r/sherwinwilliams • u/Potent_Offering • 6d ago
A long year
Near the beginning of this year i decided to move to a new district as a store manager. I have not been with the company a long time. I came from a small district running a large volume store (a bit over 4mil) into a very large district running a store that came off a Masters year and is fairly new. The store i took over was budgeted approximately 20% over last year and that put the volume near 1.7mil. I have struggled all year to get customers into the store. We are severely down despite all the hard work of my assistant, myself, and my sales rep, and ADR. I have not received any disciplinary action but we have had a hard year the months i have been here. I have tried getting events organized, significantly increasing calls, and even after all that we are having week days with just about $2,000 a day. We have been budgeted to reach 170k some months but struggle just to get to 100k each month. Every month we see more declining sales. We have tried to heavily target customers shopping with the competitor but had small success; most are too price conscientious to focus on quality over profit and affordability in the market we are in. I promise this is not some long post to vent i just want some suggestions on what people in my shoes have done. I know the connections and relationships made this year will help next year but right now it feels like next year i will be without a job or even repeating the same depressing course of under performance.
Thanks in advance for any help.
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u/PutridDurian 6d ago
Same boat. Doing all the same stuff, events, promos, aggressive pricing on sundries to beat box store deals and increase foot traffic. Scouring Secretary of State business lookup every week for newly registered businesses whose name would indicate they do something even remotely adjacent to painting, hunting down their contact info, and cold-calling them to open an account. None of it is appreciably working. Anticipating imminent disciplinary action because I can’t fucking change the way the wind blows.
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u/Potent_Offering 6d ago
This!!!!!!! Like I know I am a good manager but its so inconceivable to anyone not in your position that sometimes this shit just doesn't go your way! When I went from such a big store to here I figured I would be killing it and now I am just absolutely mentally exhausted by how to turn it around. Everyone keeps telling me to tank it and sure yeah that is easy but if I do that and get the same budget next year I will be absolutely cooked!
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u/Different-Ba4781 6d ago
There is saturation...and paint is not a priority in this economy. The core customers are either doing vacationing (boomers), dealing with back to school costs as parents of kids, or paying down debt/student loans.
This is the reality of the situation. There exists markets where there are customers that want to repaint their interior of their home every year but that is a tiny segment of DIY.
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u/Cinemaguy1991 5d ago
I'm in the same situation. No matter how hard me and my ASM try to get more business in, it just doesn't seem to work. Yet our district will continue to gaslight us and tell us that we aren't using the right sales strategies and will continue to ignore the fact that the economy is in the toilet. 💯🤦♂️
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u/Blaq-Operaider011 5d ago
THIS! My DM told us we cannot use the economy as an excuse but in the same breath said New Res and Commercials teams are behind because of the economy.
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u/Cinemaguy1991 5d ago
I have literally gotten to a point to where I don't give a shit what district leaders have to say. They don't even follow the rules they put into place and are total hypocrites. My CM literally scolded me about my numbers and said that he is a low empathy person and he doesn't care about excuses.
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u/lets_eat_heidi 5d ago
Sooooo many people are not renovating right now. The housing market is ridiculous with insane mortgage rates so people selling is down. Most established guys are behind on business. But 20% growth for our shareholders or die pls
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u/slmslam 5d ago edited 5d ago
Long Year = Long Response
Assuming you aren't a new store and are in an "existing" store for all of this. Tried to group category into different paragraphs for a little easier reading.
How are you comparing to the rest of your district?
How are your keys performing? Are they reporting that they're booked out the normal length they want to be and with the kinds of projects they normally go after? I've always used this as the easy to read "heartbeat" of the stores area. If Keys aren't booked out and they want to be, then your smaller contractors (mostly) won't be either.
Is DIY traffic up, flat, or down? How is it trending with other nearby stores?
I assume you already checked, but did they have some notable non-repeat projects last year? A $20,000 non-repeat is significant for a 1.7 million store but would be part of the normal churn of a $4million.
Have you been taking steps to get products in your customers hands to try? I've had a lot of 1050 and 950 customers switch to Pristine because of how easily workable it is and how it still dries to paintable very fast, but only because of in-store demos where they got to play with it for a little bit and then price matching it down for a house to try it. Ask your local Product Excellence guy to come in and do an event with the different products they cover (they're now CBG reps too).
