A good retail manager must wear many hats and have a mix of hard and soft skills to keep the business running efficiently. In a single day, a retail manager might need to schedule employees, provide tough performance evaluations, and motivate the sales team to hit their targets.
Looking to learn how to be a better retail manager? We’ve put together a list of 15 retail management tips that’ll help you excel in your role.
If you’re a brand new manager, be sure to also check out our list of tips for navigating your transition into that role.
1. Focus on goals
As a retail manager, you likely have multiple goals to meet: sales, high customer service scores, credit card signups, and more. These goals are usually monthly, quarterly, or annual. As a manager, it’s your role to break up these lofty goals into smaller pieces your team can achieve each day or week.
You then need to keep your eye on the prize and consistently motivate your team to meet your objectives. To incentivize your employees, tie these goals to a reward system and show employees how their hard work affects the larger goal.
Now, this is easier said than done. On a busy day, most managers don’t have time to discuss current goal status with each employee. Using software like Deputy can help. Our mass communication and task management features allow you and your team to better track both individual and storewide progress. You’ll even receive notifications when goals are achieved.
2. Prioritize customer experience
To achieve store goals, you need to prioritize customer experience. For more than half of consumers, all it takes is one bad experience for them to switch to a competitor. When you provide a consistently good experience, you build a loyal customer base who will recommend you to others.
You can improve customer experience by:
Ensuring staff treats customers respectfully (see tip 5)
Handling complaints efficiently
Keeping visual merchandising up to date
Making sure the store is well stocked (see tip 4)
Keeping the store clean and organized
See how Mud Bay used Deputy to create a better customer experience through consistent scheduling.
3. Hire the right people
Creating a great customer experience and running a store efficiently requires hiring the right people. While it may take longer to find high-quality candidates, it can take even longer to retrain people with bad habits — if they’re even willing to learn. Meanwhile, their lower performance can lead to bad customer experiences and other staff feeling burdened by having to make up for their coworker.
Great retail managers know what kind of candidate they want to hire right from the start. They ask very specific questions with a list of acceptable answers in mind. They can also use their experience to distinguish between someone who has potential and needs refinement and someone who just isn’t the right fit.
4. Stay on top of inventory management
A customer’s experience will suffer if they can’t find the products they want. This makes inventory management essential.
In a retail environment, inventory is always changing, and you need to know when you have too little or too much of a product. Keeping an eye on sales data, staff reports, and inventory unloading reports lets you know when to contact headquarters for more products or when to skip a shipment. If you’re working with perishables, you also want to ensure nothing is out on shelves past its expiration date.
5. Train your team
Take the time to pass on the knowledge you’ve gathered to help your employees avoid potential customer service pitfalls. This should start with onboarding and be consistently reinforced throughout their time at the store. Even the most experienced staff members can improve their skills.
Basic retail training should include:
How to greet and interact with customers
How to handle customer complaints
When to call in the manager
How the POS system works
Product training
Sales training
If you have employees interested in advancing their careers, you can upgrade training to mentoring. If you can’t do the mentoring yourself, try matching more experienced workers with newer employees to develop mentor-mentee relationships.
6. Provide performance feedback (and don’t forget praise!)
An essential part of how to be a better retail manager is providing appropriate performance feedback. Your team won’t be able to improve without it. Remember that while constructive feedback is helpful, it’s important to keep it balanced. Too often, feedback becomes a list of everything the employee does wrong — which demotivates the employee to improve.
Retail turnover is notorious for being one of the highest compared to other industries, so adding praise or encouragement to feedback is essential. A simple way to keep your employees motivated is to say, “Thank you for working so hard,” and acknowledge their skill growth. Matching the praise to the scale of effort helps reinforce your employees’ desire to go above and beyond for your organization.
7. Promote open communication
Effectively getting your point across and listening to your team is vital to becoming a good store manager. Improve communication skills within your team by encouraging open communication — even when employees have things to say that are difficult to hear.
When employees are encouraged to speak their minds respectfully, the chance of conflict is reduced. Sharing both positive and negative experiences makes for a better working environment.
As a manager, you need to take the communication lead by keeping employees informed about developments in your business. This is especially important if you’re part of a chain. You’ll want to avoid situations where your team finds out about something that affects them before you’ve informed them.
