Resolution #1 for 2020
Do you look back or do you look forward?
Truth be told, I wish retailers would stop using LY as their benchmark for measuring their own success. It is why I don’t endorse the 454 calendar. It is backward looking. In my own business, I focus on how we are doing against our budget, both expenses and revenue. Last year is ancient history. We are a different company than we were 12 months ago and if you are not a different company than you were last year, you are dying.
At our recent Management One annual meeting in Tucson, we discussed the importance of iteration and innovation. Both are significant and both keep you moving forward. I have found it easier to discuss iteration - or continuous improvement - and innovation, rather than talking about change. Saying “change” confounds, confuses, and is obtuse. It doesn’t give direction.
So, how do you adopt this kind of thinking that can make you unique, build your market share, and your brand?
Innovation is taking an idea or invention into the marketplace to satisfy customer expectations or needs: Evolutionary - resulting from changes in technology, behavioral marketing. Revolutionary - disruptive.
These examples spark ideas:
Build a coffee bar with a barista in your store.
Get rid of your return policy (and, yes, you can make this profitable and build market share and revenue).
Hire associates with no experience but who share your core values. Remember, we hire for skill and fire for values. You can teach people skills but not values.
Buy products at retail that you cannot get and then customize them to add value and sell for a higher price.
Collaborate with vendors and local organizations, bring in products that may not not fit your merchandise mix but appeal to the psychographics of your customers.
Iteration is repeating a process or analysis over and over again to improve results: Continuous improvement. Processes working towards improvements.
For example:
Take a process, add metrics and developing coaching around it to improve results. Select any process in your business, from receiving to selling to budgeting to scheduling. Add data and metrics and see if you can raise the bar to be more efficient and more productive.
Repeat.
But...avoid the wash and rinse cycle of repeating the same activities that are not building your business. Recently, I was with a new client and their entire marketing calendar was an endless list of promotions and sale events. After telling me how hard it is to sell sale goods, I asked, “Why, then, is your only marketing message “sale”?
Stop looking back and start being a forward thinker. Consider all the elements of your business you can control, and what actions can be taken to begin to move the needle north.
One last thought.
Go travel and visit the best stores around the country, and the best stores around the world. Go open minded and take away all the judge-y things you do to compare yourself. Stop and ask, “What are they doing that makes them different, better and interesting?” Pay attention to the game changers, the first adopters, the retailers who exhibit courage. Then edit back to your own circumstances. One big idea, even one small idea, can be a game changer. If you cannot do it on your own, seek guidance.
Getting out of your bubble is Resolution #1 for 2020!
ONWARDS & UPWARDS,
Marc Weiss
CEO and President
Management One™ and Retail ORBIT®