¶ Stop Drowning in Data and Start Driving Sales
Prepare yourself for another content rich action packed episode of Rooted in Retail. Today I'm joined with my friend and colleague, Dan Holman, the CEO of Retail by CRS and Canadian Retail Solutions. Dan is breaking it down. What metrics should you be measuring? What matters? How to make it easier on yourself so it doesn't feel like a burden. Having the right type of measurement and doing it the right cadence and how often you're doing this is so important.
And we break it all down in this episode to help you be more profitable and really understand trends in your business to help you connect with your customers to sell more from an inventory management perspective. I mean, this was sort of a retail masterclass. I love Dan's passion for this industry. He's very rooted in retail and has a lot of education to share as you're going to learn in today's episode. I looked at the clock and I'm like, I don't want to stop. This is so good.
I felt like I had just so many more questions for Dan. He has so much knowledge. If you have questions about POS systems, if you hate yours, sort of love it. You know, there's a big POS controversy in our industry. We talk about it in this episode. He has some really great advice on understanding a POS system that's good for you. Plus, this is airing in Q4. So Dan gives some advice for you to have a really successful holiday season. I love the advice he gave in this episode.
So be sure to listen fully because even through our resilience round at the end. Man, Dan was just dropping so much, so many ideas and education and resources that I was blown away by how much he gave in this episode. You're going to love it. Now, before we dive in, here's a little bit more about my guest, Dan.
Dan Holman has spent 30 plus years in the retail and service industries, specializing in marketing and business development, inventory planning, operations, and customer driven sales management. He's an award winning business coach with a proven understanding of what it takes to be successful as an entrepreneur. Dan spent 16 years in senior management and ownership roles with multi store retailers before joining Canadian Retail Solutions as their CEO, Director of Retail Planning.
Dan works directly with clients coast to coast representing hundreds of retailers categories. He's the founder of The Wealthy Retailer, a boutique consulting firm, guiding independent specialty retailers and wholesalers to growth, improved profitability, and more cashflow. You can learn more about Dan and his company retailbycrs.com. Dan is also sponsoring EVOLVE. So you will see him there and he's got an awesome breakout session that you will not want to miss.
So be sure to get your EVOLVE tickets so you can meet Dan. You can ask questions. That's the beauty of going to in person conferences. You get to see people in person and ask those questions and really connect and learn from each other. So listeners, you can use the code rooted at crystalmediaco.com/evolve to save $200 on your tickets. All right, let's dive into this episode with Dan. Welcome to Rooted in Retail. I'm your host, Crystal Vilkaitis.
Here, we have engaging and informative conversations with successful indie retailers and industry experts. Together, we learn, connect, and grow. Don't miss our live after the show every Tuesday night in the Rooted in Retail Facebook group. Alright, here's today's episode. Dan, welcome to Rooted in Retail. I'm thrilled you're here.
Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited.
Yeah, you're one of those people I always love seeing in person at conferences. Like it's always so nice. We see each other along the years. And this year we actually got to see each other twice, which was so great. So I'm looking forward to this conversation. I told you right before we hit record that today is Dan's day because I was listening to some Stacey's episode, who owns all of Olive & Bette's. She gave a good plug for Dan.
I'm going to be talking to Cloud Nine Pajamas later who works with Dan. He's very rooted in retail. So Dan, well, before we dive in here, will you take a couple of minutes and share more about you and your retail journey?
¶ Dan's journey through over 40 years in retail
Sure. Yeah, I've been in retail my whole life. It started at a very, very young age, probably younger than most should work at retail. But I did, that's where I started. And I sort of cut my teeth as a young person in retail, left retail and went into sort of a service sales and service industry. And then, five or seven years there and I quickly went back into retail. So I tell this story that I cut my teeth, in traditional home and gift retail.
And for the better part of 12 or so years was a leader, an owner and a manager within a group of gift and home stores. You know, I said this on a webinar yesterday, my claim to fame is taking a $5 million business and growing it to $55 million in four or five years and then to zero in one year. And so that journey teaches you so much. And as I exited that company or as we exited, I mean, chapter 11, exited the company.
One of the consulting firms that I had worked with for a decade said to me, "If you're ever looking to change your career, you would make a great consultant." And I honestly, Crystal, I just hated the word consultant .Still do. I never refer to myself, when I'm wearing a consulting hat as a consultant, I'm a coach, I'm a mentor for some, but I really coach, I get in the game and coach the plays that are happening in the game. And that's really where I found my passion in retail.
