By
Bob Phibbs
Updated September 5, 2024
You’ve met her …or him before as a customer …the employee who knows everything.
Who condescends to help you if they feel like it.
Whose unhappiness with their lives spills over onto the sales floor and unsuspecting customers.
I believe the root of the problem is that these toxic teammates have lost any curiosity about your customer, your products, and their jobs.
These are usually your senior employees (not defined by age but by how long they have worked for you), for whom everything in their workday has become predictable.
They've seen it before. They know how to play the game.
They know exactly who will buy …and who is kicking tires.
They think new products are just a remake of something else…and not much better.
They arrive three minutes before the store opens and leave on the dot at 5 p.m...…even if you are open until 6 p.m.
They hide behind a title like manager or senior assistant, which they think gives them a get-out-of-jail-free card for helping customers—I mean truly helping them.
They don’t see their attitude as anything less than exemplary, but everyone else is poorly trained or a mis-hire.
If you’ve got someone like this or several…
If you are tired of banging your head against the brick wall they have erected..
If every time you talk with them you get, I have my own way of doing things...
Something has to change.
Talk with them, give them a written evaluation and a couple of days to correct it…or else.
One of the most frequently asked questions I hear from business owners is, "How can I get staff who have worked in my store for a while to embrace new retail sales training?"
If I had but one piece of advice to give you to increase your sales, it would be that you need to develop your own curiosity about other people…and hire people who you can help develop their curiosity as well.
Like I said above, Toxic Teammates have no desire to do that.
Customers buy more when you make them laugh or consider something in a way they never had before. Engaging with a great salesperson changes their mindset, and they are open to buying.
The customer becomes a partner in the sales process, not a pawn.
While they may have originally met a stranger, they leave feeling they had met a buddy. The only way that happens is if the employee they met was curious about them.
If you are dealing with a senior staff member (again, they've been there awhile, not their age) who may be oblivious to how jaded they have become, go through a sale and show them how and where a customer lost interest. Get them to see what you see, then ask how you could have done it differently.
Did they even realize what was going on? Did they care?
If not, you have some firing to do...and then some hiring.
See also, Retail Sales Training: How to Get Started and What to Expect
In Sum
If you are reading this and recognize some toxic traits in your store, there's still time. The thing that you need to work on is developing curiosity. You’ll be 90% ahead of your competitors if you serve customers with curiosity.
If you can develop your employees always to be curious, you’ll have long-term employees who will never be seen as uncaring Toxic Teammates.
You can build a business with their talents.
