Lisbeth Calandrino::

I had the opportunity to talk with John Wells, General Manager for the past seven years of Taylor Flooring in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Taylor Flooring was awarded Mohawk Color Center Dealer of the year at the Mohawk Color Center Convention February 7, 2009. Taylor Flooring consists of four stores and has been in business for 16 years.

John Wells is in charge of hiring, training and ongoing coaching for his salespeople. The first thing you notice about John is his energy and focus. He knows what to do, how to do it and how to get it done. He talks about how important all employees are to the company and his connection to his salespeople. John is filled with passion about the business, the customers and the employees.  He talks about coaching as being an important part of his ongoing training program.  From my experience, it is rare for businesses to focus on coaching; but with the right coaches, people are able to make immediate and long lasting changes.

I asked John about the recession and what it means to their company. His reply was quite interesting. He said “in the United States, it’s real, in Canada there is more of a misperception about what’s going on. The news media just scares everyone so we become petrified.”

John’s solution: stop listening and stop focusing on the bad news. If 32% of homes are in foreclosure, John looks at it as an opportunity.  According to John, these homes will have to get sold and there’s his opportunity to go in and update the flooring in them. As we all know, it’s the half-full / half-empty attitude.Taylor Flooring works at using financing for flooring to help customers sell their homes.  The trick is to apply for the credit so it doesn’t get in the way of the customers other loans, and to time the closing of the loan so it coincides with the sale of the house.  Taylor aggressively seeks realtor partners by providing sliding scale commissions to realtors that offer good client referrals. The larger the flooring sale, the larger the commission.

The key to staying cool while the rest of the world is talking doom and gloom? According to John:

• Don’t panic. Leave that for your competitors. If you panic, it will send shock waves through your sales staff and make it difficult for them to concentrate on doing their best. (Interesting that John should make this statement. On February 14, one of the writers from the Wall Street Journal made the comment that it is essential that our President tell us the truth — but to not rub our noses in it. Everyone needs to know that there is hope, no matter what’s going on.)

• Focus on what works well and do it over and over again. Your team should be on auto-pilot for survival skills. Cut unnecessary overhead and focus on what brings in business and more profitable customers. This is the time to dump the unprofitable ones and to give more to those that are supporting your business.

• Have 'pit bull' persistence in follow through to close deals. Hold on to what works and don’t let go.

“Retaining a leadership position requires internal positioning," John adds.  "You are constantly improving the processes.”

These processes encompass the following:

• Having systems in place that keep the wheels turning. Everyone needs to know what to do and how to do it, consistently. All the pieces must fit together.
• The leaders must have positive attitudes and initiate the changes they want to see if they are to create believers. Once people believe, positive things will happen.
• Proper behavior must be identified and monitored. This includes professional presentations, keeping the store looking great and looking professional. Everyone knows what’s required to promote, differentiate and support the brand.

As John says, “it’s all about promoting great relationships with your customers and your employees and living the core values.” 

You would think with business as challenging as it is that people would be trying to hold on to their customers for dear life. I keep reading and keep writing about how important referral business is and blah, blah… but things don’t look so good to me. 

I came across a great article recently talking about the rise of Generation "G". They are the under-40s who belong to the video game generation. To quote Trendwatching:

Most people in this demographic grew up with games, and many of them still play now. They are familiar with gaming conventions relating to movement, exploration, cooperation, competition, and communication. Additionally, interaction with video games from an early age has created a foundation of familiarity and interest in computing technologies. 

I read this interesting article in Time magazine about happiness and random acts of kindness, and it started me thinking. I also got an email from “one of you” who is very involved in her mother-in-law's life and I could tell that she was happy she could do something that had meaning.

Challenging times see people craving care, empathy, sympathy and generosity. Now, with a full-blown recession having set in, expect to hear even more about caring, as that’s what consumers and citizens will demand from governments and organizations: someone to take care of their jobs, their savings, their fellow citizens. This need becomes extra poignant in societies where individualism is the new religion, and thus every person, young and old, rich and poor, has been told by society that he or she matters as an individual.

According to Time, simple things like holding a door open for someone at the bank, giving someone directions if they look lost or making a point to compliment three people on your way to work mean alot. How about complimenting people that you work with or who work for you? Small or big, directed at friends or strangers, random acts of kindness make the person performing the kind act happier when they're grouped together, says Sonja Lyubomirsky, an experimental psychologist at UC Riverside. 

