It’s called retail sales for a reason, right? It’s because it’s about sales, but you’re not going door to door, cold-calling or writing things on the internet to persuade people to buy. If you’re a retail manager, it’s your job to control the environment that gets people to buy your operation’s product.

Part of that has to do with merchandising, which is how you market your products or present them to the world. The other part of that has to do with people.

Operations is a joke. A lot of my reports consider me to be one of the best managers they ever worked for, and I didn’t do a single thing pertaining to operations unless someone twisted my arm.

Who do you think I was trying to impress? My bosses or the people who worked for me?

I never coached someone for their attendance unless I “had” to. I never even looked at people’s attendance. When I did it was because the store manager or a co-manager was harping on me to do it. Then I would spend about 5 minutes APPROVING EVERYTHING!

Screw the policy book. It’s a known fact a lot of Walmart associates hate their jobs. Who the hell is some policy book to tell them how many days they can call in? As long as they did an acceptable job while they were there…

I thought of stuff like checking the fire alarms as a chance to spend time and learn stuff from the Safety Lead or his boss, the Asset Protection Coordinator.

My ZS was a lot better at writing schedules than I was, so guess who wrote my schedules? My ZS wrote my schedules or fixed the ones I screwed up most of the time.

You bet your hind quarters I rarely, if ever, gave a wit about what my bosses thought of me.

But I cared A LOT about the people who worked for me. And it showed.

Most of my bosses liked me, too.

You can learn a lot by walking around a Walmart and analyzing the way the store is set-up. You can learn a lot if you’re willing to think about why retail operations like Walmart do the things that they do.

One of my favorite novels starts with a phrase something like “Now square all the edges!” People are attracted to things that look neat and orderly, including the shelves at your store. If the shelves are a mess, people start thinking about well golly jee, what else about this place is messed up? If I have a problem in this store, will the people who work here even give a crap about helping me? Your customers will second guess doing business with you over something that seems really stupid and insignificant, like keeping your shelves clean and your products lined up nicely.

Maybe you thought “zoning” was stupid before. I hope you realize how important it is now.

That’s a huge part of making a store appealing to customers. Everyone these days has low prices. Everyone claims to have great customer service. Everyone claims to be good at what they do. How do your differentiate yourself from other stores, including other stores in your chain? You do it with superior customer service, which starts with providing a clean and safe place for your customers to shop.

And you know what? If I’m writing sales copy, I try to make it as neat and orderly as possible. I try to write my copy so that it helps the person reading make a GOOD buying decision, one that’s going to please him. I took that from staring at and thinking hard about what Walmart wants of its shelves…

The part about customer service a lot of people forget is making it all about your customers. A lot of managers talk about what YOU have to do, what YOU should say, how YOU should act. When they do this, they forget that customer service has nothing to do with the people staffing the store and everything to do with the customers who come in through the front door.

What I’m saying is that retail managers everywhere would do a lot better to forget about telling their staff what to do and instead focus on telling their staff about what their customers are feeling. If you give your people a good idea of what they’re up against, they will make the right decisions without you having to lead them by the hand and tell them exactly what to do all of the time. This frees your time up to do more important things, like talk to people and make them feel good about what they’re doing for you.

Customers don’t care if you’re having a bad day. They don’t have time for your excuses. They spend a lot of time getting up, getting dressed, checking their bank accounts, getting in the car, gassing up the car, and driving to your shop to buy the things they need to keep their lives humming along. Maybe getting up is hard for them. Maybe driving is hard. Hell, walking through the parking lot can be hard on a lot of people. Having to appear in public is hard on a lot of people. But they go through all of that just to come and see you, to buy the stuff on your shelves.

A big part of customer service is appreciating all of the effort your customers make to come and see you. They deserve an experience that’s all about them, regardless of how you feel about your day or the trajectory of your own life. You should feel honored when you’re at work and someone asks, “Hey, can you help me?”

They’re asking for your expertise. You’re obligated to give them your best.

Fact: You’re going to fail sometimes. Some customers are beyond help, but that doesn’t give you carte blanche to let it ruin the rest of your day. Even if you can’t help someone with exactly what they need for some reason, you can always help them with a positive attitude and dialogue that makes it about THEM and NOT YOU.

If someone is wearing a cute shirt, take the time to tell them what you think. If a customer walks up out of nowhere, and she looks like she spent some time on her hair this morning, let her know that you think her hair looks stunning. A good 90% of people will forgive you for not knowing the answer to their question if you take a minute to notice something about them that they care about.

The whole point is to make your customers feel good. If you can’t get them what they really want, give them something you know they want. I know for a fact that everyone on earth likes to feel good about themselves, whether they know it yet or not. If they don’t know that’s what they want, you’re probably going to be one of the first people they’ve ever met who shows them how good it feels!

You really should be honored, even if you’re slaving away for $9/hr in the women’s apparel section of your local Walmart.

