Invest in your best people

Columnist Peter Smith writes that jewelers should spend time and energy on their top performers and not neglect them in favor of helping weaker players improve.

Michelle Graff michelle.graff@nationaljeweler.com

Peter Smith, author of “Hiring Squirrels: 12 Essential Interview Questions to Uncover Great Retail Sales Talent,” has spent 30 years building retail sales teams and has worked in wholesale as well. He can be reached at Dublinsmith@yahoo.com

I had dinner with a former colleague of mine recently and, as I drove home, I was thinking about how much time she and I had spent working on projects together during the years we breathed the same professional air.

I certainly liked and respected her but, even though she had been to my home a time or two over the years, we did not move in the same social circles. We have kids; she does not. Her golf game is really important to her; staying away from the golf course helps to preserve my sanity. Seriously, you should see my game.

Like me, her husband is very much into music, though I expect his Sinatra collection is probably a good deal lighter than my library of songs by Ol’ Blue Eyes. Like my wife, her husband also is in the business but, again, not in such a way as we would all interact with any degree of regularity.

So why did I engage in so many interesting and important projects with this woman? Why did I invest my time in her much more so than with our other colleagues? Quite simply, it was because she was the best. She had a demonstrated track record of superlative performance through the years and that pedigree greatly increased the likelihood of a success on any project with which she was likely to be involved.

Without really knowing why I was doing it, I would regularly invest my time and energy on projects that she deemed worthy of my attention. If she came to me and suggested that we had a business opportunity with an important client, I was all ears. If she told me that one of our higher-profile retailers was having some challenges then I would ready myself to engage in any way necessary. Those challenges weren’t any easier than the others. In fact, they may have been amongst the most demanding as they usually involved the highest-profile customers and/or the most difficult tasks.

While the upside of our efforts was always an important factor, we were always keenly aware that if our efforts were unsuccessful, the losses could be considerable.

Contrary to conventional thinking, I was spending time with my best people, not my weakest people. Instead of taking her competence for granted and moving on to employees who did not have that level of talent,

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I preferred to partner with her to tackle projects that gave us the very best opportunity for success.

Investing your time in your top people is counter-intuitive. Most of us are inherently drawn to try to help the weaker players to get better and, while some amount of development time and coaching for your weaker players is imperative, the very best use of your time as a manager is to ensure that you are connected to your best people to help them to do more of what they do well. Your business needs that, your customers need that, and your top people need that attention and recognition even though they are motivated, self-driven and accomplished.

Small percentage gains that come from your top people will very often far exceed big percentage gains from weaker performers. The return on investment from your stars also has a much more sustainable element to it than gains from your weaker people.

Every business has an inherent obligation to provide a route for improvement and growth for all its employees, both strong and weak. It is not only the right thing to you but investment in all your people serves the best interests of your customers and your business. The challenge for the manager of any business is to ensure that the time invested is commensurate with the anticipated return on that investment. No business can afford to have its managers spending 80 percent of their time with the bottom 20 percent of its salespeople.

One of the best business books I have ever read is First, Break All The Rules by Marcus Buckingham. In it, the author contends, “Great managers invest in their best because it is extremely productive to do so and actively destructive to do otherwise.” It might be human nature to want to help improve our weaker performers, but we ought not to do so at the expense of those who are driving the bus.

Peter Smith, author of Hiring Squirrels: 12 Essential Interview Questions to Uncover Great Retail Sales Talent, has spent 30 years building sales teams at retail and working with independent retailers to offer counsel and advice. He also has worked in both retail and wholesale with companies such as Tiffany & Co. and Hearts On Fire. He can be reached at Dublinsmith@yahoo.com and on LinkedIn.

Michelle Graffis the editor-in-chief at National Jeweler, directing the publication’s coverage both online and in print.