There are a lot of aspects of retail coaching and managing people, but it all starts with setting goals. If your associates don't know what the target is they will never reach it. Before you can begin training, offering feedback, or reviewing results with your associates you must first give them their goals.
1. Set Goals: You can set daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly goals for your associates, but it is important that leaders give their team goals. I know it is in style to get your associates to set their own goals and they can, but first they have to know where to start. You have to set the expectations. Goals should also be both results driven and behavior driven.
2. Shoot for the Stars: Give your associates goals and stretch goals. If they shoot for the stars (stretch goals) and miss they might still land on the moon (regular goals).
3. Simple Goals: Goals should be clear, simple, and easy to understand. You shouldn't need a degree in math to understand how goals are calculated and achieved.
4. Attainable: Goals need to be realistic and attainable. If you set goals so high that they never reach their goals it will only discourage associates. They will also start to feel that the goals don't matter, because if almost no one can make the goals then it can't be that important.
5. Tracking: Associates need to be able to track their progress on reaching their goals. The best method is for the associates to be able to see their progress in real time or at least the next day. Weekly tracking is fine, but it makes it hard to really know what to fix each day. Only Monthly and Yearly tracking is the worst. If associates can only see their progress at the end of the month or year, how can they ever hope to attain their goals. This doesn't mean you don't review associate progress on their goals weekly, monthly, or yearly. Reviewing progress is not the same as tracking. Tracking is something an associate and manager can see, so they can address and correct before officially reviewing.
