July 19, 2024
While working to help c-store manager, we found a funny thing happened on the way to c-store growth. In order to work on growth, store managers needed to focus on a lot of different parts of their operations: Growth, Profits, Value, Satisfaction, Simplicity, Improvement, Self-Motivation, Efficiency, Helpfulness, Caring, Development, Usefulness, Happiness – who doesn’t want all these things?
So often we are given choices and asked to prioritize and pick. Priorities, focus, and discipline are necessary to run a successful business. C-Store operations are no exception.
Leadership for Team Building
While working with top managers to improve areas of growth and control, leadership skills and techniques are shared. Growth areas of focus include:
- How to promptly to address issues, and train at the same time.
- How to motivate staff and make thing fun without losing accountability.
- Asking – What is the right type of person to hire?
- Is there something unique about younger workers to create bad attitudes toward work?
- And many other labor & staffing issues…
It seems no manager has a perfect store or perfect employees, but those that consistently perform well have a structured set of priorities in terms of hiring, delegating, communicating and follow-up. As problems surface and are addressed, many times, the best managers find that they must change before their staff will perform as needed.
C-Store Managers Feedback
During group discussions with managers working to improve their leadership, they often share how they have allowed staff to be confused about expectations and have not addressed problems directly nor quickly enough.
Experienced managers will often provide detailed assessments of how bad performance happened and specific areas where they bear responsibility for the mistakes. Of course, they do not allow staff errors to go un-addressed.
With patience, alignment, and consistency, they address and coach their team to improve. No one expects perfection and there are always different ways to work. The rules that seem to stick, however, are mutual respect, fair expectations, allowance for real-life, commitment to good work, and recognition of the good and the bad that happens.
Store managers expect that daily checklists are completed on-time. That is, exceptions are justified by compelling problems, not just forgetfullness. Of course, store managers lead from the front. They pitch-in and support staff. In the best teams, all staff members speak directly, and are shown by example how to address differences and how to train and support the right way to take care of customers.
Adjusting to New Operations Initiatives
Several customers have recently changed to 100% ID scanning or birthday entry. For many cashiers, they fear this change can affect customer relationships or create extra friction at checkout. What’s the right approach when ID checking older, regular customers? Tension exists when trying to comply with ID requirements and maintaining strong customer service. For managers, these updates may require breaking established habits with staff. Not every decisi
on and policy can have 100% agreement. It’s up to team leads to explain the “why” as much as possible, while, at the end of the day, meeting compliance.
Other items, however, may have less friction when building alignment. Showing customers valuable promotions saves them money on things they love. Keeping the store fully stocked and clean means customers are happy and staff feel proud of their work. Giving extra attention, smiles, and kindness builds happy experiences that make work fun and rewarding.
The Way to C-Store Growth
Not surprisingly, when stores have loyal customers, work is balanced, profits are growing, appreciation is given, and pay is good. Staff tend to like their jobs. They find satisfaction and are more likely to stay in their work.
The Funny Thing that Happened
Retention, profits, control all work well together. Developing great leadership takes time and resources, but provides great stores, strong ROI and happy, long-lasting worker retention. Perhaps it is not so funny or unusual at all. When we have great team, everyone enjoys the job more, stays longer and gets better results.