The New Era of Store Manager …
IMAGE VIA CAMILLA AND MARC
Our ‘friend’ the pandemic has fast-tracked our working world into a whole new era of digital leadership. This transition has come with its fair share of challenges for all business sizes and formats. For those of us who are office-based, this meant transitioning into a WFH format with access to digital HQs through platforms like Microsoft Teams and SlackHQ. But for our retail angels, transitioning into a WFH environment has been tricky and in most cases, impossible.
We’ve been navigating the topic of WHAT STORE MANAGERS WANT in our recruitment chats for quite some time now. And we’re here to download a quick snapshot guide of WHAT THEY WANT and WHAT WE’D OFFER if we were in charge of the future of shaping this new era of Store Managers.
Our job-hunting angels are all singing the same symphony in terms of what will tempt them to make the move to a new business during this precarious time. What are they whispering?
WHAT THEY WANT:
SM’s want to work for companies who do internal succession well. It’s no secret that it is rare to find a Store Manager who wants to stay in on the shop floor forever. Our SM’s want assurance that when they are ready for more, you can & will give more to them. They want to hear stories of successful store-to-office-floor moves and they want to know that you will nurture this in their development.
They want to join growing brands. They want to know what your expansion plans are (even if that’s digitally focused). Expansion and innovation means new opportunities will be on the horizon for them. Share your plans and sell the future of your business.
They want tech skills! We’re all divulging in these skills from an office perspective. Why should SMs miss out? Tech skills are a very important developmental phase for managers to close the succession gap from floor to office.
They want omni channel. If your brand does this well in the true sense of the word (and I mean not just as a buzz word) you will attract and develop stronger SMs. You’re an omnichannel biz if you genuinely upskill your Managers to participate in online order management, online customer service, stock sharing processes and more.
They want strategy. Gone are the days of the role of SM being purely functional. These angels want to be involved in elevating their store operations to meet this new digi world we live in. Nurturing their ideas is more important than ever.
Easier said than done … but we think tech is the answer to the new era of Store Managers. Some cheeky little responsibilities we’d be sharing with our SMs are:
HOW WE’D DO IT:
Upskill your Managers in the digi customer service world. If they aren’t already, we would be getting all of our SMs across every facet of live chat, phone, email and returns management to support a true omni-channel business. And we’d be using them as covers for that role as frequently as possible
Develop mini Content Creators. We all know that user generated content is trumping social media analytics and in most cases out performs any other kind of content being posted. You literally have UGC creators at your finger tips. You recruit based on your brand’s values, so they should be your most influential content creators. We think this skill should be part of every SM’s role. Create content for the marketing channel that generates sales for the business.
Introduce new tech into the regular life of your SMs. Analytics are queen of course! Platforms shouldn’t just evolve in the office world. We say upskill your SM team across recruitment technologies, introduce new retail analytic programs, dive deeper into the world of click and collect and use digital service experience tools to convert customers (even outside of lockdown. We predict shopping from home will become even more of a preference – so make it part of the SMs weekly role in a whole new way).
Introduce time off the shop floor for all of the above. 4 days floor-based, one day tech, admin and strategy based. The new SMs want to be more skilled. A day off the floor to develop their skills across tech, recruitment, training, rostering, online customer service , drive 1:1 online shopping sessions with VIPs… Depending on the volume of your business, these could even be a WFH day (helloooo new era).
And finally… reconsider their title. If you can give all of the above to your leading ladies and gents, is the title Store Manager still relevant? The rise of Retail Business Managers and Boutique Business Managers is rife. Follow the trend or make your own…
IMAGE VIA ACNE
Store Managers have always been our most powerful asset in the retail world. So how are you rising to the occasion in this crazy world of ours?
With love,
Lauren x