Her Story
About Maria
As a retail manager with 5 years of experience, I focus on creating meaningful connections with both my team and our customers. Every day, I meet with my team for briefings about our goals, plans, and events happening on the sales floor. I help my department manager create invitation flyers for our weekly events where we feature different brands and provide great experiences for our customers. I handle various promotions across departments and take care of administrative tasks as needed. What I believe makes me successful is communication - I always listen to my team about what they need, their struggles in sales, or even personal matters affecting their work performance. I'm always down to earth and treat my team as my friends, not as someone above them. My team trusts me and knows they can come to me for support. I spend most of my time on the sales floor, not in the office, so my team can see me and know I'm there for them. I'm also pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Biosciences at Arizona State University because I'm passionate about understanding cancer and participating in cancer research. My goal is to gain the knowledge I need to work in labs and volunteer with non-profit organizations to help develop more treatments for people who need them.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Maria
01What do you attribute your success to?
I would say that it's communication. I always listen to my team, what they need, what their struggles are in sales, or sometimes if something personal is going on in their lives that affects their work performance. I am always down to earth, and I always treat my team as my friends. I don't treat them as I'm a boss, and I'm above them, or anything like that. My team trusts me, and they always come up to me if something's going on and they need my support, and I'm always there for them. I spend most of the time on the sales floor, not in the office, so that I make sure that my team can see me, and they know that I'm there for them if anything happens and they need my support. For me, the main thing is to be a good communicator and a good friend to your team.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
My best suggestion would be to have a good heart, and always treat customers who come in the store like they're your guests, because basically your retail store is your house. Customers who come in, they are your guests, and you always want to make sure that you feel comfortable enough to treat them as if they were your friends. You always want to make sure that you create a positive environment for the customers, because everyone faces their own struggles in life, and when we come to work, and especially when we come to retail, people who come in to shop, they want to treat themselves, they want to forget about what is happening in their life. The last thing they want to face in the retail is a grumpy face, or a bad customer service. I tell my team as well, when you come to work, I understand we'll face whatever is happening in our lives. Life is not great, but when we come to work, we have to try our best to forget about what's happening outside, and focus on what is happening now. We have to celebrate that we are alive, that we are here together, and we have to create this environment for our customers, so they also, when they come in the store, they can forget about bad things that are happening in their lives, and they can just focus on something positive.
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