It takes a lot of effort, observation and humility to do this. But it’s worth it because it will keep your customers coming back. It will also make you feel really good about yourself if you make a habit out of it, promise.

Let’s say you’re a manager though. Let’s say you get a huge list of tasks every morning that have to be completed by the end of the day or else you’re a “bad manager.” It’s your job to sell these tasks to the people who are going to end up doing them. How do you sell an overnight mod reset to a team you’re already pushing too hard? How do you sell downstacking pallets to the kid in the back who seems like he hates everything on earth but mostly himself? How do you sell stocking shelves to your overworked and underpaid night crew?

This is how you do it. First thing’s first, forget yourself. You don’t exist. Your needs get tossed in the dumpster. What you need to focus on is what your people need to do the best job they can for you. What do your people need? They need the right tools, obviously. Stuff like pallet jacks, inventory machines, printers, labels, fixtures, shelves, etc. That’s all kid stuff.

But they need a whole lot more! They really need to feel good about themselves and what they’re doing. They don’t even need to like you personally for you to make them feel good about themselves. Even if they crack jokes about how stupid you are the second you leave, that gets them feeling good about themselves – and they will do a better job for it.

Tell stupid jokes. Act silly. Be outrageous. Make them laugh because laughing feels good, even if it’s at your expense. You have no reason working with people if you can’t take a joke.

If something has to be explained more than once, figure out different ways to explain it – using different words – until they’re comfortable enough to get started. If they need you to “do the first one” so they can copy what you did, then by all means do the first one and let them watch. As a manager, it’s your job to think about these things. Repeating yourself in a different tone of voice isn’t going to get you anywhere. Refusing to actually work alongside your people isn’t going to get you anywhere, either.

Compliment your people. Don’t tell them shit like “Appreciate ya!” or “Good job” unless you really mean it. And remember the more often you repeat the same praise, the less it means to your people. They can tell when you’re full of crappola. They’re not stupid people just because they work at Walmart for piker wages. A lot of them are actually really damned smart, they’re just too afraid to do anything with it.

Mostly because people have been beating them down all their lives, emotionally and sometimes physically. That’s a shame.

A lot of people feel unworthy and never capitalize on their talents. Treating them like they’re stupid or incapable will get you exactly the results you deserve. I’ve always said you can learn a lot from just about anyone as long as you’re wide open to the experiences you share with them.

Knowing someone is already afraid or anxious, why not try to ease their fears and anxiety instead of putting them down or being short with them? If someone feels unworthy, build them up by recognizing what’s awesome about them… and then emphasize that.

One time one of my cashiers came in with her hair down, wearing the most stunning earrings. I actually noticed how good she looked before I noticed who she was. I made sure to tell her how great those earrings made her face look. I don’t care how much money you have, you cannot buy that kind of allegiance from someone or that kind of happiness for someone. It has to come from the heart.

Another time it was really, really busy, probably around Christmas time, and every single register was open with a line running into apparel. I interrupted every single cashier, looked them in the eyes, and personally thanked them for their hard work. Point-blank, no fluff, just the honest truth.

It took me about 20 minutes to get through all of them, but it was time well spent as far as I was concerned.

You don’t have to be a poet or have any kind of way with words. All you have to do is make it sincere and positive. More power to you if you can add a bit of verve with the words you use or a little bit of theatre with your body-language. Otherwise just smile and say what’s on your mind that they need to hear, and they will love you dearly and do anything you need them to do.

What does this have to do with other kinds of sales? Sales is about helping people to make purchasing decisions. Everything from the way you treat your people to the way they stock the company’s shelves goes towards helping your customer make their purchasing decisions. If you do a poor job, that will help your customers to decide not to come back. If you do a great job, that will help your customers make the decision to come back more often for the things they need. The better you manage your people, the more your customers will keep coming back.

If you have money making ideas but no desire to help other people, you probably won’t make a lot of money. You will also hurt a lot of good people in the process.

Money making ideas plus a sincere appreciation for and desire to help other people is what makes businesspeople who “get it” rich beyond their wildest imaginations.

It has nothing to do with YOU. It’s all about CUSTOMERS!

I left Walmart back in February because managing Walmart was NOT the life for me. It’s pretty obvious to me at this point that I am a writer. I started this blog to tell stories and to keep myself semi-sane. Nobody has ever really accused me of being sane. Insanity, alcoholism, and drug abuse come with my territory, the territory of being a writer.

For the longest time, probably since the day I discovered it, I doubted my talent. I never thought I was good enough. The fact of the matter is I’ve been writing in some capacity pretty much compulsively, part time for the past 20 years. At this point, whether you like my stuff or not, I am pretty damned good at writing.

I’ve invested A LOT of money and time into developing my writing talent. It’s time for me to earn a return on that investment. I really feel like this is not something I chose, that it chose me. It’s a calling. I have tried to forget that this is what I am and do other things, like retail management, and driven myself fucking crazy and miserable beyond all recognition in the process. I even tried to join the Army once, and I thank God now that that didn’t work out the way I wanted it to at the time.

