Staff

Whether your staff is all volunteer, all paid, or a mix of the two, you need to treat everyone the same way. According to Jim Dion, a psychologist with over 30 years experience in retail, there should be no difference between how volunteers and employees are treated and what is expected of them. Museum gift shops are frequently volunteer run and work under this model.

While this may have a corporate flavor to it, it is actually pretty insightful as guidelines for how to give your volunteers / employees the best experience possible. Not only that, but you are helping give them practical job skills.

Your Staff IS Your Shop

• How people precieve your organization is entirely up to the staff. They are your shop, so how they represent themselves is reflects directly on you.
• Not every frog is a prince. Therefore not everyone can handle working / volunteering in your shop -- regardless of training.
• Some people just can't be motivated no matter what you do.
• With rare exceptions, staff is not interchangeable recognize and help them focus on their specialties.
• View staff as an asset instead of an expense.
• Make sure the mission is clear; deliver the best experience to people walking in the door.
• Marketing money is wasted if the current staff can't handle the resulting customers.
• Not so much in the community bike shop, but in regular bike shops a sales associate will sell 1 million worth of product. So hiring them needs to be considered a 1 million dollar decision, ideally their salary should be 14-15% of that.

Responsibilities of Staff

This can be used as guidelines on how to congratulate staff / volunteers as well as how to constructively tell them how they can improve something during scheduled and impromptu evaluations. Note the percentage of their job assigned to each task. Evaluations should be done every 30 days and 60 days.

10% Greet Customer in 15 seconds

• Everyone must assume that no ones else has helped them. It is better that they get greeted by every shop employee / volunteer than no one at all.
• A should be within 10 feet of the person.
• Say hi and smile at customers everytime you pass by.
• Never say "may I help you."

35% Suggestion Sell Every Customer

This may seem horrible in the context of evil corporations selling things that people don't need and promoting impulse buys. However, in the world of community bike shops, this is an excellent opportunity to talk about other programs within the organizations.

10% Close the Sale

If your community bike shop is dependent on shop sales, then you need to encourage shop sales. There are various ways to close the sale and not all of them are evil -- make sure how you teach your employees / volunteers to sell things is ethical and in the best interest of the customer.

5% Clean the Shop

They need to find the time to do this. If a customer walks in the door, they should stop cleaning and concentrate on the customer, but if there are no customers around, they should be cleaning.

Maturity Levels

This is not to be confused if someone is acting younger or older than their actual age. This has to do with maturity in their job duties.

References

• Jim Dion - NBDA Presentation made at Interbike 2007.
• Retail Design Associates