Retail Market Leader - Columbia, SC Area

About the Company

Follett Higher Education is a leading educational service provider and omnichannel retailer that provides students, faculty and staff, parents, and fans with the course materials, learning tools, and retail services needed to successfully support the collegiate journey. Follett Higher Education supports over 6 million students through its 1,100 physical and 1,750 eCommerce campus stores across North America.

Follett Higher Education is a drug-free workplace environment.

About the Role

As a Market Leader, you will lead and inspire store leaders and teams within a specific geographic market to consistently deliver operational excellence in sales growth, talent development, campus relations, and customer service. You will inspire and lead change management and provide clear direction to maintain alignment with strategic direction, motivate and empower store teams through strong collaborative communication, drive accountability, and demonstrate leadership in hiring, training, developing, and retaining team members while consistently elevating the retail shopping experience.

Responsibilities

Driving Results/Sales: Consistently deliver exceptional results through business insight and operational expertise within a specific geographic market, including:

• Lead ongoing in-person and virtual store visits within an assigned market.
• Regularly review market/store financial reporting and initiate plans and actions to drive future results.
• Partner with store leaders to plan and implement effective sales events such as Back to School, Gameday, Homecoming, etc.
• Champion effective execution of standard operational procedures, programs, and initiatives.
• Demonstrate a strong understanding of store presentation standards; lead and coach teams to consistently deliver best-in-class merchandising execution.
• Contribute to regularly scheduled assortment/product planning meetings with store leaders and One Team Center partners.
• Collaborate with store leaders to ensure store schedules support customer service standards and maximize selling opportunities; ensure compliance with labor hour budgets.
• Successfully partner with ACCESS leaders to drive new ACCESS business and effectively support and grow existing business.
• Responsible for leading in-store course materials activities across the market in collaboration with course materials leadership.

Ensure that all operational back-office functions are completed in accordance with company directives, policies, and procedures, including:

• Preparation and follow-up on Accounts Receivables, Account Invoices, Chargebacks, and coordination of Stock Shipments.
• Responsible for meeting annual shrink budget.

Talent Management: Champion full cycle talent management for all stores, including:

• Active recruitment, training, coaching, and talent development.
• Exemplifies market-wide culture of continuous performance feedback and effective, periodic performance evaluations.
• Maintain succession plan/talent pipeline with a strategy to develop an internal bench of candidates and cultivates external pool of key talent.
• Develop cross-functional teams of engaged team members to execute standards and drive business results.
• Cultivate and maintains a culture of accountability.

Campus Relations: Establish and foster strong relationships with the campus communities, campus administration, athletics departments, faculty, and staff, including:

• Ongoing review of campus operations and business results with campus partners.
• Collaborate on opportunities both on campus and within local communities.
• Partner with store leaders to deliver effective SPR meetings 2x per year with relevant campus stakeholders.

Customer Service: Is passionate about Customer Service and leads teams to provide a fun, best-in-class experience for all customers, including:

• Provide an engaging customer service experience and incorporates the GET customer service model into in-store and online experience.
• Coach store leaders and teams in effective customer service behaviors; follow up consistently to recognize performance.
• Ensure store scheduling is optimized to provide exceptional customer service.
• Partner with stores as needed to resolve escalated customer issues and incidents in a timely manner.
• Review SMG data, share with team members, and proactively takes action to improve results.
• Other duties as assigned to support general store operations.

Qualifications & Required Skills

• Bachelor's Degree or equivalent
• 5-7 years of Multi-Unit Store Experience
• Results and Sales Driven
• Experience with full-cycle talent management
• Passionate about Customer Service
• Foster strong relationships with campus relations
• Travel Requirements greater than 50%
• General Computer Skills

Pay range

Target Annualized Salary: $80k - $100k

Equal Opportunity Statement

Equal Opportunity Employer. This company considers candidates regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.