I’m not really a blogger. This was a sanity project more than anything else. I figured out recently I can use the same skills I use to pick up girls and make friends to sell things on behalf of other people. I was a wannabe novelist, a wannabe Army Ranger, a wannabe professor, a wannabe poet, a wannabe songwriter, and a fine retail manager before I finally figured out that I’m a copywriter. I love direct response marketing and smart branding. I especially love long-form copy that uses compelling storytelling to move its audience to buy. It took me a long time, but these days I have enough knowledge of myself to claim to have a clue. I catch on to the small stuff pretty quick, but I’m kind of a slow learner when it comes to the big stuff.

I was clueless about pretty much everything when I started at Walmart. I learned a lot working there. I grew up a lot. The experience helped me figure out a lot about myself.

Like what? How about a for instance? I used to think I hated people. The only reason I didn’t like people is I had a lot of bad experiences with people being mean to me whenever I decided to be myself. And I used to care deeply about what those people thought, and I would spend days and days and days thinking about what kinds of things those people believed that made them think it was OK to treat me like that. I spent a lot of time brooding and thinking and figuring people out. I took that to Walmart, added confidence, did quite well, saw the extent to which I influenced people, and fell in love with people in general.

Two things in particular that I did at Walmart make me feel really proud of myself. I had something to do with at least two associates leaving Walmart for different jobs. There was an associate who seemed cool and had just finished getting her CNA cert, so I introduced her to someone who does that kind of work, who hired her away from Walmart. I got a friend of mine an interview at my summer/day job, and he quit Walmart today to come and spend the summer trying something different and using the opportunity very much the same way I do, to network and to learn new things.

He’s taking a pay cut to come and work where I work. A lot of Walmart managers have a hard time leading and retaining talented, motivated, entrepreneurial people. I do not, fortunately. We are living proof of that.

I make money writing sales copy, but my day job keeps me from drinking too much and going crazy. I’m a “delivery boy” at an event rental company. I get to get dirty, move heavy shit around, operate equipment, and drive big, yellow trucks all around the state on my employer’s dime. I don’t get hassled there. I have a ton of autonomy to do my job the way I want to do it, to dress how I want to dress, to talk how I want to talk. I have ZERO management stress because I don’t have to manage anything. The only stress I feel is when my muscles hurt, but that’s cool because all they do at that point is get stronger. Some of my best ideas come to me when I’m cruising down the highway in a box truck, spaced out and thinking about falling in love with beautiful women. It’s what I do. I like what I do.

I’m talented. I’m smart. I have a unique and valuable skillset and an eccentric, zany, DGAF personality that complements it. I don’t just make this shit up. This is what my clients keep telling me. They tell me with MONEY, which means a hell of a lot more to me than the words that come out of other people’s mouths. I understand society a plenty and have no desire at this point to waste any more time trying to earn its acceptance.

I don’t want to spend my life looking for the perfect job, working for someone else. I have two jobs. I’m a writer by night and drive trucks by day. How did I get into writing? I was born this way. I went to university, flunked out of engineering school, and took an English degree instead. If degrees mean anything to you, that’s that, meaning I have the actual credentials to call myself a “man of letters.” I work for lots of people. Instead of working for a boss, I work for my customers, and that is infinitely more satisfying to me. Instead of worrying about how to keep my job, I spend most of my time thinking about how to do a better job on behalf of my customers.

If you hire me to do a job, you’re #1 in my book. Your account means a lot to me, more than almost anything else on Earth. It’s not about the money so much as it is about other people seeing real value in the work that I love doing. I will happily turn myself inside out for you if you’re paying me to write. I love it that much.

I learned that at Walmart, too. You know a lot of people who work at Walmart don’t know anything about Walmart’s 3 Basic Beliefs. I will probably always remember them because they’re a part of living a good life for me. I bet a quick Google search would reveal them to you or remind you of them. They have to do with Respect, Service, and Excellence.

I took all of that to heart. I’m not saying you should, too. I’m just saying that it works for me.

Another thing I took to heart is the Patton quote where he said “Always do more than what is required of you.”

And simple things, like happiness, are more important to me than money. I’m happy when I’m doing what I’m doing right now. I’m happy when I’m cruising down the highway in a box truck, and my brain goes completely blank for half an hour at a time. It’s like Xanax without the Xanax, and it keeps me about as sane as I will ever be.

This summer is going to be a lot of fun.

The point of the blog isn’t the blog.

The blog is a pre-write. It’s the writing that comes before the real shit.

Things are about to get a whole lot more interesting.

What you’re reading is part of a larger process.

If this is your first visit, try some of the older stuff:

The first post

Walmart shit I didn’t care about at the time, 1 of 3

How to get a job at Walmart

Calling corporate wastes everyone’s time, mostly yours

Fucking in the freezers

I broke a Gemini into a hundred pieces