Boone: Most people who work in retail don't sell. They try to do one thing, and that is make sure that nobody ever accuses them of being a pushy salesperson. The lamest question in retail is, "Can I help you?" We all know that anyone who asks that question is the last person who can really help us. The man in the desert reminds us that selling and service are the same thing. If the customer walks out of the store empty-handed, he's not happy. If he walks out with a bunch of stuff that's exactly what he needs, you've helped him in the truest sense of the word.
Intuition comes to a prepared mind.
boone: Intuition is the sum total of your life experience. So why on earth would you want to leave it at home in the morning before you come in to work? Intuition is vital to the empowered employee, but intuition certainly doesn't come to the unprepared mind. The more knowledgeable you are, the better informed you are, the better prepared you are to use your intuition.
Tindell: The fact is, we don't sell Bounty paper towels or Coca-Cola Classic. We sell complicated stuff like those Elfa storage systems, which are measured in meters, for God's sake. But selling stuff that's hard to sell is a key business strategy for us. It ends up giving us incredible differentiation from other retailers, because they just can't seem to sell the hard stuff. That's why we give our first-year employees 235 hours of training, as opposed to the industry average of 7 hours. How is the company going to recoup this fantastic investment? By encouraging everyone to be brave enough to use their instincts and intuition at work. Don't ever worry about making mistakes. We've made millions of them over the past 30 years. If you use your training to apply your intuition in a way that works for you, you will provide legendary customer service.
Flexibility is the key to retail.
tindell: Retail is very situational. We take planning very seriously, but there's no way to predict exactly what our customers will need at 10:30 tomorrow morning. That's why you have to have the ability to flex and adapt and come up with a solution that will work at that particular moment. We don't believe in big, thick rule books, because they tie people up in knots. Staying flexible results in a much higher level of customer service, while these foundation principles will make it easier for us to operate as a team -- as opposed to 2,000 yahoos going off in 2,000 different directions.
Boone: When we open tomorrow, we'll see retail in its purest essence. There's nothing better than when the store is just swarming with people. That's when retail is the most fun. So let's go out there and have some fun.
Postscript: Thirty-six hours later, after the opening day's receipts were tallied, there came some disappointing news: The store fell short of its $125,000 sales target, due in large part to a true San Francisco tradition: a massive peace march, which nearly shut down the city's Union Square shopping district. But even that setback failed to wipe away staffers' smiles. As any resilient retailer will tell you, there's always tomorrow.
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