Tractor Supply VP Michael Diedrich on What It Takes to Drive "Legendary Service"

Hello, everyone.

This is Omnitalk Retail.

I'm Chris Walton.

And I'm Man Mazinga.

And we are coming to you once again to kick off our coverage of NRF Day 3 of the Big show conference here from the Vuzion Group's podcast studio, which you can find in booth 4938.

Come on by, stop by, say hello.

We've enjoyed meeting everyone for the last couple days.

You can see all the great tech within the booth as well.

But joining us today and to start the day off is in Omnistar.

Oh, boy.

In Omnistar.

Yes.

To what do we owe the.

I know.

What a special day.

I actually feel like it's special to meet both of you for the first time.

So this is a big deal.

Yeah.

Yes, it will.

I'm happy to be here.

Yes.

We're excited to introduce our Omnistar, Michael Diedrich, the vice president of store productivity at Tractor Supply.

Welcome to Omnitong.

Thank you.

Glad to be here.

It's great to have you.

Michael.

Let's start a little bit by just learning about you and your background and then your current role at Tractor Supply.

Yeah, thanks for the question.

Actually, in a couple of weeks, I'll celebrate 23 years with tractor Supply.

So it's been a little while.

I think we had about 200 stores when I started, so it's been quite the.

Quite the journey.

And how many are you up to now?

2300 as of a couple days ago.

Right.

So, yeah, very excited to be here.

But, yeah, 23 years with tractor Supply.

Always on the operations side of the business.

So whether that's store manager, district manager, regional manager.

Then I had the opportunity to go to the store support center just outside of Nashville.

Nice.

And I did a few roles there, whether that was customer solutions center, some strategy.

Really always my passion is the customer and the team member, and so I've been super fortunate.

Every role I've had has always supported either one of those two folks.

Team member and our customer.

So.

And today my official title is store productivity, which I think means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

Dig into that a little bit.

Yeah, it can be a little boring depending on how you look at it.

But no, honestly, my role today and my team's role is all about making sure our team members have as much time as possible in front of the customer at the end of the day.

Like, we are so good at overcomplicating this business, but I want our team members to be armed with the information they need at the moment, they step in front of the customer.

And so that's how we look at productivity.

How do we get the most time possible in front of those customers?

That's a really cool metric.

It's really interesting.

Really interesting way to think about it.

I've never heard about that before.

And so you grew up in the field.

I did.

Right.

You grew up in the stores.

I did.

We always love when we have field leaders on our show.

It's a rare treat, honestly, a lot of times when we're doing these interviews.

So it's great to talk to somebody that grew up in the stores.

So I'm curious.

You mentioned productivity.

As a former field leader, too, I'm always curious about this question.

How does Tractor Supply measure the productivity or performance of one store relative to another?

Yeah, that is a great and difficult question.

I'll start with this.

We think it's really important to spend as much time as possible in the field.

Okay.

Our best ideas, and this is proven out time after time, our best ideas are going to come from the people doing the work.

So my team, actually my entire team is remote different areas of the country.

So, yeah, we are always out in the stores doing the work and trying to understand how to make those stores as productive as possible.

So I'll kind of start with that.

From a metric standpoint, though.

Yeah, I guess a lot of people listening will probably feel the same way.

We have a lot of metrics.

Yeah, right, right.

I would be hesitant to give you a number because it is a lot of metrics.

But we do have a very specific way we look at the stores.

You know, we're going to look at very usual things everyone else does.

It's going to be CX metrics.

It's going to be sales.

We assign very specific goals to our stores that our district managers and regional managers are responsible for.

But the end of the day, I think at our level, we have all the metrics we need to make sure our stores are successful.

Where the rub or where the opportunity is is that's just too much in the field.

Right.

It can become overwhelming.

What's the most important metric if I'm a store leader, a store manager, even a team member, what is it Tractor Supply wants me to do?

What's the most important thing to me, and so I think that is probably pretty common among a lot of retailers, is how do you boil that down to the most important things?

And I would say we've gotten better at it.

Every year we get better at it and we Continue to utilize technology to help get smarter about what those metrics should be.

Yeah, well, and that's the art of the store manager too, really, is to understand and sort through what are the different priorities in a given day in your store to understand what you need to do.

I used to have a metric that I used to use when I was in the field.

You know, it was called sogt.

It was, how are your sales?

How are your operations?

How's your.

For us, it was guest customer experience scores.

And then of course, how's your team, too?

Because your team engaged.

What's the turnover look like?

All those things.

Absolutely right.

Those are.

Those are really the four buckets, I think that fall.

We have those same buckets.

Yeah, I imagine you do.

Most important to us, though, is the interaction with the customer.

Again, this whole business boils down to people.

And that moment we get to stand in front of one of our Tractor Supply customers.

Do you measure that in any way?

I'm curious.

Like, how do you measure whether or not your employees are able to spend more time with their customers?

We do.

We do it through a variety of different ways.

We have a lot of CX metrics that we measure.

Service Management Group is our third party that helps measure the customer experience.

So our stores have access to that.

