Staffing for success: gallery owners and directors share their insights on hiring, training and professional development

Art Business News, August, 2005 by Joe Jancsurak

Timothy Tew: I give feedback, feedback and more feedback. I try to find people whose basic skills will allow them to understand our systems. Most of the training comes from observation and feedback. I am demanding and I look for people who can share my vision and the potential rewards, which are humanistic and financial.

Suzanne DeBruyne: We do a lot of brainstorming. We analyze both successes and failures and try to come up with reasons for both. Our major question to each other is "How could we, as a team, have done this better?"

How do you approach staff training for artist shows?

Kevin Morrison: All shows should be approached well ahead of time. Training on pre-selling art before the shows is critical. Just as critical is training on how to actually guarantee maximum attendance of clients for each art consultant. It all goes back to excellent customer service and relations. Never forget how important that is for exceeding expectations.

Timothy Tew: One component of the training is to spend time with the artists talking about their work. But I find that the feeling the employee has for the art and the artists must be natural. Oftentimes just getting to know the artist is the most powerful incentive. We are all keenly aware of our roles in helping the artist, and these relationships are very important to us.

Suzanne DeBruyne: We encourage the staff to interact with as many clients as possible. We also have a slightly higher commission structure for sales closed during shows. We keep a close watch on each other so that a staff member who is "stuck" can be gracefully rescued. During shows, our staff motto is, "off our seat and on your feet."

Jeff Jaffe: We focus intensely on an artist at the time of a show. We designate a "specialist" to help everyone and we usually require that the artist, artist's rep or publisher do a training session prior to the show.

Anastasia Starr: Our exhibitions are mostly for artists that we represent on an ongoing basis so the staff is usually well-acquainted with the artist long before the show. However, we always encourage input from the artist regarding the specific body of work, or anything else that the artist can share with us.

Do you offer employees incentives, bonuses and commissions? Please discuss the details of these programs.

Kevin Morrison: As with any commission-based program, incentives and bonuses are important. We have created a program that rewards the associate with a larger percent-based commission as the individual's monthly sales increase. Many of our consultants make 15 percent on what they sell. We also reward everyone as a team. If the gallery surpasses their monthly goal, there is an extra five percent given for every dollar the gallery is over goal. This is split by all the consultants according to the percent of business they contributed to the gallery for the month. For example, the goal may be $200,000 and the actual is $300,000. So, $100,000 over goal at 5 percent equals $5,000. If consultant "A" sold 40 percent of the business for that month, he would receive 40 percent of the shared bonus, or $2,000, and so on.