Clean & Organize

“Clean and Organize”, while it sounds like simple common sense, there is nothing common about common sense and the simplest things can be the most profound.

  

Cleaning and Organizing can be the most powerful business practice you employ. If business is slow, clean and organize; if the weather is bad, clean and organize; if the country is in a recession, clean and organize; if you are bored, clean and organize. On the surface, the benefits may seem obvious: the store is cleaner, customers see you cleaning (positive perception), and things look better. But the real benefits of cleaning and organizing can be far greater. I have found thousands of dollars worth of ‘missing’ inventory while cleaning. More importantly, cleaning and organizing allows you to discover hidden assets, liabilities, and opportunities in your retail store (or any other business). Every basement, storeroom, shelving, closet, cabinet, drawer, and shelf in your store can reveal a hidden opportunity. Sometimes you will find old displays which can freshen up the shop, or products which have long been forgotten. But, the greatest benefit from cleaning and organizing is not the things you will find, but the potential ideas you will have. Nothing clears the mind like a fresh environment or good organization!

  

Whether you are a shop owner or manager who does this yourself or delegates, the rewards are always positive. Try to Clean & Organize and let us know if you discover anything special! Leave some comments on the blog or send us an email…. we would love to hear from you.

Retail Default Positions

   

According to the CRT Code of Ethics & Standards, a CRT must:

Merchandise all Luxury Tobacco Products with the same care and respect it took to create them.

  

Merchandising is the physical and visual language with which our products communicate with the customer; and it should be commensurate with the quality of the product and your store.

  

Special Merchandising involves creating a new display/arrangement which will capture the customer’s eye and generate a sale. Other times the effects of merchandising are more subtle, but it will convey that you have an organized, clean, and thoughtful approach to your products and profession. This type of Day-To-Day Merchandising has a powerful impact on your customers even if they do not consciously respond to it or acknowledge it. Good, Clean Merchandising projects professionalism. Haphazard and less-than-clean merchandising says ‘we don’t care enough’. I stress the word clean here with the intention of conveying two meanings; Clean can refer to uncluttered as well as not-dirty. Every Tobacconist knows that our stores are practically dust factories so it is imperative to keep lighters, cases, humidors, and other products polished and clean.

   

With these fundamentals already established, we can get to the heart of Default Positions and Retail Theater. In every store, every product, display, machine, chair, ashtray, and instrument has a home; a default position. Events, Receiving Inventory, Customers, and sales will all ‘disrupt’ organizational equilibrium. In fact, the unique nature of our business creates customers that ‘feel at home’ when they are in our shops. While this may be our customer service goal, it can also lead to messy stores. Customers move furniture, ashtrays, products, and anything else in order to accommodate themselves; but the ‘inmates cannot run the asylum’. So Tobacconists must be thoughtful and proactive about RESTORING DEFAULT POSITIONS. Without this attention to organization a Retail Tobacconist will degenerate into a flea market-like booth instead of the professional luxury retailer that it is.

   

In the theater, every actor and prop has a ‘mark’: a physical location where they must be at any given point in time. And Retail Tobacconists are no different. We must have predetermined strategies and layouts for our facilities to keep them from falling apart and running amok. This may seem like a small or frivolous point to a novice or inexperienced Tobacconist, but it is critical to Retail Theater. As a Retail Tobacconist with two stores, I can tell you that a big part of my job is teaching and enforcing Default Positions. If we did not do this successfully, the stores would begin to look like disheveled war zones.

   

Be disciplined about Restoring Default Positions, and if you don’t know where something belongs, ask someone who does. Put things where they belong and then you and your customers will know how to find them. Organization can really be the key to success, and with a little discipline, even disorganized people can become functional retailers. Otherwise, you might as well just sell stuff out of the back of a van*.

   

*No disrespect was meant to people who sell things out of their vans. In my teens I sold clothes and swimwear out of my van and found it to be fun and profitable. But, this guerrilla style approach to business was not nearly as fulfilling as being a Retail Tobacconist.

