“This bow is too quiet in my hand.”
“That buck is just too big to shoot.”
“I couldn’t possibly take more money than I am for my job.”
In the pantheon of things you’ll never hear anyone say, those three things sit high on the list.
Vocational compensation is a sticking point in the best of times. When you consider the economic turmoil of the last five years or so, it becomes even more magnified. Credit card debt is rising, home ownership is down, and everyone is feeling the pinch in their pocketbook.
This goes for the business as well. All the household expenses that are going up are going up for businesses, too. Inventory isn’t being stocked for less than it was in the past, and utilities, taxes, rent, they’ve all gone up.
While dealing with the reality of increasing overhead, shop owners are also faced with a labor force that needs more than ever to make ends meet. Increasingly, employers of all kinds are having to turn to non-traditional means to appeal to the candidates with the skills and know-how they are looking for in their workforce.
What kind of non-traditional compensation might work for your shop, to help you attract or retain the talent you need in your workforce?
Product Discounts
While one of the most common perks of working in any manner of retail environment, it certainly isn’t universal, and the extent of the discounts vary greatly from location to location, let alone industry to industry.
I’ve enjoyed as much as a 40% discount, and as insulting (yeah, I said it …) as 10%. Obviously you don’t want to take a loss selling to your employees, but especially in an archery shop context there are some second-order effects to a strong product discount program.
First and foremost, the best way to move the inventory you have on your shelves is to have advocates for the product working the floor. What better way to sell more arrows, broadheads, binoculars, bows or any other item than to have people in the shop talking about how they use the product and are happy with it.
Customers who come into your shop are often looking for input on what they should be buying. If they already knew and were just shopping for the best price, it’s very likely they can find it somewhere online, sadly.
Recognize the power of your floor staff by providing them an incentive that also works for you and the shop.
An effective floor staff that is using and promoting the products in inventory at your store helps facilitate sales. That increases overall revenue for the store, and becomes a rising tide that lifts all boats.
So, what should an effective discount incentive look like? Certainly, something as paltry as 10% seems to be as much a waste of time as an insult, but as mentioned, you don’t want to lose money either. Where is the good middle ground?
Provided it isn’t being abused, which is pretty easy to monitor, I have always been a proponent of extending a product discount to your employees at shop cost, with a few caveats.
First and foremost, abuse cannot be tolerated. Ideally, you’re hiring people you can trust who know this to be the case without it having to be said. Reality proves that isn’t always the case. This isn’t a program to get friends better prices, or start a competing dealership out of their trunk at the local swap meet. Requests should be formalized and monitored to avoid problems.
Another consideration should be that the store actually carries the item being ordered. As a retailer you have access to a great number more items than you actually carry. Some items may not make sense to stock for logistics purposes, and that may be okay to order ad hoc, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense for an order to be placed for a product that isn’t carried in the store, and actually competes with your standing inventory.
Again, having a system for these orders ensures that the product being ordered is appropriate and of value not only to the employee, but isn’t in conflict with what the store is carrying and trying to sell.
Product Bonuses
People like being given goals, reaching them, and getting recognition for doing so. Sure, you can unlock the doors every day and tell everyone to sell as much as they can, but that kind of unstructured, open-ended directive usually results in unstructured, open-ended results.
Are you doing performance reviews or evaluations with your employees? If the answer is no, that’s probably a problem all its own, but what better time to dangle a carrot than when setting goals and objectives for the coming quarter or year.
This can become a bit of a choose-your-own-adventure based on your employee. Maybe the entire team is competing for a bonus, or they each have their own prize at the end of the tunnel. Regardless, you generally have the advantage of your people wanting to use the products in your shop, so why not use that to your advantage, and offer them the chance to earn it without spending?
Invest in the Employee
You’ve probably seen the social media meme depicting a discussion between leadership and HR at a company.
Leadership: “What if we invest in our employee, and they leave?”
HR: “What if we don’t, and they stay?”
As with most memes, there’s a nugget of truth in there, even if it is oversimplified or extreme. We’ve all been employees who worked for leadership that we didn’t feel like trusted or believed in us. That’s not a fun position to be in. Hopefully we’ve also all been part of an organization that wanted to see us grow and succeed and made that investment in our development as a person and employee.
Rewarding employees with the opportunity to attend training events with brands to increase knowledge and skills is a great way to show employees that you value their contributions and want to see them grow. More than that, you’re allowing them to develop not only as employees but as people. People like feeling trusted.
