#67 CHOOSING THE MANAGER * (revised 6/4) breaking barriers

Choosing our manager


There is no person more important to a garden store business than the on-site working manager. We say this because, too often, the owners or accountants or buyers are given more attention, more incentives and more recognition. No one gets paid; No one has a job unless products move out the door. It is the responsibility of that manager keep turning the wheel every minute, every hour. If that does not happen, failure will happen, guaranteed.


At green garden gates, we have developed guidelines for the hiring of managers at our stores. While not any one of the guidelines eliminates prospects from this position, the composite is very important.

Male or Female?

“They laughed at me. They said it was a store for biker guys and we did not need any fru fru. Well, I fought them all the way. I tricked out those dungeon biker stores and the ladies started to walk in and buy and boy did they buy, and so did the men who were lawyers and doctors.

Sarah Lindsey-Banks
Managing the upgrading of the Harley-Davidson Stores

It has been automatic to think of a manager of a garden store to be a man. This business seems to demand that physical strength and stamina are paramount. After all, who is left unloading a semi of heavy trees when there is no one else around? Who moves loaded plant carts, or fills an order for twenty bales of frozen peat moss into an enclosed van? It is all tough and muscle straining day after day. Absolutely, it takes a man. Well, not so fast. If the only real reason for a excluding a woman for manager is strength, muscle, height and weight, let’s set that argument aside for the moment.

Seventy percent of the gardening customers who come to green garden gates are women. More than that a larger percentage of the buying decisions are made by women. Doesn’t it stand to reason that, without question, the look, the products, the atmosphere, the presentation, the approach to customers is directed primarily to those women shoppers? Would not a both a male or female be qualified to direct the store operations? We, at green garden gates, are not a feed store; we do not make parts for radiators. Many of our customers arrive in heels, they arrive in their Lexus. They want the feel or they will not freely purchase.



Ok, let’s simply solve the muscle thing. We will make available the tools and the human resources at any time to get the job done for our female or male managers.



A male or a female both possess sometimes different but equally important skills for green garden gates. We welcome both men and women as our managers.

#1 Managers for green garden gates can be either male or female




Young or not so young?

Here are some myths that We have to avoid when making choices for our managers Young workers have more energy, spirit and stamina for the long haul. Young managers are trained more easily. Young managers have more hunger and thirst for success. Young managers have “fire in their belly”. Young workers are the last into work and the first to leave. Young workers will stay long enough to add a job to their resume. Young workers have to be rewarded all the time or they will get discouraged. Older workers are more resistant to change, more hesitant. Older managers are likely to be “set in their ways”, following patterns learned and not able to adapt. Older managers do not have the stamina for the long haul, their interests are elsewhere. Older managers have been “burned” and are cautious, taking the easy road, avoiding difficult choices that may endanger their positions. Older managers cannot relate to their young employees. Older workers value a job well done. Older workers relate to customers more easily. Older workers will stick with a task no matter how tough it is

Both the young and not so young managers and employees bring equal talents to green garden gates.

#2 Managers can be of any age



A higher formal education or the “school of hard knocks”?

“They turned me down for the job because I did not have a college degree. That was it. I had been doing that job for months and always was at the very top of performance. They dead ended me at that level. They said I was the best person ever to be in that job.


Sammy
Applying the business manager position of his company

So many bright and talented employees have been passed over when applying for the job of a manager because they did not have a college degree. It is tragic and a waste of talent. Not possessing college work, beyond a high school diploma or its equivalency will absolutely not exclude their selection. We want our managers to have been exposed to the real world as well as the classroom world. Of course, there will be standards of proper speech and decorum that needs to be closely aligned with the customers of green garden gates, but that does not translate to the necessity of having a college educational background to have gained these social skills and decorum.

#3 Managers are to possess a basic formal education as well as experience in the workplace.

Gardener, haberdasher or gravedigger?

We get hung up on this gardener thing. Some garden store owners insist that the mangers and key employees need to have some sort of degree in horticulture, botany, or landscape architecture. Nonsense. And to add insult to injury, those employees are regarded as very important employees. Nonsense again.

Some of finest most knowledgeable employees in the store have never stepped foot in a place of higher learning, let along getting a degree in these fields. Some of the worst employees post these diplomas proudly on the wall. There has yet to come a decent number of graduate landscape architecture majors who can tell the difference between crepe myrtle and crepe paper. And the master gardeners? Forget it. Most have just enough information to make them dangerous in the retail garden store. If you want your customers to have a tour of your plants and learn about the stages of plant life, leaf color, and flower characteristics or if you want your customers to have a pretty picture with little tree symbols, property boundaries, these are the people to send on that mission. If you want your plants purchased, skip this group!

Now, that is being a little rough on these graduates and degree holders. Some have made the change for the retail store. Together with their knowledge and their newly acquired “street smarts” on plants, they can very fine and valuable employees. Just be careful that the staff is not loaded with a bunch of plant snobs. Garden stores are not botanical gardens. We sell things.

The first quality of the manager is that he or she knows how to sell; to have a basic understand of the gardening products, give honest advice, and close the deal. The best plant a garden store has is the one that left the parking lot in the customer’s car. Experience in a garden store retail setting is great. More importantly, however, is experience in a fast moving, high product turnover retail environment, where movement is the key. Some of the best employees of garden stores come form the cosmetic and clothing industry. Those employees know how to display and sell, leaving only dust on the shelves. Likewise a manager from these businesses knows how to motivate and how to promote. Like the haberdasher, the object is to get the suit on the man and satisfy him so he will never want to take it off ever again!

The manager needs to be part gravedigger, sweating away during the long hours of the spring planting season, digging those holes one after another from dawn to dusk endlessly until the season draws to a close.

#4 The manager has to have a basic understanding of gardening, experienced in selling and moving products and be willing to put in the long difficult and demanding hours of a garden store.