November 2024 Mastermind Recap

Innovators agreed on the importance of an overlap period to help customers adjust. Stores that combined digital promotions with physical circulars saw less customer frustration as they transitioned away from quick to trash mail pieces to quick to convert email coupons. During the overlap, some stores took the opportunity to educate their audience about scanning QR codes or accessing online deals, which led to a smoother transition for their old customers to adopt new ways to access deals.

One store saw fantastic results handing out magnets with QR codes for their digital monthly circular. These were so popular that they had to order more after just three days! Laminated signs with QR codes in each aisle also drove click-throughs to their website, making it easy for customers to engage while shopping. Want something even simpler? Another innovator recommended using a Linktree like this one to consolidate key links for stores without their own website.

Physical materials continue to resonate with certain customers, especially during the holidays. One innovator created a nostalgic holiday gift guide inspired by old-school Toys-R-Us catalogs that they handed out at Ladies’ Night. They used Canva to create the guide and handed out 200 printed copies at schools and events.

Bonus idea: Include a tear-off Christmas wish list for kids (and parents) to fill out at home with your store’s branding!

One member emphasized the importance of creating clear organizational charts to define roles and responsibilities, especially as your team grows. As a legacy owner taking over a store that has never used org charts or had job descriptions, managing 85 people was something that demanded a look into how to structure their organization while taking on a new store, high volume rental department, and even lumberyards. It all starts with the org charts and we’re hoping to gather some for folks to use as a template. Breaking teams into smaller, focused groups led by trained team leads helps with communication and accountability.

Core values are the foundation of a great team. Innovators agreed that hiring for personality and aligning with company values creates a more cohesive and productive workplace. Sometimes, firing those “grumpy hardware guys” who didn’t align with company values is the best way to reduce customer complaints and reinforce the importance of the core values as the north star for all employee related matters, good and bad. There was lobbying for wanting to give the team every opportunity to get on board with the core values prior to letting someone go. Sometimes creating an SOP within your employee handbook that has real life examples of how the core values are lived ‘in the aisle’ is valuable when talking through ideal behaviors. We left this topic with a motivating question to share with your team: “The train’s leaving the station—are you hopping on?”

When problems arise, it’s important to identify the root cause. Is the issue stemming from unclear processes or individual performance? One innovator reminded everyone that narrowing this down helps to avoid having to judge people and a specific situation that may be hard to interpret and help to efficiently get everyone involved to use similar language in getting to the root of the issue. When it’s a process issue and there isn’t one, department leads should create them and add them to your SOP’s. When it’s a people issue, department leads are taught to identify which core value is in misalignment with the person involved and is there a way forward through the lens of that core value.

Reducing taxable liability is a top priority for many as the year closes. We talked about strategies like dumping underperforming SKUs and implementing profit-sharing plans to offset taxes without impacting cash flow. We’ll dig into this one alongside what to do with permanent staff in the slow season at December’s meeting.