While I own a retail store today, I have the good fortune to work with 35 or 40 retailers in one on one every single month. That feeds my passion and then POS, point of sale, pays the bills, is the way I look at it. And so not necessarily a passion, but an absolutely essential tool.
And I learned very early in my retail career that the more effort I put into understanding the nucleus of our business, that one platform that harbors all information, I could make a significant change if I just listen. And so here we are. 30 through years. Probably 35, almost 40. I mean, if I'm thinking about when I started, I was 12 when I started. So, you know, I'm definitely 40 some years into retail and working with retailers on an independent level has really been about since 2007, 2008.
I have kind of lived and breathed in retail and never thought about ever leaving.
¶ Why negativity holds back so many independent retailers
Yeah, you really have. You are super rooted and what incredible experience that you have and what you can bring to our listeners today, which we're going to dive in and we're going to talk about POS and data. But before we get there, I want to hear some of this coaching side because you've coached retailers across hundreds of categories. What's one unconventional tactic or mindset shift that has led to a major turnaround for one of your clients?
A great question. I don't know if it's unconventional. But there is definitely a systemic problem in our world. Most independent retailers struggle with negativity in their business. And the reality is we tend to focus on the negatives that we create. We're off our last year goal or our last year sales, our comp is down. We didn't make our sales goal. There's no traffic, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Those are all negative.
Things that take us to the wrong place in our business and the real turnaround for retailer always begins when we start to focus on success, no matter how small it is literally impossible to work on broken things in your business. You just don't know what you don't know. And if you did know, they wouldn't be broken. And so my coaching, has always sort of been foundationally based as a cheerleader. I'm going to look for positives and cheer you on.
And when we flip sort of that lens that we look at from what's not working to what is working, and understand why something is working. We make significant change in the business and we achieve success that we didn't know was possible. So for me, the biggest turnaround, and I can tell you, you know, you're talking to Stacy or Cloud Nine, they are going to say the same thing, "Dan always focuses on what's working, never what's not working." And it's not that I'm oblivious to what doesn't work.
It's that I focus energy on understanding reasoning why something is working. Whether it's a product or a process, a relationship. If I understand why it works, I can fix anything. It's the knowledge of what does work that is our superpower.
I love that. And something that I have personally done as a small business owner, and I'm sure you've seen it with these retailers. I want to know is that we can do something that does work really well. And then never do it again. It's like, we just move right on. We forget about it. We're doing so many things. We don't actually like stop and say, "Oh, that worked really well. Should we do that again?" Like, and learn from it. Do you see that with retailers?
Always, and that sort of brings me always back to one foundational place. And I'm going to say this, I mean, until the day I die, every retailer needs a dashboard that keeps their finger on the pulse of what's working and what's not. And it focuses on what's working so that we don't forget why we had success. And too many of us do it. I sent this email, I held this event. It was a great success. When did you last do it? Oh, a year ago. Oh my gosh. Hello, there's success there you can build from.
There is, I like to call this a winning slot machine where you can just pull the lever and just keep winning. Right? Like that's what we want. And you know, Systems and data.
¶ The top things retailers overlook in inventory management
Like making those data driven decisions are so critical. We will get into that a little bit, but I want to hear like about these blind spots that you're seeing from retailers 'cause I'm sure there are some, especially when it comes to inventory management, like what are you seeing?
Well, I think the biggest blind spot, Crystal, is a retailer's inability to connect their current inventory to their current customer base. I say current, I don't mean the people that are your infrequents. I mean the people that shop with you frequently. I mean the customers that were here yesterday tell you a better story than those that don't. And the blind spot for every retailer is not recognizing that behavioral activity.
And the connection of existing inventory to existing active customers is a key ingredient to success. And instead, we have this, I call it the Kevin Costner approach. If you build it, they will come. That's not true. It's never been more untrue. It's never a more inaccurate strategy in retail. You have to connect what you do to the audience that trusts you, that loves you, that follows you, that patronizes you.
Absolutely, it's so true. So this makes me think about when I was interviewing Miranda with Cloud Nine Pajamas and she said, you are on her email list and you got an email from her about bras and you are a male. And you're like, this is not, no, this is not the right segmentation. And we were talking about email marketing and segmenting, but what am I understanding? What you're saying here is our retailers, understanding and knowing they have that information.
They have that data of what the customer in their store is buying today. So they can make strategic decisions on how they're talking to that customer in the future, as well as what they're ordering and using that data. How should they be using the data?
