The department manager, the driving force behind a team

Responsible for managing and motivating their team, the department manager plays a key role in ensuring positive results for the companies within the Group.

 

Competition
All department managers agree that achieving objectives and targets provides essential motivation in their daily work. In their opinion, competition between stores and competitive pressures have a positive effect, in that companies from different groups compare their monthly sales volumes and this motivates the teams to try even harder.

 

Time management
Leading their team takes up almost 60% of department managers’ time, while management, organisation and sales account for the remaining 40%. Managers sometimes feel that this breakdown leaves too little time for activities aimed at boosting sales, such as special operations. Delegation is essential. Department managers need to meet suppliers, liaise with product management to obtain authorisations, collaborate with the marketing department to send out mail shots, put up posters, and so on. In general, centralised purchasing is freeing managers from certain tasks and giving them more time to devote to management and sales.

 

Customer contact
The sales aspect is crucial.
Department managers must lead by example and be experts in sales techniques as well as selling guarantees and credit agreements. They must also pay close attention to customers’ wishes and criticisms, since customers are the driving force behind improvements. Monitoring customer perception is important, in particular in view of changing behaviour. Today’s customers have greater access to information, for example through the Internet, and are more aware of competitive practices. When a customer visits a store, he or she has very specific expectations in terms of price, service, competence and welcome. All of these elements combine to trigger a purchase. Against this background, a department manager’s role is to instil a customer culture in his or her team in order to make the company stand out from its competitors. They must anticipate customers’ needs. A Fnac department manager explained “A customer who buys a DVD player without a SCART socket or a printer without a USB cable is a missed sales opportunity. Selling accessories and services is essential. We repeat this to our teams every day”.

 

Areas for improvement
There is still room for improvement in terms of organisation and management.
At Conforama, they plan to improve organisation between departments, in particular between merchandising and display restocking. A project is underway to transfer responsibility for restocking displays to the inventory department. Others want to focus their efforts on management to develop sales and increase the sales conversion rate for customer visits. However, the priority for everyone is training in sales techniques.