Obviously, as you go up in the organization, we have access to it, but we're constantly looking at what is that experience.

And you all probably know we've been recognized a few times now through Forbes and ACSI as having really great customer service.

So we know it's working, but we've got to continue to be relentless about getting in front of that customer.

So one of the things you called out that I didn't even realize that your whole team was remote, I think that's even more.

It's really interesting.

But one thing that I've always appreciated about all the people at Tractor Supply that we've talked to is that from your chief supply chain officer, Colin Yankee, right down to, you know, the.

The like person just kind of coming up in the organization, they are in the stores all the time.

Hal Lotton, your CEO, we were just talking about in the stores all the time.

Now that is amazing.

But when we're talking about what metrics your store's teams need to follow sometimes I imagine while it's, yes, you have.

You have these points that you're trying to hit on, there's still things that Hal will see when he comes into the store that you'll see that Colin will see when they come into the store.

And so one of the things that you've adopted as a team is Corso's AI copilot.

Yes.

So I'm curious to understand how like, that gives you.

Yes, you can each put your priorities into that list, but that's kind of helping the associates know.

Okay, we have a store visit coming up.

How do we know that we're maximizing, you know, what our leadership is expecting of us, but then most importantly, how we get that time in front of the customer.

How is copilot helping your team?

Yes.

So to be clear, the most important visit in a tractor supply store is from the customer.

So that's our mentality.

We can all visit the store all day long.

None of that matters.

All that really matters is.

Well said.

Yeah.

But certainly we do.

You know, we get out in the store, we see a lot of things.

I am delighted to talk about Corso.

I actually get the opportunity later today to present with Julian Mills, the CEO of Corso.

We're.

We're on the stage here and super excited about that because back to the point about too many metrics and how do you slim it down?

That's exactly what Corso does.

So we did a pilot with Corso a couple years ago.

The pilot was extremely successful.

I was skeptical.

I would say, yeah, yeah, hear the buzzwords.

AI and technology and all.

Everything the technology is going to do for you, but in the moment it gets in the store, like, is it really going to resonate with the team?

And, yeah, I will tell you, beyond just being a great group of people to work with, like an excellent group of people at Corso, it is driving significant results.

What kind of stuff are you seeing that caused the most immediate impact?

The most immediate impact comes from what we call sales missions.

So of course we call them missions.

We really went out of the gate just talking about how to drive sales.

Okay, so you might get a mission on.

Just think of anything.

You know, we sell a lot of pet food and livestock feed.

You might get a mission that says your store is underperforming stores like you in this particular category.

What Corso allows the store to do, though, is figure out the day, the time of day, the day of week, that.

That sales of that particular.

In this case, actually, the SKU level is underperforming.

More important, though, is Corso guides the store on what actions it take.

So we're not just going out there saying, hey, you've got an issue.

You should sell more of this.

I'm guessing the store probably already realizes they want to sell more stuff.

But we're.

We're helping them with the actions to take that.

And the one thing I will say about Corso is it's very.

It's very visual.

Yeah.

And our stores are extremely competitive.

And so there's a chart in Corso and you see as the.

See how you stack up.

You see the dip and when the mission kicks off.

And then the stores love to watch themselves climb up into the green.

It is motivator in the field.

It is the best motivator.

93% engagement.

And we've held that strong since the day we rolled out.

Which find me another thing that you can put into a chain with 50,000 team members that you get 93% engagement.

Our team members love it.

Yeah.

I want to go back to answer question a little bit though too, because I think it brings up an interesting point too is so since you've rolled that out, how have the store visits from the leadership changed or adapted to the technology?

Like, how have you had to do things differently?

Yeah.

So I think more of that will come.

If I was to tell you where we are in the journey with Corso, we're probably 10% there, which is just crazy to think about the impact Corso is going to make at Tractor Supply.

We are actually going to put our store visits and our audits through Corso.

So all of that will be in Corso and it will trigger district managers as they do a visit.

It will create a mission based on things that the DM rated in that visit.

It will create a mission for the store to react to.

Got it.

So it's just getting a lot smarter about who.

What we do inside the store makes sense.

That's using technology to help.

Right.

Like not just technology for the sake of having it, but actually making the life of us.

When I imagine the district leader too, has that information of what has been bubbled up in Corso before he goes into the store too.

And can.

Then everyone's on the same sheet of music in terms of where the system has been directing them.

And then they can follow up on that when they go into.

And we're actually just getting ready to kick off DM specific missions.

So now making the life of a district manager easier, we will eventually get to the point where a DM will know where to go, where to spend their time based off of that data.

I love that.

Instead of just expecting to be in every store X amount of times a month.

That's great.

Oh, my God.

All right, so.

So you guys have.

You guys are Famous for your legendary service, as you like to call it.

Yes.

What other technologies or initiatives or priorities are you looking at for 2025?

Yeah, that's a good one.

I'm glad you brought up legendary service, though.

I've loved the opportunity to talk about legendary service.

People ask, like, why legendary?

How did that come?

You know, we are a mission and values driven company and our mission is to work hard, have fun, make money by providing legendary service, great products at everyday low prices.