8. Show confidence when resolving conflict
If you want to learn how to be a great store manager, you need to embrace conflict. A fast-paced, high-stress retail environment can create tension between team members. You’ll need to identify and defuse potential conflicts before things get out of hand.
Give each employee involved in the conflict the chance to air their grievances separately. Make it clear that you’ll share what was discussed with the other parties to reach a fair conclusion. All employees should have the right to reply to the other team member’s side. After you’ve conducted your investigation, it’s up to you to come up with a fair solution to restore order to your team.
9. Use technology to streamline operations
There’s a wide array of retail technologies that can improve your operations. Utilizing the right technology will make processes run more smoothly and simplify your job as a retail manager. You’ll be able to spend less time on routine tasks and dedicate more attention to your team and customers.
Deputy’s retail software can help you improve operations with features like:
Being able to do all this in one program — which easily integrates with other software — cuts down admin tasks significantly. Just ask UNTUCKit, who cut their scheduling time in half with Deputy.
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10. Embrace delegation
It can be tempting to attempt to do everything yourself when you’re a retail manager. A reluctance to delegate can originate from thinking that:
No one else is qualified to do the tasks.
Things will get done quicker if you do them yourself.
But delegating tasks to your team members is a good way to show you trust them. You’re in the best position to judge who is suited for particular jobs, so use this knowledge for task allocation. Giving your team the chance to take on additional responsibilities will develop both their skills and their confidence.
11. Maintain fair scheduling practices
It’s important to remember team members have a life outside of work. When creating schedules, the best retail managers strike a balance between what the store needs and what the staff wants.
From the onboarding process on, make sure you maintain open communication about scheduling needs. For example, if an employee is studying or has school-aged children, you need to know what hours to avoid.
Of course, you won’t always be able to make everyone happy. But the more effort you make to consider everyone’s needs when scheduling, the better.
If you need some help making this process more efficient, we offer easy-to-use scheduling templates.
12. Work the sales floor
While it’s true that the bulk of your time should be spent on high-level work, great retail managers are prepared to roll up their sleeves and work the sales floor when needed. When you see your team struggling, don’t watch from your office — go out and show your skills.
Maybe you’re short on morning employees to accept deliveries or clean the store. Maybe you jump on a register during an unexpected rush. Remember, you’ll gain little respect if all you do is give orders.
Helping out your staff can also boost team engagement and morale because they’ll know they can rely on you when things get tough.
13. Keep calm under pressure
Dealing with customers comes with the added advantage (or disadvantage) that anything can happen. Whether it’s a disgruntled customer who becomes aggressive or frustrated shoppers waiting in line, your team will take your cue as to the best way to respond.
The pressure in retail doesn’t only come from dealing with customers. Internal team issues can also cause anxiety. What happens when most of your team has called out? How do you deal with replacing employees on short notice?
To be a good store manager, you need to always be prepared for the unexpected. Your employees are looking to you for guidance and reassurance when things go wrong, so demonstrate that you’re confident in your ability to handle difficult situations.
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14. Create a problem-solving atmosphere
Nurture an atmosphere where your team feels comfortable making suggestions about better ways to do things. After all, your employees are your eyes and ears on the shop floor, so they’ll have opinions about how things can be improved.
Take every contribution seriously by talking over the pros and cons and referring appropriate suggestions to the head office. This approach will empower employees because they’ll feel they are making a real difference to the company.
15. Keep a pulse on your team
Retail is always changing, and it’s easy to forget to check in with your team when things get busy. However, if this goes on for too long, you won’t know what your team is feeling or dealing with — potentially leading to growing frustration and turnover.
Becoming a better retail manager means using tools like surveys to learn what your team is thinking. Deputy offers a pulse survey tool that makes getting feedback from staff easy. This way, you can know how your team is feeling and what issues need to be addressed before it’s too late.
Deputy makes good retail managers better
There are many facets to being a good retail manager, and it’s a role that requires continuous learning and adaptation. The right tools can help you do your job more effectively and free up more time to develop your retail management leadership skills.
Deputy equips managers with the tools they need to better manage their employees and grow their business. See how much our software can improve your operations. Try our free demo!
