Destination Retail – The Place to Be

Retail employees can move through the ranks pretty quickly in comparison to most other industries. For this reason alone in makes for a great career. Gaining enty into the retail environment is easy and promotions can and do come quickly, as long as the individual can demonstrate, common sense, the desire to learn, commitment to the ever changing retail scene and an ability to work with people.

The single most important quality is people focus. You must have a real desire to deal with people on all levels, the customer is the first most important ingredient in any retail business, ignore them at your peril. Build good relations with your customer base, you also gain more job satisfaction from serving and improving the quality of their shopping experience.

You can make things happen faster, and speed up your career growth by learning a few critical skills. Product knowledge could be an area where you need to learn more, what services are available in your store, do you fully understand what is on offer to the customer base? Ask yourself this question, if the customer asked for assistance on any product or service could you give them the answer?

Think about this fact, over 50% of customers leave a store without making a purchase, purely because the person serving them did not have sufficient knowledge of the product or service that the customer was enquiring about, coupled with poor attitude to customers in general. A recipe for disaster.

Working and interaction with people, important throughout life, very important in the retail environment. How to get along with your line manager, the Boss. First thing to take on board is, your boss is a human being, just like you. Just like you he/she will have dreams, wants and needs. Some bosses are good managers, some are bad, on the whole most fall somewhere in the middle. Unless you work for a small or independent business, your boss will have bosses of his/her own – who will undoubtedly drive them crazy at times. Your success will come down to how you and your boss deal with the ups and downs of everyday retail life.

It is important that you understand what makes a ‘good employee’ in the eyes of your manager. They will expect you to know or make an effort to know your job inside out, if something new comes along, you will take the time to work things out, if necessary look at the options and report back, with some possible ideas/solutions.

A good employee doesn’t take time off except for real illness or emergencies. You will be the one who gets your job done, the person who takes a pride in what they do and the contribution this makes to the overall success of the company you work for.

A good employee lets the boss know that the current work load is finished, which leaves some time to assist with another task or project that needs attention. You will not ‘camp out’ at the coffee machine, appear to be busy doing nothing and take every opportunity to stop and engage in idle gossip with fellow workers. You will also leave your area of work as you would expect to find it.

The bottom line is, master human relations, gain the important people skills, at some time in the future you could enjoy the power and prestige of being the boss, enjoying the benefits that go with that position. If you make a decision to master the requirements of a good employee you will, without doubt know who and what to look for when you achieve supervisor or manager status.