Doug Fleener

In honor of Mother's Day, here's some advice my mother might give if she was part of your management team.

“We get what we expect from people. The worst thing I could have done as a mother is to lower my expectations of my children. Instead, I taught them how to achieve more. As leaders, we should do the same with our staff.”

“I worked well in to my seventies because I loved the people I worked with. As a matter of fact, I still help out there every now and then. The effort you put into building a great team and being a great place to work directly impacts your sales and customer experience.”

“You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Never underestimate the power of being nice to your staff, your customers, and even your competitors. By the way, you’re still being nice when you expect more from your team.”

"Leave work on time to be with your family. There's always time to do paperwork and other tasks, but you'll never replace the...

Redirecting a conversation is an extremely effective technique used by highly effective salespeople.  Let me give you a good example.

Let me tell about a great example I witnessed.  A man came into a store I was working with in search of a very particular pair of earrings.  I didn't hear the entire conversation, but it seemed that somehow his wife had lost one earring of a pair he had given her.  He told Debbie, the sales associate that he travels extensively and is always on the lookout for earrings that would replace the lost one.

Debbie asked him describe the earrings and then showed him some potential matches.  None of them were a match, and the man said he would just keep looking.  At this point one of three things can happen.

1. The sales associate can say she's sorry and wishes him good luck in his search.

2. The sales associate can provide somewhat better service than that by giving the customer the company's contact information...

Social media is a great way for retailers to engage their customers.  When done well, customers even engage one another.  But believe it or not, that same level of engagement can work against you when something goes wrong.

This is what one of our readers recently experienced when what seemed like a simple request turned into a Facebook disaster.  Here is what happened, along withsteps you can take if you ever experience something similar.

One day a locally owned store was asked if they would post in their window a flyer about a lost dog. (You can probably already see where this is going.) Although this retailer does a lot with and for the local community, they have a policy of not placing community material in their windows.  They said they would be unable to post the flyer.

Before they knew it what seemed like an innocent decision, consistent with a long-standing policy, blew up online.  All of a sudden it seemed that every dog lover in the community was...

Last week I received an anonymous email from a store staff.  They said that their owner/manager, a regular reader of my newsletters is in their own words “The boss from hell.”

They shared some of their reasons for bestowing the title, and asked me to try to help them. I have to say I was intrigued. I’ve worked for some less than stellar bosses, but I never went so far as to ask for help from an outsider.

I ended up exchanging emails to learn more about what this person was doing to earn the label of boss from hell.  I realize I was only hearing one side of the story, but even if only half of it is true, this owner/manager needs to improve.

It was an interesting email conversation, and I realized that even good bosses could learn from what this staff has been experiencing.

Here are five factors that can lead you to become the retail boss from hell, with a comment from an employee on each one. (I’ve adapted the comments to protect the innocent and the...