Tobacconist Whisperer

I like to think of Tobacconist Whisperer as my own little management theory, but in reality it has been borrowed from the original Horse Whisperer(s) and Dog Whisperer (Cesar Milan). It has taken me almost fifteen years to get to the point where I can use the Tobacconist Whisperer techniques and I am finding them just as valuable as anything I have ever learned from Peter Drucker, Ken Blanchard, Tom Peters, or any other management guru.

  
Tobacconist Whispering is the art and science of understanding natural human behaviors, instincts, and reactions; then using that knowledge to illicit desired actions from Tobacconists and Customers. Tobacconist Whispering is employed through Calm & Assertive behavior.
 
It is easy enough to understand that stress and angst lead to more stress and angst. A stressed manager will stress their Tobacconist who will in turn stress the customer. No matter how hard we try, our own dispositions and body language will affect and effect those around us.
 
For example, recently I walked into my Princeton store to find a Tobacconist on the floor trying to fix the fax machine while another was fussing with the credit card machine. The machinery had gone haywire and there were customers coming in and out of the store. Both of my Tobacconists had flustered and frustrated demeanors. One had their brow sweating and the other looked ready to strangle a chicken. I’m sure a decade ago this would have led me to get angry and frustrated as well. But I now know that all of these problems can and will be fixed; they are just machines after all. The only variable worth focusing on in this mini-catastrophe was the CUSTOMER. Our job is always to focus on the customer and not let anything get in the way of that. If you focus on the customer then you realize that nothing else matters. We must encourage that customer to come back through our good service and having two hysterical or frustrated Tobacconists does not help. So I walked into the shop and focused on being more CALM than ever, telling employees to RELAX and FOCUS ON THE CUSTOMER. I used my body language, tonal inflection, and words to CALM the situation and get everyone re-focused. If I had come in cursing, barking, or overly assertive it would have compounded the already downwardly spiraling situation.
 
The Tobacconist Whisperer techniques are about letting your mood and emotions set the tone for what you want out of people, and lead by example. Consider your employees (and customers) like your loved-ones and ask yourself: How do I want my loved-ones to be treated? What do I want my loved-ones exposed to? Treat them with calmness, respect, and fairness. You are in a position to create a perfect world for yourself and it starts by LEADING BY EXAMPLE.
 
Every retail Tobacconist knows that when it rains it pours. Often we are dealing with broken humidifiers, machinery problems, schedule changes, POS issues, and much more. All the while, we must provide a comfortable and hospitable environment for our customers: that burden/responsibility/honor rests on our shoulders, so we must lead by example.
 
And the Tobacconist Whisperer techniques work equally well on customers. Through our body language, tone, and words we can manage our customers as well. One of the first things I tell our Tobacconist Apprentices is that “You never know what a customer has been through on a particular day”. If someone comes in and is nasty or angry, that is OK. Perhaps they received terrible news that day or lost a loved one: these things happen every day. It is not our job to judge them, but rather to do our best to bring something pleasant and positive to their day. As humans, retailers, and Tobacconists we must be willing to accept and forgive in order to move forward. Conversely, if a customer is ever belligerent or too nasty, every one of my Tobacconists is authorized to throw them out forever; because no one deserves to be treated with disrespect. There is a lot of grey area here, but if you train and educate with the right values your Tobacconists should be able to make the right decision without letting their egos or emotions get in the way.
 
Ultimately, Tobacconist Whisperer is about being cool and collected under pressure; body language counts! With December and the holidays around the corner, these are excellent values to be reminded of. The ten days before Christmas are extraordinarily challenging for good retail Tobacconists: we handle ten times our usual traffic and try to maintain our own high standards, since we want those customers to come back during the year. Ironically, the majority of our holiday customers are the most challenging, question and doubt-filled customers: they are called SPOUSES. So my advice to myself and every other Tobacconist this year is buckle down, be cool, and focus on the customer. Everything else should take care of itself…

Jorge Armenteros, CMT