EXPERT OPINION
DALEY
version of ourselves. So, each month I will share with you some Practical Solutions and advice that you can apply in your business to improve your performance. These come from real work and life experiences and it would be great to have your input, so if you have any comments or advice of your own, I’d love to hear from you and can feature the best ones each month. To kick off the year, here are some of my top tips on making conscious decisions based on real facts. Whilst I love decisions made from passion and gut
I reaction, and we should
never lose those, many decisions we make can be deep routed from data.
Look beyond the surface data When looking at performance results, make sure you look at the whole picture and dig deep. It is all too easy to see and latch onto the quick answer and then go about our other duties, when important insight can be deduced from a little more digging. I remember last year after a hot Bank holiday weekend, the business I was working with celebrated a strong weekend of garden sales – if you remember it came late last year, and everyone was happy. But was the performance as good as it could have been? We dug deeper and looked for opportunities that were missed. We analysed whether the advertising had been compelling, how the proposition stacked up to the competition and whether logistically we had serviced all the customers’ requirements…and we found key learnings
that would improve performance for the next
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peak weekend. Especially in a situation where you have had a good result, you often don’t take time to study. Remember, it is cheaper and more effective to maximise the sales from the customers that are in your store than the effort you have to put in to acquire new ones.
Test in order to learn Whilst businesses need intelligent thinking and structured planning, don’t forget the benefits of learning by trial and error pressure test your
in order to initiatives and
to learn through testing. Where you can like a science experiment conduct AB testing, which means you have a “Control Group” and the “Test Group”. This allows you to understand and see clearly whether your initiative or idea has had an effect by comparing the two. Only then can you understand the true
incremental impact of what you are doing and whether it is worth it. Remember to look at the surrounding areas for signs that your initiative has had an impact in other areas. I remember once putting a promotion in place on a range that looked good on paper from the line-by-line results, but, on reflection, the surrounding products that dropped in sales as a result and overall category impact suggested the promotion was not successful at all.
Learn from failure
Learn how to embrace failure… don’t be one of those businesses who only see the negative aspect of failure. There is a lot that can be learned from things that do not go the way you planned. If you are willing to accept that not all things go the way you have planned and take the learnings you will continue
believe of
us
that and
each our
businesses can improve and that we should strive to be the best
PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS
CFD Strategic Solutions director Clive Daley introduces the first of his monthly solutions to optimise and elevate businesses; this time with a particlar focus on using data-based decisions.
to improve. I remember a talented CEO I worked with saying retail does not happen in a straight line and he was right. Remember it took more than 3000 attempts to get the lightbulb right and 40 versions for WD40 to get the right formulae… so thank goodness they learnt from failure or we would be in a dark and squeaky place right now. Next time something does not go the way you expected, take the time to deep dive in to the detail, find the root cause and importantly find out how to do it better next time. See the positive and move forward.
It’s all in the execution So, when you are learning from looking beyond the surface data, testing in order to progress and taking on the valuable lessons from failure when things do not go as planned, make sure your execution is spot on. So much effort can go into the planning, thinking and testing but it can all fail through poor execution. Remember to dedicate quality time on scheduling how initiatives will be implemented, executed and your step by step expectations. Set clear milestones and track and monitor them so that you and your teams know when you are delivering on the original expectations…it also gives you that chance to celebrate success when it comes and that is the good bit right!
For comments on this piece contact Clive Daley via Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/clive- daley-7295028/
14 JANUARY 2019 DIY WEEK 17
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