Well, there's really three things that come from understanding that behavioral activity of both inventory and customer. I know exactly what she's buying from me. If I know exactly what she's buying from me, I also know what she's not buying from me, which opens the door to opportunity. This person is buying dress wear from me, but not casual, not denim, not sweaters, not jackets. Why? What are other people doing that buy those products from me? So it is understanding.
And you know this better than most. To the degree you know your customer, you will have success. It's this unknown and it's not that we don't know our customers and we think about the independent retailer. That person that's got a small boutique. That's got five or seven employees. That's really active in the front end of their business. They know their customers. They know their customers by face, but not by habit.
They don't ever go back and look at their habits to justify, to verify, to in fact, reason why something is the way it is. We use excuse, you know, what we believe to be true rather than what we prove. So certainly connecting inventory to your existing customer. What did she buy? What hasn't she bought? I mean, when you talk about segmentation, you've used the best example. Why would you send a bra ad?
Which I love KDM, not the KDM products, but from Cloud Nine, I can tell you that my wife is a fan. I got the email about the KDM bras and underwear. I'm not the audience. So I instantly, if I wasn't part of that family, I would have just tuned out and there's a good chance I'd have never looked at another one because they clearly don't know me.
It's so true. And I think that's where a lot of retailers are hesitant on, at least from the email marketing side is that they feel like they're bothering their customers. So they never send anything. But if you are sending the right type of communication, because you know what they are buying and your customers habits, like you just said that. I really want our listeners to let that sink in. Do you know your customer's habits? And what are you doing with that information?
It's so powerful, you've gotta use it.
You have to know if your customer comes in your store whether she buys or not is irrelevant. If she walks through your front door every single week, that's habit. If she comes in every month, that's habit. If she comes in every quarter, every season, that's habit. Habit isn't necessarily a daily task. Habit is this act of repeating the same function, the same process over and over again. Cadence really is irrelevant.
And so understanding how she shops, when she shops, what things she purchases, the best example I have for stores that sell consumable commodity: candles, soap, detergents, things like that. We think about bra stores and the amount of soap that we should sell that we don't. I mean candles, how long does a candle last? If you light a candle, open a bottle of wine, how long will that candle last? And when should I let her know, it's time to get another candle?
Like there is habit buried in our information, like buried in our point of sale system. If we just understand how to ask a question, you're going to get this. I mean, untapped uncapped potential revenue in your stores. And we're missing it today. It's a blind spot. I mean, so the third thing I would say that understanding this, it tells you how to buy. It tells you what size to buy. When you go and swim through the minutia of stuff at a trade show, it tells you what to focus on.
Your ultimate goal has to always be "Fill her closet, fill her home. Not my store." And it is behavioral information that allows us to become better buyers. And these are traditional blind spots. These are typical blind spots in all indie retail, not all, not just indie retail, but in retail in general.
We're seeing significant improvement with clientele and now coming back to the forefront, which I think you're not old enough to remember this, but I will say this in the old days, you knew exactly what I bought. It was written in your book. You had a little black book that contained all of that information. And you reached out to me specifically about a dress, a jacket, a suit, a whatever it is. "Dan, I haven't seen you in forever." That's clienteling.
And only now, I mean, especially in the last sort of 12 to 18 months, are we even hearing the words clienteling in regular language.
It's so true.
It's a lost art.
It so is. Actually, I've been in this industry for over a decade and I feel like I've only been hearing clienteling for the past couple of years now. Like it is coming back. I remember I was in a store a couple of years, well, actually probably like six years ago. And my mom was in town. I was in California. My mom was in town. It was Mother's Day weekend and we were taking her shopping and she really needed a pair of jeans. And we went into a couple of stores.
She tried on a few things, but she didn't find anything that she liked. The store owner the next, like five days later, called me and was like, "I was wondering if your mom ever found any jeans. We got some new jeans in," and I was blown away. I'm like, "I can't believe this lady." Like seriously blown away It is a lost art. I think that there is so many opportunities.
And I also love the idea of retailers getting really almost like obsessed with the purchases and the behavior and the habits that their customers are, that they have.
¶ Biggest data points retailers should monitor regularly
Now let's talk about the data because it can feel really overwhelming. So what are the top data points they should monitor regularly? And how can they easily track these metrics without becoming burdened by it?
That's great question. I mean, key metrics are a critical component of success in any business. You have to know what your key performance indicators are. And for us in retail, it should always start the same way. What are my weekly sales? And I'm going to break this down. This has to be weekly. Not monthly, not quarterly, not annually every week. What are my weekly sales? What are my units per transaction? What's my average order value? What's my margin and what's my on hand inventory?
