Industry Leadership part 2
Leadership in the firearms industry is varied. Some places are squared away and others are a disaster. This is a topic I’ve written on before but and as usual, I’m going to stick to a former employer (who will remain nameless). One pit a lot of managers and owners seem to fall into is the “Friend Zone”. What I mean by that is some “leaders” lose sight of keeping some professional distance. You simply cannot be a leader if all of your employees are your best buds. In my last position, we had an owner that went too far into the friend zone with only a few employees. These few actually ended up running the place by proxy. All major decisions were run past the co-range master and a couple of sales monkeys. Yes...I said sales monkeys because let's face it...you can train a monkey to hand someone a gun and let the firearm sell itself. For the most part, that’s all they’re good for. Very few take the time to be truly knowledgeable about the guns they are showing and will only show the few they have heard about. If you have knowledgeable sales people treat them like they are gold plated because they are the heart and soul of your business. This owner actually gave up true ownership (sure on paper he owned it and his signature was on the paychecks) because nothing could be done without the approval of his friends and at times let them override his decisions. You are not the owner, or leader, of your shop if you don’t keep a certain amount of professional distance. It usually ends up with the BFF’s leading from the shadows and true talent having to fight to be heard or is dismissed altogether. These shops are usually poorly organized. They typically have too many people without the experience necessary to even attain their jobs. And even more, that are simply in the wrong position for their experience. In the shop in question, we had one lady hired as sales...who didn’t know the difference between a rifle and a shotgun despite being an Army veteran. With respect, she fit the “sales monkey” profile. However, she had a lot of experience managing offices. She should have been hired as the office manager and run all the incoming inventory, special orders, and anything else that needed to be run behind the scenes. We had others that had no business being in firearm sales because of lack of knowledge and others that had a lot of firearms experience that sat all day as range officers despite being hired as sales or gunsmith's assistant. If all this seems like a gigantic cluster...you’re right. Keep your professional distance. Be good to more than just your favorite employees. Listen to those trying to give you ideas on how to do things better. Take your shop by the horns and LEAD your business to success.
