Your team will succeed with the proper equipment
By Rich Lindblom, AVB Marketing
Let me share with you a story from a really long time ago, roughly 1980, back when I was a young pup, just getting started in this industry.
My father sent me out to install a gas wall oven and I needed to trim a quarter inch off each side of a 38-inch-tall cabinet to get the oven to fit.
Well as luck would have it, our cheap Black+Decker Jig Saw went totally dead about a quarter of the way through the cutting process. But rather than allowing me to go to a hardware store and pay a high price (probably $30 back then) for a new jigsaw, my father insisted I finish the cut with the dull hand saw in the truck.
Fast forward two hours and I finally completed the installation, which should have taken half as long at most. The entire time, the female homeowner is sitting on a kitchen chair watching the process and shaking her head in disbelief. As I go to leave, she hands me a sealed envelope and instructs me to give it to the person I had spoken to on the phone.
I do as she asked when I get back to the shop and my father opened the letter and read it. I don’t remember everything she wrote as it was so long ago, but the line that I will never forget was when she equated my attempts at cutting her cabinet with a dull hand saw to a person “trying to dig their way to China with a teaspoon.”
It made me laugh then and still does today. But you know what? She was absolutely right!
And that brings me to the point of my story: If you don’t give your team the tools they need to succeed, you are dooming them to failure.
It doesn’t matter what role a person serves in your company; you need to give them the best chance to succeed. And the way to do that is to provide them with the latest tools to do their job.
For your sales staff, it could be:
- A modern, connected point-of-sale system (POS).
- How about a tablet to carry around as they show customers options? This way they don’t have to leave the guest to go to a desktop computer (or even worse, walk out to the warehouse) to check inventory.
- Maybe it’s more comfortable chairs for your staff and customers at the cash wrap station.
- How about better lighting in the showroom?
- Or maybe even faster internet service to speed things up when searching online for information.
- Here’s another one off the top of my head: digital price tags.
- And finally, how about an effective, transactional website from AVB?
For your service technicians and installers, consider:
- A new jig saw (LOL), or at the very least a fresh pack of blades.
- Maybe there are other power tools available that would make their jobs easier (and, by the way, faster, which means you make more money).
- Diagnostic tools and testing equipment.
- A truck full of necessary parts and accessories. When I took over delivery operations at my company, I made sure our trucks had everything our installers could possibly need to complete a job in one trip. I always joked that they were driving around in a mobile hardware store.
- Here’s a huge one … training. Make sure they also have the knowledge they need to succeed.
- And how about a new appliance dolly to replace the one with the broken ratchet?
The bottom line is that there are an endless number of tools you can provide your staff that will make their lives easier and less stressful, which in turn makes them more productive. And guess what more productive employees do for you? They make you more money.
And as a side benefit, you won’t get any nasty letters from unhappy customers. Instead, you’ll impress them with the modern, efficient way that you and your staff conduct your business.
Rich Lindblom is a past principal of Advanced Maytag Home Appliance Center, a family business founded 64 years ago in Schaumburg, Ill. After working at and later leading the company for more than four decades, he and his brother sold the operation. Lindblom now shares his 40-plus years of retail experience with fellow BrandSource members as a columnist for YSN and product manager of AVB’s SYNC point-of-sale system. Contact him at rich.lindblom@avb.net.