And if I measure that every single week on a dashboard, on a simple dashboard, I can see trend. I can quickly identify when my AOV starts to soften or strengthen. Why did it get better? Why is it softening? If it's softening on AOV, I know exactly what lever to push on to improve that number. That's an internal problem, not an external problem, right? I own that. And so these metrics that you look for, you should have most three automated reports that you get every Monday morning from last week.
You want to know. Obviously, POS reporting. You should have one report that gives you really the five key metrics that you need from sales. I always want to know what my on hand inventory is and if measured against my weekly sales, I know what my average weekly sales are. And I can quickly say, Oh, my average weekly sales are $10,000. I have a hundred thousand dollars in on hand inventory. I have about 10 weeks of supply. Now that would be perfection, if I had 10 weeks of supply.
The fact is most of our retailers are carrying more than 25 or 26 weeks of inventory, which is a half a year's worth of goods at any given time. You have no cash. And so just that simple metric keeps me focused on how many weeks worth of inventory do I have? Based on my trended weekly sales. And as we move in and out of bigger sales seasons like fourth quarter I know historically what my average sales have been so I know where I can grow from.
So those five sort of pos metrics, critically important. The other thing I will say, there's two other reports that I lean on. A marketing report, absolutely. What are my weekly email campaigns and flows. And I'll just share this quick story. And we're talking about Cloud Nine, I do this quarterly strategy meeting for them typically right before holiday. And just try to rally the team, give them some insight.
And so this year we went to the team of store managers and said, "Hey, tell me what you want to hear from me." And everybody had the same thing. Tell us how we compare, how are others doing? And so I always cautioned by saying comparisons either live, leave us in a world of commiseration or aspiration. Make sure you're looking for the right output when you comp. So we showed them 22 stores that are relatively similar to what they do over the same period, same store sales, same period.
The average is in the middle point, but the bottom was 30 percent behind last year and the top was 58 percent behind. And they asked me, what is that person doing that they've got that kind of growth? And I said, every single morning, she wakes up and thinks about how do I drive traffic into my store tomorrow? Not today, tomorrow. Today, I should have done that work yesterday. So I'm always focused on future traffic growth.
So when I think about the number of emails that Laura sends, there are seven to 10 emails that go out every single week. Not always to the same customer, obviously, but truly segmented. Here's the emails that go to my early adopters. Here's my sales seagulls. Here's my popular girl. I'm sending her these are the most popular items. And then the, we miss you. And so those seven to 10 emails that go out have to be measured for their performance. If we don't measure it, we can't improve it.
So I want a marketing report on my dashboard that I can see. How many did I send campaigns and flows, what percentage were open, what percentage were clicked, and then what events did I have? And if I do it every week and I consistently enter that number, you guessed it, I get to see a trend. And when I see a spike in traffic, that's followed by a spike in sales, I have hit gold. And now I want to expand on that. This is part of that ability to reason why something happens.
And then the very last report that I need to have is traffic. I need to know how many people are walking through your front door or your virtual and your physical door that allows me to see what conversion is. Every retailer should know the success or the sales formula. Traffic times conversion times average sale equals your sales. No matter how you multiply it or how you divide it, you get the same result. Here you go. This is my sales.
So if I can break down the effort rather than the result, I know where to improve the business.
Yeah. Whoa, that was just like a masterclass here on really making sure the retailer is measuring what matters weekly.
Right, stop measuring things that don't matter.
Yes.
And the things that don't matter to you are the things that are not a catalyst. The metrics that are not a catalyst to change. Okay, If I'm measuring something that doesn't create change in my life, it doesn't need to be measured.
I love that.
And the people that have dashboards or scorecards that kind of max out at 10 to 15 numbers are the ones that get the best traction. I look at some scorecards and there's 40 lines of information. I'm like I have paralysis by analysis. It's too much information. I don't know what to focus on give me three good sales metrics, two good inventory metrics, one good marketing metric, I'm a happy guy. But I want to expand to know where to apply pressure.
Yeah, exactly. Well, and that's why I said in my question, the burden. We don't want the burden. And if you're looking at 40 different things, then that just feels very heavy. And then what levers are you pulling? And I just feel like you're wasting a lot of time.
¶ Episode Sponsor: EVOLVE
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¶ How Dan recommends retailers track in-store traffic
Now, two questions for you. One, how are retailers tracking in store traffic? Do they have like a door counter, like something that is actually tracking? Do you have a software you recommend for that? How can they do it?