I don't think it's an accident that the founders use the words legendary.

Not good, not great, but legendary.

And so back to what I was saying in the beginning.

It's so important that every one of our team members has the time they need to spend in front of that customer.

You know, our customers, when we look at the comments they make, it's not about the product, it's about the interaction.

It's about we know their dog's name, we know how many chickens they have, we know they bought the chickens from us.

Yeah.

And so it's so important that we have that relationship with our customers.

So legendary service drives everything we do.

And so we're continuing to use more and more technology to support leading with Legendary.

Give you just a few examples.

So one thing is all of our team members have a device, right, that they have on them inside the store.

And so we empower them with as much information as possible.

So the moment they get in front of the customer, they have it.

So we call it learning on the go, but learning in the field in the moment, in front of the product, not in front of a computer, in.

A back room, on the floor.

But people are used to TikTok and Instagram, right?

They're used to this really quick nuggets of learning.

And so that's how we transferred our learning into very short videos in the moment on the sales floor, on the handheld device.

We also think it's important for the team members to understand their contribution to their specific store, for sure.

And that's harder than it sounds because it's like, how do you do that?

So we actually created, we call it Power of the Red Vest because all of our team members wear the red vest.

And Power of the Red Vest is really at a team member level, showing them their impact to their specific store based on some of those key metrics we were talking about.

And then the other one I'll mention, I think you guys have heard about, you can't, you know, not talk about AI.

But hey, hey, Gura is the app we use Inside the store that's using generative AI.

So Gura is greet, uncover, recommend, and ask.

Okay, so if you say, Michael, in the simplest way, how do you provide legendary service?

We use Guru, our map, uncover, recommend.

All right, so hey, Gura plays off of that.

And our team members can speak through the earpiece or type in and immediately get an answer to any product question.

So in a tractor supply store, I like to use this example.

Someone will say, how much of this roundup to kill weeds do I need to mix in a gallon sprayer?

Yeah.

Well, you either need to memorize that.

Yeah, right.

Or go to Google and find it.

Or now just click the button and say, how many roundup to it right in front of the customer.

It's speaking in the earpiece.

Team members get that immediate team member.

Is an expert for pretty much, right?

Pretty much right away.

Like day two on the job, they.

Could be an expert between learning on the go, power of the red vest, understanding their impact, and then using a tool like hey Guru on that handheld to immediately get them.

Yeah.

I mean, think of the products we carry and the kind of questions our team members get.

Can't imagine.

But another, it's not technology.

But another thing I'll mention is, you know, we hire our customer.

We hire people who live out here, the life out here.

We hire people who are passionate about taking care of those customers.

So it's just very natural for them to interact with the customer.

Well, Michael, let's close up with what you're excited about in 2025 or something that you're hoping to accomplish in your role this year.

Yeah, it is 2025, isn't it?

So hard to believe.

I can't believe.

Feels like it's off with a rousing start too, doesn't it?

Yes, it does.

I think it's quick for my team and for me.

You know, we talk about just being relentless about removing work from the stores.

And I know, I'm guessing a lot of retailers say that we really want to just be relentless.

You know, I've been doing this for a long time, and I think we get comfortable with certain things.

We assume we have to do certain things because that's just the way we've always done it.

And what I love about Tractor Supply is just we are willing to just go break it and make it better.

So we are going to be relentless about productivity, about taking low value workout, about finding ways to again get that team member in front of that customer.

That's all that matters at the end of the day.

That's all that matters.

Taking legendary service of our customers.

You know, Michael, one thing I want to ask you too, before I let you go is we've talked a lot about the customer service side, which really translates to the front end of the store.

Anything on the back end of the store that you can talk about?

Yeah, we have a process.

We love to name things, if you haven't realized that.

All the way.

We have a process we call the tractor way, which is just really the way we operate inside the store.

Our biggest body of work really is freight, unloading the truck, getting it to the sales floor.

So a few years ago, we really, again, about being efficient and productive, looked at that process and.

And really created a way to make it the most efficient we think it can be.

So we have a very, very detailed and specific way we unload the truck, bring it to the floor, stock it again.

What I think is so great about the way we think about things is we did all that not with operations in mind, but again with the customer in mind.

The faster we can put that freight out, the more accurate we put it in the right spot, the better we can help the customer.

So we do a good chunk of our productivity work is on that back end.

But it's still with the idea of how does it impact the customer.

Right, right, right.

And if you do it get everybody doing it the same way, then it's easy to continue to innovate and invent along that process too, as you go forward.

I mean, we have 50,000 team members, so every footstep.

Yeah, like every second it matters.

It's got to be optimized.

You want people out there talking to customers.

Yeah, for sure.

It's a great way to think about it.

That is a huge nugget here to start us off on day three of nrf.

Thank you, Michael.

You're very welcome.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks for having you.

You are welcome back anytime.

As is any Omnistar ever.

But yes, you particularly since we now are meeting you in person.

That concludes our interview with Michael.

We're going to be here at the Fusion Group booth all day long.

Booth number four, nine three eight.

And Anne, until next time, be careful out there.