How do you stop a downward spiral?

I've worked with retailers that have been going through a downward spiral and struggling to address it. By a downward spiral, I mean a drop in sales, that ends up with a cut in staffing, that in itself prompts a drop in sales and so on. There are other symptoms that usually go with the spiral, and they include-

*Low staff morale

*High staff turnover

*Low customer satisfaction

*Uncompleted tasks

*Low personal morale (the business owner)

Obviously this combination of factors can be pretty poisonous for a retail organisation - or any organisation for that matter.

Dealing with it at any given point in the timeline is difficult, but not being there every day with your team in the shop floor may well mean that you miss a lot of the warning signs above and end up dealing with it when it's festered for a while. Having to deal with it at this's the stage is much more difficult as you will now be dealing with some of the after-effects of the problem as well as the problem itself.

So, how do you stop the problems from getting any worse?

I've worked with single independent retailers and in national High Street chains and the first step in any of these organisations is to communicate effectively with your team. Spending time with the team on the shop floor may seem like an obvious solution but it definitely is the start of the process. Talking to your team in their everyday roles and everyday setting is a great place to start. And a large part of your communication technique here needs to be listening. You need to be able to find out the feelings of your team and there's no better place to do it. At the same time you are doing this, it's also the ideal place to communicate the plans for the organisation - to let your team know about the past changes and any changes to come. These open lines of communication change the way that the organisation and you are viewed by the team.

Of course, communication on its own won't be able to turn around morale and solve all the problems. In partnership with this, the team needs the feeling that things are turning around. If the store or company is feeling like it's still spiralling downwards, then even effective, positive communication may struggle to stem the negative feelings. At this point, every small victory needs to be celebrated. A new contract, a big sale, a particularly good piece of customer service - anything that has a positive feel to it. Celebrate these small wins with the person responsible and the whole team. This feeling of small positives will start to chip away at the previous negative vibes and start to get the team feeling better about themselves.

If you find yourself in this situation, either as the owner of a retailer or as part of the store management team of a larger retailer then I feel for you. But I think that by flowing the above steps, you can start to put positives in the eyes of your team and turn things around.