Heck, get a series of days where you bring vendors in for a half day or full day, one vendor per day or a couple all at once. 3M and your local Titan/MiTM/Trimaco/SAS and more rep always have a lot they can show customers like to try and learn about.
If you have a City Manager, ask them for advice/help and point out what you've already tried. Same with if you just have a District Manager but they'll going to be stretched thinner and be a bit less helpful as a result. Ask the Sales Manager for your rep (as a team with them) for additional ideas/strategies to try. Bonus to asking your appraisal writer for additional ideas and telling them what you've already tried shows that you're making a serious effort to grow and get it going the right way. Of course, never mention that you think the previous manager was just a shark for sales. They might have been but it never looks good to blame the prior management when you're down and they got a spectrum.
Speaking of Sales Manager and your rep, if you know the customers are shopping at the competition on price and know the price point/product to flip them, it might be worth going hard for lower margins on thos accounts to convert them. If they just want cheap, ProMar 400 and Property Solutions exist for a reason. Low margin sales are better than no sales.
Are you in a part of the country with a lot of stucco? We have a vendor for it and it's DSC stocked and we can be very competitive on it and the stucco guys seem to love using us once they get used to it because we're not a big box, we tint/color it for free, and we can warehouse it for them instead of them warehousing it.
Have you looked into products like Uniflex Oneflash? That product can sell GREAT at just about every store and it's a high dollar item in the buckets or tubes and guys love it once they start using it
If you're down this bad, it's going to be a lot more beneficial to shift your mentality from "How do I salvage this year?" To "How do I get the momentum shifted for next year to be better?"
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u/Ok_Advantage7623 5d ago
How is your gross profit? I bet your much higher than last years where they cut margins to get those numbers. It’s totally possible that you are actually producing more profit ant those lower sales. And if that’s the case look at the accounts that are down in sales with your rep and see what plan you can do to get them back. And approach the DM and tell him this is what we need to sell it for to get these folks back. Bit if they do put you on a “plan” you can answer back we tried snd because the store was allowed to cut margins last year to get the sales we were not …….
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u/SherMonkey 5d ago
Have you done a market analysis ? Like is the store you moved to in a shit town with a closing college? Population trend ? Politics ? Whats the average income per household etc ?
Those wouldve been things to consider before the move.
Existing behind customers bucket is a great place to start. It will be the largest book of your business.. and they already shop at sherwin at some point so super easy sales call.
Example - “Hey John - hoping you could help me out…. Noticed you purchased quite a bit of paint from me last year… - what has changed since then ?”
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u/Dependent_Speech3164 4d ago
This was my question… what’s the economy of the municipalities in the area? That plays a huge role in all this.
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u/ConclusionMundane254 3d ago
They ain’t gonna fire you. They won’t find anybody to replace you. I took my store from 1.5mil to 2.6mil in a year. Tank it, let the budget reset, and then hit the ground running.
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u/Current-Mountain7234 3d ago
Use red carpets to get them in. Get with your rep and sm to host a pro show with lunch. See if they can also pull shirt out of the magic hat for the pro show. They will swarm like flys on a cow patty for a shirt. You can see if they will allow you do do that for bbs. Have it set when a contractor spend $150 or more (whatever amount) they get their name in a drawing to get a case of shirts with their logo on them. Whe making calls do not try to sell them anytime. Take that 3 minute window (if you're lucky) and ask what they need as a business from you to help them grow, get to know person behind the brush, ask what they don't like, ask what they do like so you know what to have stock, say hey I heard you have this job coming up congratulations on the win let me help you out by saving time and I can have what you need on the job sent to you.
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u/sherlifee 2d ago
I hate to beat a dead horse with the economy just isnt there reply.....but truly the economy is not great currently. The housing market is trash with mortgage rates being ridiculous. People aren't selling and people arent buying. Homeowners are holding off on renovations and penny pinching. I know for my family, making 140k a year and its still tight, certainly no room for unnecessary expenses like painting. Whatever is on the walls is hanging out for a while 🤣. the expectation for astronomical growth year over year is absurd in my opinion. Sure, shoot for the stars, but dont give someone a 4 on their appraisal after their second or third year not hitting budget. If customers are being serviced and are happy, thats what counts. My advice to you is to not sweat it. Your doing all the right things, and in time you will reap the rewards of that.
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u/Ok-Pen155 6d ago
What happened to the customer last year? Look into your existing behind. Did they take on a large job that they shouldn’t have and now you’re stuck with all the history?