As all supervisors already know, employees can be either positively or negatively engaged.

The former are evangelists; the later are subversives.

The challenge is to develop and then retain the number of evangelists. How?

The Container Store is among very few companies that know the answer. It continues to hire at each of its 47 stores and probably has the lowest rate of attrition of any retail organization. Moreover, it is always on Fortune magazine’s annual lists of most-highly regarded, best to work more, most profitable, most valuable, etc.

Here is how its co-founder, chairman, and CEO, Skip Tindell, explains its success with attracting, training, and retaining evangelists:

“We take very special care of them and then they take very special care of our customers.”

To learn more, check out this article and this video.

I suggest that you read the article, watch the video, and then read Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force co-authored by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba and for which Guy Kawasaki wrote the Foreword.