For every retailer that we talked to, we say, "Hey, you got to use SMS store traffic." It's a simple PEARL counter. It's a door entrance. It's inexpensive. It has the ability to capture live data for $35 a month, Canadian, I think it is, but you can see your live data in your store. The pain, Crystal, in counting traffic comes when we rely on the human to count it
Yeah. It's not going to
they ignore. They ignore the mailman, the FedEx guy. Oh, the FedEx guy came in seven times. That door counts not accurate. Well, the FedEx guy is actually an ambassador for your store. He should feel the love of shopping at Crystal's dress shop. And if he doesn't feel that love, he's never going to share that love. He'll never share that message. He, in fact, is an opportunity to sell. We miss it.
So I say, put a door counter in and write that number down or pull that number if you're using software, which in today's world you should be, and get it on your scorecard. And if you count it the same way every day, it's not inaccurate. It only becomes inaccurate when you humanly modify it. When you say, "oh, this is an exception." There's no such thing. That's the number of people that walk through the door. And I don't care if it's a kid with a popsicle that came in and out 17 times.
It doesn't matter to me. It happens. Just roll with the number. And when we start to think about micro measurement, we're starting at a small scale. And the bigger we get in looking at trend, the more accurate it becomes. So that kid came three months ago and he did the same thing. So my average traffic on Tuesdays is this and he influenced it. He sure did, but the way I treated him resonated with his mother.
Exactly. Yep, exactly.
He's an ambassador.
He's the ambassador. I love that. I love thinking about the FedEx guy is the ambassador. You just can't, you got to be careful when you're manipulating data and then you create like inconsistencies as well. Like just allow it to give you the number and work from the number, find the trends.
¶ The easiest platform for tracking metrics
My second question was this dashboard. So I'm assuming that you have a dashboard, probably the software. So people could do that through you or they could create their own, but like, tell us about your dashboard.
The simplest, easiest dashboard is a Google sheet. I mean, if you're not, if you're not living in a Google world or you're on some other platform, great. I get it. There's tons of options. The simplest, most cost effective platform is Google sheets, create your goal and your tolerance. So you list your metrics, create your goal. What do I want to achieve? The tolerance. You know, that's typically 10 percent behind goal, which tells me I'm on track.
So if I have a sales goal of a hundred dollars this month, and my variance allows me to fall to my tolerance to fall to 90 before I do anything, I'm on track. I'm within that gold zone or the scoring zone. The truth is when that number falls more than 10 percent off, I'm going to go take action. It's a really simple to do it on a go. And I listen for anybody that's listening. I'm that guy. I've always got my hand up, not out. If you're not sure about how to use a dashboard, you know, ping me.
We'll jump on a screen share. We'll build you a quick dashboard and I'll show you where to get the information from whatever system you're using. It doesn't really matter. It's just as long as it's consistent. It can give me, again, those foundational springboards that are required to drive business forward.
Yeah, good. Okay, I hope everyone that's listening to this takes action. And if you do not have a dashboard, it's time to build it. And I really love the tolerance too. I kind of do like a level one, level two, but it's sort of the same. Where are we in this buffer, the zone? Like, I really like that. That's awesome.
For me, it comes on the back of being an EOS guy for so many years, that I understand getting 80 percent of the way there is good enough. But in retail, 80 percent isn't good enough. We've got break evens that we're doing. And so I'd set my tolerance and I set it realistically and I never set goals that are on achievable. Every goal I set has to be SMART, which just means it's specific, measurable, achievable, relevant to the business, and it's time bound.
I'm measuring the same way the same day the same week every single month And I know what my numbers are.
Oh, so good. Okay. I love it. Okay, Dan, we're going to keep this going. I feel like there's this controversy with POS systems. I mean, I'm sure you've heard it too over the years. There is love. Little love for POS and a lot of hate and a lot of frustrations. And I'm not kidding. I met a woman once who was so mad at her POS system that she took it out into an alley and drove over it with her car, then reverse, then kept just going over it.
¶ Dan's advice on choosing a POS system
Like oh my gosh, that would be great content for social media. But I want to know your opinion. Based on your experience, which one's the best and why?
such a good question, it's impossible to answer and this is why it's impossible when choosing a point of sales system I have to better understand my business and ask the right questions. Everybody that hates their point of sales system did not ask the right questions when they chose it. "It doesn't do the things I wanted to do, and I hate it," but it was never capable of doing those things. We created this, what we call the POS Toolkit.