See if the brands you carry have educational classes or workshops that your employees can attend. Make your staff aware that these are available, and let them earn the chance to go, expenses covered. There’s almost no way to know all that your employee may be able to bring back to the rest of the store, and in the meantime, you have given them the opportunity to add skills or knowledge to their own portfolio.
Hunting Trips
Sure, there’s competitive archery, but the bulk of your business revolves around hunting, right? Chances are, the people staffing your store do so because they want to be around the world of archery and bowhunting.
And bowhunters are a different sort of hunter.
The beauty of working in a bow shop is you get to work around archery when most people are busy with other stuff. The worst thing about a bow shop is while everyone else is just realizing that the season opened last weekend and they need new strings, and arrows, and releases, your employees want to be in a tree somewhere.
But your customers need them in the shop making up for their lack of preparation. It’s a hellish trade off to do what you love.
Why not lean into what your employee’s love and give them the chance to earn a hunt on your dime?
I’m not saying you need to pay for an elk hunt or African safari, but there are a lot of hunts your employees might love to do that wouldn’t break the bank. For example, those of us who are lucky enough to not have hogs enjoy the novelty of chasing porkers while other seasons are shut down. Maybe a rotation of turkey hunts to help your staff finish a slam over the course of a couple years. And spring black bear hunts can be done far more affordably than people think.
It’s possible you already have connections to outfitters or shops in other parts of the country with a line on such hunts that can help facilitate the trip. You might also be able to work out a trade for some products to help offset your expense as well.
No, it’s not cheap. Neither is staff turnover. And neither is constantly worrying about if you have enough people to make it through the week.
The benefit of working in a hobby industry is there are people who will accept less pay to be around the thing they love. How much less? That varies. If the cost of a hunt for your top-performing sales person is what keeps things running smoothly, isn’t that worth it?
Vacation/Flex Time
Flexibility is worth a lot. I once worked a job that wouldn’t let me take a half day if it was the middle four hours of the day. It was a professional job. Emails answered at 10am or 2pm were the same, but I was told that I either had to work in the morning or in the afternoon.
It made no sense to me.
You need me to work four hours of the eight-hour day. I will do that. Why does it matter if it’s the first four, middle four, or last four? There was no time clock. I was salary — in the hunting industry. But I couldn’t come in a little late and leave a little early to bowhunt the rut. It’s part of why I was more than okay not working there anymore.
Giving employees some flexibility in scheduling or the ability to earn extra vacation time is something everyone appreciates, even if it isn’t to hunt. Kids have baseball, or swimming, spouses take classes, parents need help with things.
Being able to work around the details of life goes a long way with your people.
Have you modified your hunting-season hours to allow your staff to be in the woods? Reduced staffing during slow times and cycled schedules around? Have you considered it? No, it isn’t always easy to schedule around flexibility, but your employees will appreciate it, and that’s the goal.
Final Thoughts
Staffing a workplace isn’t easy. When your work calls for a specific type of person who understands technical products and can work with customers, the talent pool shrinks quickly. Then, from that diminished talent pool, you have to be able to make a value proposition to those potential employees that makes working for you a viable option.
No small task.
Thinking outside the box and working on some unconventional and unexpected ways of compensating your people can be the difference between staffing your shop with the best of the best, or the best you could manage.
That difference may well make or break your shop.
Sidebar: Outdoor Trip Ideas
Hunting trips are a great option for non-traditional compensation, but what about fishing or family destinations? The key is novelty, so which one is the biggest departure from you and your staff’s everyday?
Lake of the Woods – Baudette, Minnesota: The walleye capital of the world! Others may try to claim the title, but I can tell you first hand I’ve never experienced a walleye fishery like this one. If walleye aren’t normally in the livewells around you, consider sending staff up for a few days to one of the resorts on this massive fishery. I’ve stayed at River Bend Resort, and Paul and Brandi will be sure to take care of your people. I can’t recommend them highly enough.
Deadwood, South Dakota: Public ground? Check. Merriam’s Turkeys? Check. Black Hills? Mount Rushmore? Old West stories? Incredible scenery? All checks! For those who haven’t been, this is an incredible area to visit, and outdoor opportunities are easy to come by. Spring turkey hunting, great fishing, and a wide variety of attractions to visit make it a great trip to reward your staff.
Kentucky Dam Village, Calvert City, Kentucky: Kentucky Dam Lake and Lake Barkley make up an incredible fishery that stretches from East-Central Kentucky all the way into Tennessee. Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area lies between the parallel bodies of water, and offers loads of outdoor recreation. A fantastic fishery for crappie or bass, the area has plenty to do for dedicated outdoorspeople, or families looking to get away.
