MISTAKE #40: Your team just doesn’t understand retail
“Retail is detail.”
James Gulliver
Everyone has heard these three words before.
Just like everyone has seen an over-used image of grocery store shelves. Maybe one with a shopper looking either horribly confused or unnaturally happy.
It sounds nice and simple and easy to agree with. But few people realize James Gulliver plagiarized a longer statement I made years later:
“Being successful in the retail world requires focusing expertise and attention on a thousand minor elements that may appear insignificant on their own, but the product of which is the overall success of your business. This equation is not a sum, where a couple zeros might still give you a 97 out of 100. Rather, it is multiplication at work, where one zero makes the entire equation equal zero. This includes not only knowing what to look for and where to look for it, but also having the time and attention and skill to adequately address each and every issue you find.”
The entire premise of this series of articles is based on this saying. It has been written from my 15 years of experience that one little mistake can compromise all your efforts to be successful. And it has been written to help you, the reader, avoid those mistakes so you can actually be more successful.
I fear that most companies today would be quick to say “Retail is about managing costs and profit margins.”
And I always cringe when I hear people position themselves as all-encompassing retail experts because I know the breadth and depth of retail are far too vast for one person to understand all of it.
I also cringe when I work with teams that have huge holes in their capabilities due to a pedigree that is overly focused on a particular function:
They are sales-force heavy, assuming that everything will work out as long as they meet with enough retailers and get enough P.O.s.
They are old-school marketers, trying to use the playbook they’ve ‘borrowed’ from their prior large-CPG-company employer to bring success to their under-funded never-heard-of brand.
They are inventors or engineers that have figured out how to design and produce an interesting new product, but they can’t demonstrate incremental sales exist for it or how they will market it to deliver sustainable sales.
There are lots of potentially successful products being managed by teams that simply do not understand all that it takes to succeed at retail.
Unfortunately, the same self-selection that guided how teams were initially built also tends to limit their self-awareness.
Marketers love the chance to go on sales calls and play that role.
Salespeople love to dabble in the creative aspects of building marketing programs.
Inventors tend to have the self-confidence that they can do it all.
And almost no one considers how critical expertise in areas like replenishment is to making sure all their efforts aren’t for nothing when a shopper goes to buy their item only to find it out-of-stock on the store shelf.
KNOW WHAT DO YOU NOT KNOW
If you’ve been reading this series, I’ve hopefully convinced you by now of the need to pay attention to every detail.
Beyond the advice I’ve offered in past articles to help improve your individual performance, take time today to consider how your organization may be set up to fail due to gaps in understanding retail. Consider where blind spots may exist due to what skills were emphasized when staffing key positions. Consider whether your organization welcomes the 10th man.
If you have the authority to control your team structure, take action to plug those holes.
If you’re operating on a shoestring and can’t change anything, take up regular prayer and have a plan to quickly address inadequacies as they surface and threaten your ongoing success.
If you don’t want to grow and change your structure, but see areas of concern, we’d love to help you find third-party solutions. We love helping clients connect with experts, even on a temporary basis, to improve their probability of success.