de a huge difference.

•Acknowledge the hits and learn from the misses:

Martin Broadwell said that praise is the bullet- proof vest for front-line service personnel. It’s important to praise swiftly when staff have done a good job. Conversely, it is vital for new associates, as well as existing ones, to learn from their mistakes.

I remember my young son (Ben, 4) admonishing me one morning when I laid his clothes out wrong. They should have been upside down because, “you hav

For many years my family owned one of the most influential retail wine operations in the country. Maria was our Italian wine expert, and she loved Italian wines, as well as many other varieties (actually only Italian wines, come to think of it!). To her, Italy wasn’t the center of the fashion world; it was, without question, the center of the food and wine universe!

Maria left our company to work at a wine importer. The company had an exquisite portfolio of Italian wines. She was excited to try her hand at selling. Her first six weeks were terrible. Her boss was all over the board, hot and cold, good and bad, reversing herself, unpredictable. And she was consistently inconsistent. She changed direction almost every day. Poor Maria didn’t know whether she was coming or going.

This situation is all too common in business today. Part of “Hitting the Grand Slam” with customers is hitting home runs, every day, for your associates. To truly create a winning, customer-focused team, you must motivate and make it fun for everybody. Taking care of your internal customers, the staff puts them in a frame of mind to take care of the external customers, and the results are more sales and higher profits.

Here are a few easy ways to do this:

•Don’t throw them out there on the first day without training. The Ritz Carlton understands that an employee is never more shapeable than on their first day.

The Container Store trains people for 120 hours before they ever set foot in a store. Other legendary companies understand how important it is to train and support new people. In the case of our Italian diva, her boss’s erratic behavior left Maria feeling frustrated and de-moralized. The feeling is not uncommon. According to a recent study of 1.2 million employees of Fortune 100 companies, 85 percent of employees have a significant decline in job satisfaction and morale after 6 months.

Clear direction from Maria’s boss would have made a huge difference.

•Acknowledge the hits and learn from the misses:

Martin Broadwell said that praise is the bullet- proof vest for front-line service personnel. It’s important to praise swiftly when staff have done a good job. Conversely, it is vital for new associates, as well as existing ones, to learn from their mistakes.

I remember my young son (Ben, 4) admonishing me one morning when I laid his clothes out wrong. They should have been upside down because, “you have

cited to try her hand at selling. Her first six weeks were terrible. Her boss was all over the board, hot and cold, good and bad, reversing herself, unpredictable. And she was consistently inconsistent. She changed direction almost every day. Poor Maria didn’t know whether she was coming or going.

This situation is all too common in business today. Part of “Hitting the Grand Slam” with customers is hitting home runs, every day, for your associates. To truly create a winning, customer-focused team, you must motivate and make it fun for everybody. Taking care of your internal customers, the staff puts them in a frame of mind to take care of the external customers, and the results are more sales and higher profits.

Here are a few easy ways to do this:

•Don’t throw them out there on the first day without training. The Ritz Carlton understands that an employee is never more shapeable than on their first day.

The Container Store trains people for 120 hours before they ever set foot in a store. Other legendary companies understand how important it is to train and support new people. In the case of our Italian diva, her boss’s erratic behavior left Maria feeling frustrated and de-moralized. The feeling is not uncommon. According to a recent study of 1.2 million employees of Fortune 100 companies, 85 percent of employees have a significant decline in job satisfaction and morale after 6 months.

Clear direction from Maria’s boss would have made a huge difference.

•Acknowledge the hits and learn from the misses:

Martin Broadwell said that praise is the bullet- proof vest for front-line service personnel. It’s important to praise swiftly when staff have done a good job. Conversely, it is vital for new associates, as well as existing ones, to learn from their mistakes.

I remember my young son (Ben, 4) admonishing me one morning when I laid his clothes out wrong. They should have been upside down because, “you hav

er-focused team, you must motivate and make it fun for everybody. Taking care of your internal customers, the staff puts them in a frame of mind to take care of the external customers, and the results are more sales and higher profits.

Here are a few easy ways to do this:

•Don’t throw them out there on the first day without training. The Ritz Carlton understands that an employee is never more shapeable than on their first day.

The Container Store trains people for 120 hours before they ever set foot in a store. Other legendary companies understand how important it is to train and support new people. In the case of our Italian diva, her boss’s erratic behavior left Maria feeling frustrated and de-moralized. The feeling is not uncommon. According to a recent study of 1.2 million employees of Fortune 100 companies, 85 percent of employees have a significant decline in job satisfaction and morale after 6 months.

Clear direction from Maria’s boss would have made a huge difference.

•Acknowledge the hits and learn from the misses:

Martin Broadwell said that praise is the bullet- proof vest for front-line service personnel. It’s important to praise swiftly when staff have done a good job. Conversely, it is vital for new associates, as well as existing ones, to learn from their mistakes.

I remember my young son (Ben, 4) admonishing me one morning when I laid his clothes out wrong. They should have been upside down because, “you hav

efore they ever set foot in a store. Other legendary companies understand how important it is to train and support new people. In the case of our Italian diva, her boss’s erratic behavior left Maria feeling frustrated and de-moralized. The feeling is not uncommon. According to a recent study of 1.2 million employees of Fortune 100 companies, 85 percent of employees have a significant decline in job satisfaction and morale after 6 months.

Clear direction from Maria’s boss would have made a huge difference.

•Acknowledge the hits and learn from the misses:

Martin Broadwell said that praise is the bullet- proof vest for front-line service personnel. It’s important to praise swiftly when staff have done a good job. Conversely, it is vital for new associates, as well as existing ones, to learn from their mistakes.

I remember my young son (Ben, 4) admonishing me one morning when I laid his clothes out wrong. They should have been upside down because, “you hav

de a huge difference.

•Acknowledge the hits and learn from the misses:

Martin Broadwell said that praise is the bullet- proof vest for front-line service personnel. It’s important to praise swiftly when staff have done a good job. Conversely, it is vital for new associates, as well as existing ones, to learn from their mistakes.

I remember my young son (Ben, 4) admonishing me one morning when I laid his clothes out wrong. They should have been upside down because, “you have to do it wrong to do it right”, he said. His shirts had to be backwards and upside down for him to put them on correctly. Our associates do things wrong all the time. Usually, they do things wrong before they do them right. It’s so important to learn from those experiences.

•Set high expectations.

If you set high expectations, and explain those expectations to all your associates, you will get high performance. Conversely, if you don’t expect much, you won’t get much. This has been my experience in 19 years of business. There were many times when the moment we raised the bar of someone’s expected performance, their effort and subsequently their results improved dramatically.

Whatever happened to Maria? Her boss was re-assigned. The new supervisor knew how to motivate and make it fun, and her territory results have gone up significantly.