It's this 20 page, lots of image, it's not 20 pages of questions, but it is all of the questions you should ask yourself when choosing a POS system, that you make sure you end up in the right place. And I will say this, I absolutely have my favorites. If you're an apparel shop and you're doing, 80 percent or more of your sales are done a brick and mortar genius or what's called genius now Heartland Point of Sale, 100 percent the best dollar over dollar investment for point of sale.
If you're a little larger scale, I'm going to go to a bigger software. And this is the thing unsophisticated retailers don't, and this is not a negative or a slight. If you're not sophisticated you should never choose a sophisticated system. If you're very simplistic, you need something that fits your level of simplicity or conversely your level of sophistication. And too often we choose the wrong system for ourselves and then we spend, gas money driving over it in the alley, right?
And so I have my favorites. I love Shopify. I love Heartland. I love Retail Pro on an enterprise level. I'm a huge fan of some of the enterprise ERP systems that we get to sell and work with every day. But from an independent retailer perspective, that's largely brick and mortar, the best dollar for dollar platform is Heartland, which is rebranded now as Genius. Global has global payments. Who owns that product is investing significantly in the retail product.
They are masters in restaurant and they're going to become masters in retail.
Very cool. I have a interview scheduled with Heartland, or Genius. So I'm looking forward to that conversation. That was so insightful, thank you. I know that retailers listening just it's there's a lot of confusion. It can be so technical and confusing and I love how you broke it down. Like get it. If you're simple, find a simple one. If you're sophisticated, find simple. One thing that I find challenging for people is like Merle Norman, let's say.
They have their own system or like a quilting has their own system and you can't be on a different system and you're stuck and it's like oh, you want to help these people, but they're trapped. It's just blows my mind, that world.
And there are so many verticals that are underserved by technology today. There are just thin, I mean, when you think about fabric and quilt stores. I mean, the greatest pain that I hear is the limited choice in POS and everything that they buy is a P.O.S. Piece of, you know, not point of sale, right? They just end up unhappy because there's not enough opportunity in that. And we're going to see improvement in the products. We're going to see fractional selling available.
It's already available in Shopify through an app. It'll become inherent development. We're going to see fractional selling and genius. These things that are critically important to the operation of a fabric store or anyone that, that sells in less quantity than they buy. Bolts of fabric, cases of pop, cartons of cigarettes. Whatever it is, I buy in a bigger quantity and have to fraction it out in sales. And so it is such a painful world.
And this is the one time whenever I talk about this, it's the one time that makes me reflect on how lucky I am to have such great technicians on our team. That just deal with the hatred for point of sale that exists in the client, our own clients will call and say, "I hate my POS system." Oh, you hate an aspect of it because we don't know it. Let's figure this out for you.
¶ How make teams stronger and more profitable
Exactly, well said. Oh my goodness. We love those technicians, that's for sure. Thank goodness for them. Now, Dan, you have 30 plus years, maybe 40 years of experience here. What's one piece of leadership advice that you would offer our listeners to help them manage their teams more effectively and boost their profitability?
That's a good question. So I will just go back to in my younger days in home and gift I had a two mentors Lee, was my inventory coach, consultant, whatever. And Toni was our front end. She was she looked after all of our sales training everything and Toni was really the person that gave me the best advice.
I was a good manager and the best advice I ever got from Toni was simply, Dan, you need to lead and I said, I could remember this conversation saying, there's a lot to unpack when someone gives you four letters and says, go.
Yeah.
And she used to begin each session as I pushed back on understanding the difference between leadership and management. She'd say, "Dan, leaders, lead. Managers, direct. Leaders, listen. Managers, speak. Leaders, inspire. Managers, control. Leaders see vision, managers see the task. If you want to boost profitability and productivity or productivity and profitability, you have to shift. To becoming a leader, you shift your mindset to lead people and manage process or systems. You lead people."
And her innate ability to just fall out of her mouth leaders lead. I was like, "Oh boy, okay, there's something here." And even when I think about my own team, when I sink back down into management, our productivity weakens, thereby profitability weakens. When I focus my energy on leadership, we grow. Good things come out in people. And Toni used to say this to me all the time, which is tough for a guy like me that spends 90 percent of his day yapping.
She said, "you got to listen more than you speak." If you're speaking more than you're listening, you are clearly a manager, not a leader. And it's just something that has stuck with me forever. You have to lead people. If you lead them, they will do unbelievable things for you. If you manage them, they'll only do what you're capable of doing.
