1) What is the biggest challenge facing retailers today?
Attracting and retaining top talent. This has been the biggest challenge facing retailers in all industries for the past decade and there's no sign of it letting up anytime soon. The "people" aspect of the business is particularly crucial in the convenience store industry since most consumers view it as a commodity industry. When it comes to store design, product offering, hours of operation, and retailing and merchandising, there is very little that distinguishes one retailer, and/or brand from another. In the customer's mind: everyone is the same. That being the case, the people behind the transaction counter are the differentiator.

To attract and retain the top talent, retailers must focus on 3-key aspects of their business:
Recruiting process
Interviewing process
Store culture

Each component is closely integrated with the other, and must work in harmony as a whole.

2) How do I reduce employee turnover?
Improve your interview process. Without question, the success of your company depends upon choosing the right people for your team. Hiring affects profits in more ways than most companies realize. A Harvard Business School study determined that more than 75% of turnover could be traced back to poor hiring practices. The leading contributor to turnover is often not what happens after the employee is hired, but rather the process leading up to it. Most retailers view the interview process as a single event: the interview. When in actually the interview process is a 3-step phase: Pre-Interview, Interview, and Post-Interview. The most important phase is the Pre-Interview: where, as the saying goes "preparation meets opportunity."

3) What exactly is behavior-based interviewing?
Behavior-based interviewing is based on the premise that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. Thus, how someone has acted or responded in the past is probably how they will handle themselves in the future. Behavior-based questions require the applicant to tell stories about how they handled specific situations in the past; situations that are comparable to those they will face in the position you're interviewing for. This systematic approach helps reduce employee turnover by selecting applicants whose demonstrated competencies, skills and motivations match the key competencies, skills, and abilities required for success:

Here's an example:
Typical interview question: "Why do you want to work in a convenience store?" Behavior-based question: "Describe a time when you had to resolve a conflict with a customer"

4) How do I motivate my employees to do a better job?
Motivation is not something you do to someone. Motivation is an individual-specific emotion that comes from within the individual, not someone else. It's the role of leadership (i.e. store manager/owner) to create the type of work environment where individual motivation is activated.

Here are a few tips to stimulate motivation:

Provide on-going training.
Involve employees in every aspect of the business. This engenders a sense of ownership.
Supervisors should be coaches vs. bosses.
Reward and recognize good performance: a pat on the back and a sincere "thank you!"
Treat each employee as an individual. Treating everyone the same doesn't work, because people are not the same. This in turn leads to loyalty.

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