After Your Store Visit - 3 Things You Can Do to Take the Most From It

Store visits are the reality of life in retail. As I wrote in the last post, Store Visit: Be Ready to Tell Your Story, there are things you can do to prepare yourself for a visit in your store. Keep in mind, I believe few people, especially good leaders, ever want to go into a location and have a bad visit. They want to help, share experiences, and push the bar higher for the benefit of the team, the customer, and the Company. Whether you have a good store visit or a bad store visit, a long list or a short list, there are positives that can come from the experience. The learning from any visit is completely up to you.Knowledge transfer should always occur during a visit. Both ways. Keep an open mind to share ideas throughout your visit. They see a lot of locations, talk to a lot of people, and likely have information that is not broadly available yet. Listen objectively and assume positive intentions. After the visit is completed there are a few things you can do to ensure you get as much from the visit as possible, regardless of how you perceived the outcome.

Reflect

Replay the visit in your mind. What was said, what information was provided? What challenges were created? Justifications aside, can you approach some of the discussion from a new perspective? Remove the emotion and ask yourself, what is the take away from this or what can I do differently based on what I learned today? Take time to think about what was said and what praise or challenges were provided. Reflect on the conversations and output.

React

One way or the other you need to react to the visit. The best leaders take the information and share with their team and build a plan for what the next steps are. Even from a very positive visit, there is a reaction that comes from it. Share the praise. Share the recognition. There are likely some opportunities that can help to make you and the team even better at what you are doing. Take advantage of this. Avoid reacting in a punitive way. There may be some actions and behaviors that need to be addressed, but those were there before the visit. You need to address those anyway. Do not use the visit as the excuse to finally take action on those as that only serves to diminish your credibility as a leader. Take action on the information that was shared with you. Put it to good use to help make everyone better.

Re-engage

Sometimes after a visit there is a period of relief or in some cases denial or frustration. You need to get back in the saddle again, immediately. There can be no letdown. Take time to complete the first two steps, but then get back to your routine and what you stand for. As I said before, everyone has a bad visit or two in their careers. It is not the end of the world. Your Supervisor has a lot invested in you and will want to help you succeed.Your team and customers need you. Your attitude about anything, but especially a location visit, will ultimately determine where you go from this point. If you take the ideas from above and apply them objectively and unemotionally, you can move yourself and your team forward setting the stage for a better experience and improved results.How was your last visit?  What were your actions on the backside of the visit? Click here or on the comments button above to share your thoughts.