Oh, Dan. So good. And wow, Toni. Thank you, Toni, for that.
I love Toni. Still 25 or 30 years later, I refer to Toni frequently in my coaching calls with clients.
Yeah, that is really good. I want our listeners, if you're listening, really take an honest look. Are you managing or are you leading? And are there opportunities for you to really lead and empower the team, maybe to become those managers? It's so good. Dan, before we go into the resilience round, we're filming this in Q4, it's airing in Q4.
¶ What retailers can do to have a strong Q4
What can retailers do to have a strong Q4? I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of things, but give me one or two things here.
The number one thing we have to do is always focus on the customer experience. And I will say this, the minute that we shift thinking from selling to serving, sales follow. They always do. And I want you to think about it like this, we're in retail, but what if we were in restaurant and we sent the people in our retail store to go and serve in restaurants? Would they ever make any money? I mean, think about a restaurant in North America.
When we go to a restaurant, a bar, a tavern, whatever it is. We acknowledge the level of service with a gratuity. We pay over and above the invoice based on the experience we got from the service that we received from that person in retail. I mean, every business coach out there will say ABC or ABS, always be closing or always be selling. I don't say it. I say always be serving. To the degree that we serve people, sales will grow.
And in Q4, there is never a better time to demonstrate how much you care about that customer. This is their most, this is what I would call their most anxiety ridden time to shop. And it comes out in their tone, in their body language, in their feeling, they are stressed out and it's our job to serve them and make them feel like they matter. If you do that in Q4. If you shift focus from sales, park sales on the side and focus everything on how my customer feels.
You will have sales success and you won't know why.
I So 100 percent agree with that. I'm such a believer of giving and serving and everything follows. And it's easy, I think, for our retailers to get caught up in Q4 sales.
God,
yes. Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday, sell, sell, sell. So that was excellent advice. Dan, are you ready for the resilience round?
¶ Dan's resilience round
All right fire.
¶ Best business book
All right, let's go. Best business book.
Oh, best business book. Okay, I'm gonna tell you what the best business book ever written. That was not written for business is called Moneyball: Winning the Unfair Game. Moneyball is a story, for those that don't know, now you're gonna have to go read this book. Moneyball is the story of a general manager in major league baseball that lived in cyber analytics. He hired somebody to change. He had a payroll that was 30 million going up against payrolls of 300 million.
And in the first year made it to the playoffs. And this is the game that we play in today. Moneyball tells seven different tips stories within that book into how do I get more for less? How do I inspire people to change? How do I ignore the old gray haired big belly dude that thinks he knows retail inside and out and pay attention to the 20 year old kid that's coming up that represents my customer base? I mean, they took a major league catcher and trained him to be a first baseman.
Like there are so many good things in Moneyball. That it was never written for business. It was to tell a story, a real story of what happens in major league baseball. And in fact, you're seeing it. If you're a baseball fan, they're going to win the world series by the time this airs. But you're going to see a team that wins the world series is going to do it with a payroll that's less than a third of the team they're playing against today.
And it's because they use analytics to build their team. They fill their gaps and their voids with data. Not personality or skill. I mean, I say skill. We all want that Aaron Hernandez, we all want that big star on our team, but the result that we want comes from the effort and this book, I mean, it is, in my mind, the best book ever. And sorry, this was supposed to be fast.
No, are passionate about Moneyball and I can't wait to read it.
There are so many good business tips in there that you can read it and go, how does this apply to me? Oh my gosh. Okay. This applies.
Very cool, I love it. Okay, best retail technology, like an app or software.
Oh, totally going to be an analytical software. I'm biased. We built a Shopify reporting product for Shopify retailers. Absolutely game changing analytical product. And whenever I look for a new app or new software, it always comes on the foundation or with the foundation of being analytical. So my favorites are going to be analytical products that plug into your systems.
What's the name of the Shopify app?
It's just CRS Advanced Shopify Reporting. We actually called it ARR Advanced Responsive Reporting. But ARR gets confused with annual recurring revenue, and it's really not. It's just responsive reporting. Meaning that I can click on an item and drill all the way down. Or a metric and drill all the way down on every attribute within it and then all the way back up out without running multiple reports. It's just responsive reporting, but it is using it. It's a data aggregation platform.
We pulled data from a bunch of sources, mix it back up and give it back to you in an actionable state.
I love it. We'll link to that. I know that's on your site. Retailers got to go check that out. How do you keep up with the ever changing retail landscape?
