Melody Vonderbaan (co-founder & CEO, Max Retail) presents a short talk on motivating and retaining retail employees by classifying them as 'rocks' (steady, role-focused workers) or 'rock stars' (ambitious, development-seeking employees). She advises managers to identify each employee, lean into their strengths, give rock stars a clear development path (e.g., one-year proving period then skills coaching), maintain a balance of types in the team, and use simple rewards (free clothes, lunch, snacks) to keep rocks engaged.
Chapters
I'm Melody Vonderbaan, co founder and CEO at Max Retail, where we help retailers in the boutique hub get their wholesale cost back on past season inventory. But today I wanted to talk with you about how to motivate your employees. Because if there's anything we have in common, it's that we have employees. When I had my retail store for nine years, I had a lot of retailers that were friends of mine that would always say it's hard to find good talent. And you know what? It's true. But I can help you understand what talent you have and how to motivate them. You see, all employees are divided into two buckets. You have rocks and you have rock stars. When you're dealing with a rock, these are your foundational people. This might be the woman who's an amazing stylist. And, and she's just gonna come in style, style, style, and she's gonna go, she's never going to do the inventory. She's never going to run the payroll for you. Right? But she's great at selling. That's fine. And you know what? She's happy doing that. Maybe she drops her kids off at school, hangs out with you for a couple hours before she goes and picks them up, but she makes you money. She's a rock. A appreciate her for who she is and don't expect her to do other things. There are other kinds of rocks, and these rocks are the ones who are more administrative. They might love inventory. They might love things like creating the schedule. You know, all those things that the creatives don't like to do. And those people are important as well, right? So even if they're not your strongest salesperson, if they have a strength and they want to be consistent with doing that strength, lean in. Now, what is a rock star? A rock star is someone who always wants to be challenged. And you know what? They're probably going to fly the coop someday, and that's okay. What I did in my store is I encouraged my staff to say what they wanted to do or be in the next five years. And if they said, I want to be a buyer at Macy's, well, by golly, I was going to chart a path for them to be a buyer at Macy's. If they said that they wanted to be a stylist on sets, I'd be like, okay, what do we need for that? And so you need to know that you got a rock star on your hands. And what I used to say to my rock stars is, you prove yourself to me for One year, you're just going to do for me everything I say. You're going to show me that you are worth pouring into. And when they would step up, they would show up, they would learn everything I would teach them, they would totally absorb it. Then after a year, I would start to say, okay, now let's talk about all the skills you need to lead that dream job. And I would give them opportunities. My one gal, Olivia, she didn't know what she wanted to do when she came to me and she was a student at the local community college. Well, you know what? She was so inspired by her time at Blessed Boutique. And she kept saying, mel, what else? Mel, what else? She grew into my manager. She grew into my assistant buyer. She came on the buying trips with me. And those are things that you gotta do for your rock stars. If you put a rock star in your store and you just tell them sell or do inventory, but you never give them the chance to grow and to learn new skills, they're going to leave you. So you can get a rock star to stay with you for three, four, five years if you're constantly giving them more opportunity. Okay, so look at your stuff. You also need to know, do I have too many rock stars that are eventually going to leave me? Do I have too many rocks that maybe are steady, stable, but maybe I can't give them more challenges? You really need a steady balance in your store. So take inventory. Write the names of your employees. Are they a rock or a rock star? And then look for your gaps. Do you only have people who love to style and no one is passionate about inventory? Do you have people who are only passionate about inventory? And you're the only stylist that doesn't work? Figure out what you're missing and chart a path. And wait before we wrap it up. Reward your rocks. How do you reward your rocks? Give your rocks free clothes, Buy your rocks lunch. Stack the snacks in the back room, make them feel loved, and they will never leave you either.