I was thinking about Oprah Winfrey lately and her weight problem (of all things). Everyone I know at one time or another wants to lose weight, including Oprah. The only thing is, Oprah loses her weight on television and loses it often. I was somewhat disgusted when I heard her say she was going to put a photo of her big butt (her words) on the cover of her magazine so she could talk about her weight gain of 40 pounds. 

With stores going out of business right and left, it’s great to see one that isn’t: Anthropologie. 

As a matter of fact, it's growing!

If you want to make it, you have to be different than your competitors. Being different can mean offering different things or by targeting a specific audience, finding out their likes and dislikes and catering to them. Unfortunately, many small businesses don’t roll that way. They decide on a product because they like it, go into their parent’s business or buy an existing business and suddenly they’re in business! Being in business is different than staying in business though. 

Which brings me back to Anthropologie. It was founded in 1992 by a small group of people with a love for making things that inspire the imagination.  Quite clearly, these intrepid entrepreneurs have traveled the world and broken new ground with their catalog and Web designs. If you can believe it, they also refer to their customers as "soulmates!" Target, meanwhile, refers to their customers as “guests,” which is what a number of other stores have been doing of late. But soulmate? That's entirely different. It  implies a level of intimacy that I think is a little too "out there” for many businesses. It doesn’t matter what we think though, because it works for them.   

Today I got an email from Job Market Weekly. I don’t know what it means but I figure it means something — in this case a big something. Are you prepared for the future?

I get at least one email a week from someone who has lost a job. Rarely do I get emails saying, "What should I do to update my career or my resume?"

With unemployment statistics what they are, it’s frightening. The key is to keep yourself employable. How do you do this then? Ask yourself if the skills you have today will keep you relevant in your job in 2, 5, 10 years. Take a look at your resume and ask whether you would want to hire you. What have you been doing  with your schooling since high school or college?

Maybe you love your job, and you’re doing great and you’re not worried. But business is a partnership; just as you want the owner to keep on top of trends, products and the bottom line, it’s your responsibility to keep up your end. Suppose the business gets sold; would you look as good to the next owner? Or do you look good now because you're related to the present owner?

A good friend of mine just lost her job. It  started me thinking about someone I know named Janice. Ten years ago, I volunteered with Vocation and Educational Services for Individuals with Disabilities (VESID), a New York State agency dedicated to helping people with physical problems get back into the work force. Having been an employer, I thought this would be a good place for me to use my skills and help others.

Although the agency gave me some guidelines for reporting and a budget for incidentals and transportation, they didn’t prepare me for Janice — a 38 year-old, 6-foot tall woman with a master’s degree in criminal justice and arthritis so bad that some days she couldn’t hold a glass of water or a wash cloth. She had no family, was living on welfare, had not held a job since struggling and graduating from grad school five years prior. She had pretty much given up, was depressed, and some days could barely stand up straight. And did I mention her anger?

Long story short, it took us one year to get Janice a job. The thing is, nothing conventional really worked for Janice. We got plenty of job interviews because of her schooling, but some how nothing clicked.

Here's what we did to change things though. We got Janice some new clothes. Where? At the Salvation Army, Goodwill and other places that supplied clothing for those returning to the workplace. We looked for marked-down stuff, bought it on sale, went to churches and yard sales, etc. It was a great start, and Janice started to look better.

We went to Macy’s and the cosmetic counters, told them Janice was returning to the workplace and got lots of freebees. Shiseido offered makeup and other work tips. At first Janice was uncomfortable with the charity. But then it became fun and she realized she was a valuable member of society. Everyone we met wished her luck and knew someone who knew someone. If you can believe it, we found there was even free plastic surgery available!

We looked for free classes on computer skills, sales skills and more job training. Janice was smart, but we decided to make her smarter and well rounded. She knew police work, but those skills were getting old.

We went to not-for profits, Planned Parenthood socials, the library, the health clubs, the jails, the local prison, the state police academy, the city police — no jobs! It got pretty depressing for me too. Although looking and feeling better than she had in a long time, Janice had to work very hard at keeping her spirits up.

Okay, so what worked? Interestingly, it was her desire to volunteer with the city police. It wasn’t easy getting them to take her in — even for one day a week — but they finally agreed. Eventually she worked her way up to three days a week. And she was good! She knew the police stuff backwards and forwards, she was from Brooklyn and had worked with the police there for several years. She knew the “customers” — she was both tender and tough. After six months she had made herself indispensible, so they created a job for her.

I saw Janice six years later. She yelled to me from across the street and I hardly recognized her. She stood straighter, even with her cane. Her hair was braided and pulled back. She had on lovely makeup and was getting into her car. She said it was the first car she had ever owned, which went along with her first  driver’s license.

I smile when I think of Janice.