Part 5: Facebook is a great place to make announcements

Facebook is a great place to make announcements about one’s business and I am using it to ‘advertise’ for the people I need to run my new Family Shopper store. Having worked out a sales and cost budget for the new business I have decided that I need to employ 10 people. Some of these will be employed at my current store as I will be taking some of my established employees to the new store.

I placed a comment on both my personal and Premier Mo’s Convenience Store’s Facebook pages saying that application forms are available in the Coatshill Avenue store. There has been a brilliant response with nearly 50 people asking for a form on the first day. I will be using Facebook as part of my short listing process as applicants comments on their own FB page will give an indication to the type of person they are.

Once selected my new team they will need to be trained to ensure they work in the manner I need for my business. For me there is one word for describing how I will want them to behave, Pride. Pride in themselves, the job, the store and serving our customers. Getting this right from the start we will deliver the best customer experience that we can and that will ensure our customers return to the store regularly.

While I am investing a lot of time focusing on my new store I am not forgetting about my current business. As I will be spending much of my time at the new store I have decided to write down the job descriptions for my Coatshill Avenue shop employees. Having talked this over with my team and they are all happy with this. To assist with the future day to day running of the business I am developing a routine jobs diary that my staff will check off as tasks are done each day. This will mean that any member of the shop team will be able to see what needs doing. It will also help me to quickly see what’s happening when I pop in to the shop.

I am also refreshing all the shop notices like the Health and Safety and Work poster and the Tobacco Warning sign. Renewing any customer or employee facing signs that we have and encapsulating them before putting them up. Running alongside this is a complete clean of the entire store.

The new shop project is giving me the opportunity to leverage improvements in my original store. I am sure that it will mean that I will be able to have most of my time available to deliver success in my new venture!