Oh, Crystal. Education, education, education. Every day, you have to wake up and learn something new about retail. And I'm lucky. I have the good fortune to work with and learn from some of the best retailers on the planet. And my connection to enterprise level retail sort of keeps me in tune with big scale shifts, but I wake up every morning and I have about 7 different blogs, newsletters that I go through that are latest and greatest or shifts or trends.
And so it is just continuing to educate myself every single day. Learn something new.
¶ What's an inventory management foundational best practice?
So agree. To help retailers be stronger, more rooted in success. What's an inventory management foundational best practice?
I'm sorry, I'm going to repeat myself. You always think about behavioral activity of inventory and customers. The behavioral activity. Work harder at connecting to your current on hand inventory to your current active customer and you will have foundational success. It's a best practice. Connect inventory to customers that exist already.
¶ If you had to start your business all over again, what's one thing you'd do differently?
Well said. If you had to start your business all over again, what's one thing you'd do differently?
I've been asked this question before and I never have a good answer for it and i'll tell you why. If we knew the things we knew now back then, we wouldn't build the businesses that we did. So when I think about this, truly, what would I do differently? It would adopt an iterative process faster. We have iteration in our business today, and we do it without even knowing. We do the same thing over and over again. We measure it and we improve it. That's iteration.
And if I can think about back in my early days, I did things one way and one way only. There's no iteration, right? And growth is slow because of that. So it is adopt iteration in your world today. Think about what you're doing today and do it over and over again. Measure to improve it, which strengthens business faster.
¶ What do you think the future of independent retail looks like?
I love that so much. Dan, what do you think the future of independent retail looks like?
It's stronger than it's ever been. We have more access to our customer. I say our customer, the GeoDemo psychographics of our customer than we have ever had. We can speak directly to her like we never have i'm thinking about a client that's in Philadelphia. And her largest customer base is in texas. You know how far it is from Philadelphia to Texas to buy a dress? But that's because we have access to those customers that we never had before now. That's not me advocating get online itself.
It's just this reinforcement that access to the marketplace is greater than it ever was. It used to be you put up a beautiful store. You had great products and great people and you got sales. It's not that way today. You have to have better messaging. You have to be a better influencer. You have better analytical mind in order to be successful.
So true. Dan, where can people learn more and connect with you?
You can see me at dan@retailbycrs.com. Canadian retail solutions if you're in Canada. If you're our friends in the south, it's just Retail by CRS and yeah, I mean my email my contact information's all there. And if you're bored driving in the car and you've listened to every single Rooted in Retail podcast twice, then check out The Wealthy Retailer. I did some stuff over there for a while.
But there is lots of evergreen content and some really good stories of really good people in retail that sometimes I still get super emotional when I listen to them. You know because I got to live vicariously through their ups and downs and there are some things that even I as much as I dislike listening to my own talk. There are some that I just absolutely love. So yeah, you can find me, dan@thewealthyretailer.com or dan@retailbycrs.com.
Emails and then canadianretailsolutions.com or Retail by CRS. Everything you need to know about us is at least a way to get to us is
there. Yeah, we'll link to it too. And I have togive a plug Wealthy Retailerr. Cause I have listened to many of your episodes on my walks and I love them. You do bring in really great content. So we'll listen, we'll link to that. And then you're sponsoring EVOLVE. But we're going to see you at EVOLVE, which we're so excited for. So listeners, get your tickets. Come see Dan, meet him, learn more what they're doing. We're just honored to have you guys there.
We are so excited to come. I think it's going to be the first trade show that's a full blown, not trade show, but the first sponsorship that we're going to bring a full suite of Genius with us, which is the new Heartland product. So we're going to see lots of new products and devices and software and all the other stuff that we have too. It's all in branding right now. And I think yours is going to be the first one that we roll it out at. So we're excited.
I'm so excited for that. Thank you. I can't wait to see it. Our retailers are going to be so excited to see it. So thank you, Dan. This was so awesome. Thank you for being here today.
Anytime. It's my absolute pleasure, Crystal. And I'm sorry it took us this long to just chat.
I know it's long overdue, but this was so good. I love it so thank you. And everyone, remember that I am rooting for your success. Have a great week ahead. Bye. Thank you so much for being here. It means the world to me. Don't forget to join the rise and shine newsletter, which is social media news. You need to know sent via email every Monday morning, go to crystal media, co. com slash rise to join and don't miss the newest episode of rooted in retail, which drops every Sunday morning.