is critical. There can be too much exposure causing harm to the store as easily as not enough exposure. Our daily formula percentage for our managers is about seventy percent floor time and thirty percent recovery time, away from the customer activity.

#7 Managers at green garden gates are floor managers involved directly in customer service and support as well as monitoring the ongoing activities of the floor.