Article

Excerpt: The Retail Doctor's Guide to Growing Your Business

How understanding the four types of retail employees can help you improve customer service.

June 15, 2010

The following is an edited excerpt from the new book "The Retail Doctor's Guide to Growing Your Business," written by Retail Customer Experience blogger Bob Phibbs and published by Wiley.

What do we want in a sales team? In short, they move product. Don’t care if they are a nice person, don’t care that they need a job, don’t care if they are a relative, don’t care if you would want to have them over for holiday dinner. Are they able to help you grow your business and improve your financials? When they are on your sales floor they need to be focused on the customer and adding value; not stocking shelves and finding something to keep busy.

This chapter helps you set expectations and boundaries for all four personalities of employees, as well as shows them the rewards of working for your business, and if necessary, the door.

The expectation we need to set from the beginning and your new employee has to get right away, is your expectation of work. The “work,” the bar that employees are to reach for is making the customer feel that at that very moment, they are the most important person in the world. Just for those few minutes, their cares are your employees’ cares. If they don’t get that, you need to prepare them that your job may not be a good fit for them.

Understanding the four employee personality types

When you can manage each of the four personality types to meet their needs, you’ll find less turnover and a crew, who are all different, working together. You must change your approach like a chameleon changes their skin color to match their environment if you want to get the most out of your employees. First a recap:

There are two main types of personalities, those ruled by their head (Thinkers) and those ruled by their heart (Feelers).

Have your run your business without objective employee reviews, formal training programs, or criteria for performance? Then you probably are a Feeler; either an Expressive or Amiable. The Expressive personality wants to know “who,” is going to be there and expresses their opinions freely. The Amiables — the largest segment of the population — want to know “why” and are driven by being amiable, likeable and part of the group.

Do you have a handbook chock full of policies, procedures and punishments? You’re probably a Thinker. Within the Thinkers are the Drivers and the Analyticals. A Driver wants to know “what,” they are driven by results and status. The Analyticals want to know “how” something works; they like to analyze results and outcomes.

Drivers want to just get the job done, Analyticals want to get the job done the “right” way, Expressives want to do a job their way, Amiables want to know who else will do the job with them.

Drivers are happy doing, Analyticals are happy thinking, Expressives are happy playing. Amiables are happy listening.  

Just knowing that can help approach the way you talk to them. But what if your personality is an Analytical and you are managing an opposite personality like an Expressive? Look to the shortcomings of your personality type for clues to know what can create friction.

Helping Drivers Get Results

For a Driver, which I am, we tend to talk fast, expect people to get the point and we tend to steamroll our thoughts over others. If this is you, knowing that should help you slow down in both your speed of speech and speed of expecting people to “get it.” Drivers tend to “cut to the chase” when Feelers in particular need the whole journey and details.

If you are a Driver, encourage others' opinions and thoughts before laying down the law, “this is what we’re going to do.” The very things that make you successful are the very things that can trip you up.  

If you are managing a Driver, you need to get their confidence that you are equal before they’ll take your advice because they are confident in what they know and want. Drivers are afraid of being last in sales or standings so reinforce when they are No. 1. If they are number two, show how easy it will be to get to first place. If you don’t get this, Drivers are the first to leave you looking.

Want to kill a Driver? Ignore them, take credit for their idea or patronize them.