Great leaders are visionaries. They are able to see multiple avenues to success in the big picture while leaving the details to the doers of the world. As a convenience store manager, your role often falls right in the middle. You must be a leader and a doer. You must keep one eye on the big picture and one eye on the details. How do you do that without getting dizzy? Easy! Do it just like the best leaders do: train and delegate.
Delegating Details for the Convenience Store Manager
A convenience store manager is often the only person in the store with a direct line to the top where the vision of your company is formed. Ensuring that vision makes it into the details of your day-to-day store operation is up to you. The most likely goals for your operation – and for you as a manager – involve creating an environment where customers will want to come back. This includes big picture strategies like brand awareness, marketing promotions, and products offered. In order for those strategies to be successful, the entire operation needs to support them. Train your staff on these details so you have more time for your big picture responsibilities:
- Exterior store appearance: Chances are, your customers have many options in your immediate area for the products and services you offer. Maintaining the appearance of the exterior of your store, including the fuel area, parking lot, dumpsters, and trash cans, will help ensure customers pull into your store and not the one down the street.
- Interior store appearance: Training on the care of the inside of the store helps ensure you live true to the “convenience” aspect of your business. Customers want in and out fast, so make sure shelves and self-serve items are stocked and easy to navigate. To give customers a reason to come back, keep the store clean. This includes cleaning the restroom, floor mats, floors, shelves, self-serve areas, and the cooler.
- Customer service: Great marketing can kill a bad business. Even when you do everything else right, if your staff isn’t trained to deliver exceptional customer service, your big picture vision will evaporate. Customer service training for convenience stores is not a one-and-done topic. It requires ongoing training and strong mentoring.
Online Training to Delegate the Details
As a convenience store manager, you can’t be the one to take care of the details of your operation. You need to train your employees to do that, leaving more time for you to focus on big picture goals. Our Early Success Online Training Series is a comprehensive program that covers a wide variety of topics important to your operation. Click here to learn more.
