Presby-Musings

This is the second part of the blog post on some things I learned about business and leadership from my tenure as a "Sales Counsellor" at Circuit City (R.I.P.) 6.  Train Managers to Inspire, Not To Conspire CC managers were about as inspiring as an old shoe.  They were trained for one specific purpose:  to maximize profits.  We held them in fairly low esteem because not many of them could sell water to a man dying of thirst.  And even the ones who could, quickly became drones trying to keep their jobs and bonuses.  They seemed to conspire against us---making sure that we lived in the same kind of fear they were living in---rather than inspire us to greatness.  First of all, your business should not create toxic and ineffective managers.  The way you treat you mid-level staff is probably the way they will treat your front-line employees.  Secondly, there is always a fair amount of junk that managers will have to deal with that they sh...

I worked for Circuit City --a now defunct electronics chain---for two very long years.  I sold appliances mostly, but also was trained on selling small electronics, programming cellular phones (remember the Motorla "flip" phone?) and selling home audio equipment.  During my tenure at Circuit City I learned some invaluable lessons in organizational leadership that I have never forgotten.  Perhaps if these lessons had been evaluated by the Circuit City brass a few years ago, they would still have jobs. 1.  Care About Your Customers Needs, Not What You Need From Them .   As a Circuit City employee I quickly learned that my first priority was to sell products that paid the most commission  and that would make the company money.  Our desire was not to help the customer find what they needed, but to sell them something that had a higher "spiff," which was the slang for the commission sales people received.  We could see the spiff on every ...