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Want Your Folks to Learn New Tricks?
Pavlov understood: Immediate reinforcement to produce a behavior works!
Offering consistent rewards and recognition helps improve sales, service and profitability by REINFORCING KEY HABITS. Take a look at these tips for creating programs that work to achieve your goals:
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1. VALUE: Make the reward matter. You know your culture. Find something employees value, and give it to them: $, time off, cool gear, status, etc.
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2. PICK KEY HABITS: We suggest selecting one to three standards at a time to focus on. These can be areas of weakness or areas that will bring important change or profit to your company. Some suggestions: suggestive
selling specific items, asking for the sale, recommending a loyalty card, approaching the customer (10-feet, 10-second rule) are among the best.
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3. PROMOTE: Give 15 days’ notice for the incentive launch and talk it up (people need to see something six times to get on board).
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4. REINFORCE THROUGHOUT: Don’t wait until the end of the programto tell your people what they are doing right or what they are missing. Focus on those key habits individually throughout the entire program. For example,
while you are out on the floor, you would want to watch and say things like, “Good job hitting that key habit!” or “Don’t miss a shot at reaching that reward…work on that habit, Mark.” You must hit the right note as you reinforce. Be neutral, like a coach. Don’t be a cheerleader and certainly, don’t be irritable.
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5. PUBLIC RECOGNITION: Give specific, public recognition. Wrong: “Congratulations to Sally, she scored a 95% on her shop.” (This is public but
not specific.) Right: “Sally Deal is a model associate. I know this because one of our customers said, ‘Sally didn’t have to call other stores to find the item I
needed, but she went out of her way to do so. All the time she smiled and discussed how she wouldn’t want to pass up this item at this price either. By the end of the conversation, I felt I had a friend at your store. Thank you toyou and to Sally for a great experience.’ For this, Sally Deal will be receive one free day of vacation.” (This is public and specific. Reading direct quotes
from the evaluation is a great way to recognize employees.)
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6. EARN IT: Never give rewards out to everyone unless everyone has earned them. It diminishes the reward.
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© 2007 AboutFace™ / The Secret Shopper Company
