The retail landscape is ever-evolving, and no one knows this better than Julia Reynolds, a maverick in the world of retail who has seamlessly transitioned from brick-and-mortar success to digital marketplace dominance. Julia's story is not just one of personal triumph but also of industry-wide transformation, especially for the demographic often overlooked: women over 40. Her career journey, as detailed in a recent podcast episode, encapsulates the trials, triumphs, and relentless pursuit of innovation that marks a true leader in retail and fashion.
The conversation begins with Julia's early days at Topshop's head office, a young woman eager to leave her mark on the fast-paced world of fashion. With no university education, she challenged conventional wisdom, believing that there was more to success than traditional academic routes. This defiance of norms and an inherent drive to question the status quo led her to play a crucial role in the rise of Tesco's F&F clothing line, transforming it into a retail powerhouse. Her move from Tesco to the pioneering e-commerce site Figleaves.com came at a time when online retail was still in its infancy. Julia's insights on achieving operational efficiency, particularly in inventory control and reverse logistics, were crucial in turning Figleaves.com into a profitable venture. The transition to digital retail was not without its challenges, including the complexities of business acquisitions and the resilience needed to navigate the private equity space and advisory roles. But it's her current mission that stands out—addressing the fashion industry's fit problem for women over 40. With a combination of AI and body-scanning technology, Julia aims to create garments that not only fit better but also contribute to sustainability by reducing production waste. Her dedication to quality over quantity and her vision for a more inclusive and vibrant future for retail reflect a deep understanding of the market's needs. Julia's revolutionary approach extends to the high street, envisioning a community-centric shopping experience that integrates commerce, dining, entertainment, and services. The potential of such a revitalised space could be transformative, bringing people back to local centres and fostering a sense of community and inclusivity. The episode ends on a hopeful note, with Julia's future plans hinting at continued innovation and success. In essence, Julia Reynolds' journey is a testament to the power of thinking differently and the importance of catering to the needs of all consumers. Her story resonates with anyone interested in retail's future, sustainability, and the empowerment of women through fashion that truly fits. Tune in to the podcast for a rich narrative of retail revolution, a deep dive into the transformation of e-commerce, and a blueprint for serving the mature female market with the respect and attention it deserves.
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Work those numbers
For most businesses the keeping of accounting records is a necessary annoyance demanded by HMRC. However, those VERY annoying figures are what ultimately drives your business, my business, ANY business. In fact, those figures should actually be utilised to drive all your business decisions and ultimately increase your profits – which is the aim of all (most) businesses. Even charities need to be driven by their numbers – more so. So how do we work those numbers? Firstly we need to have a GOOD SYSTEM of recording all those figures, so a decent accounting system is paramount. Spreadsheets are not good enough because they do not automatically give you instant information to make great business decisions. Cloud accounting systems are now fairly cheap – but one word of warning they do not do all those amazing things advertised on TV/Radio unless you understand what you are doing, what you are recording – so make sure you learn all the basics of how to use that system. If you find this too difficult then OUTSOURCE to a Bookkeeper (you can use your Accountant but this will be costly) The cost will be far outweighed by the BENEFITS. Second. Those records need to be UP TO DATE so that information is available which relates at the very least to the last month of trading. Not always easy but it is essential if you want to be able to make good business decisions and make changes quickly if some part of your business starts to fail – you don’t know what you don’t know! Once a year is definitely not acceptable! Thirdly – using the numbers which can automatically come off ALL proprietary systems will ultimately steer your business in just some of these ways:
Alongside all the financial numbers above it is just as important to record all your sales and marketing numbers to ensure you are able to easily identify your best performing products / services, your win (and lose) rate, your best performing types of marketing (is it direct sales, sales through social media, online sales etc), your best performing sales people / departments – all of these need to be recorded and compared against KPI’s. KPI’s are important because they are the best indicator of how your business is performing against your strategy / forecast for your business and if you do not know what is or is not performing you will be working blindly, and could be putting vast amounts of effort into the wrong products / services / type of marketing / people (who cost a lot of money) etc. This shows just how useful all those annoying numbers are and why they are so IMPORTANT for every business – they are in fact your BUSINESS SUPERSTARS! People can get passionate about which tool they use to mange sales and relationships with customers. Lotus 1-2-3 paved the way in data management and manipulation when it introduced the world to the spreadsheet. Excel stole the march on Lotus with Excel and since the 80's has dominated the market. Excel is a powerful tool and is absolutely the right tool for analysing data is certain circumstances. The problem is it is not dynamic and really only looks at history and is not much use at being used to manage your interactions, past, present and future with your clients. Here are some comparisons between the two. Breeze writes Quote While Excel spreadsheets are a good enough tool for some tasks, when it comes to customer relationship management it lags way behind. CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software is a much more efficient tool for managing your business’ most important asset – your customer base. We are living in the Age of the Customer, and businesses that don’t shift their focus on customer satisfaction will pay the price. That’s why it’s very important to use the best tools available to manage your customer relationships, and Excel just doesn’t quite cut it. Why is using a CRM better than Excel for customer relationship management?Data is centralized A CRM system keeps all of your data centralized so you can access any information you need easily. There is no need to waste time searching through different spreadsheets to find what you are looking for so you can spend your time on more important tasks. Plus, you don’t need to cross reference with other team members’ spreadsheets to make sure you have the most updated information. Email Integration As opposed to Excel, you can integrate your email and calendar in the CRM to send and receive email within the app. View your correspondence history with each customer so you can get a better picture of their needs and take a more personal approach to customer service. Relating Data In Excel, you cannot relate data. This can make it very frustrating to see which contacts are related to which deals and difficult to get important tasks done. In a CRM, you can relate your deals to an account and/or contact as well as create tasks related to specific records. Team collaboration A good CRM is designed for efficient teamwork. Unlike an Excel spreadsheet, a CRM lets share data and tasks as well as notify other users of important details. By collaborating in the CRM, team members can work better and sell more together. Analysing data By analysing your data, the CRM will give you important insights into business activity. You can get a clear view of your sales funnel, your leads by stage, team productivity and so much more. Analysing your data gives you the knowledge you need to make smarter selling decisions. While you can colour code your data and create charts, the functionality is very limited and doesn’t come close to what you’ll get in a CRM. Customization Each business is different, and so it is important to use a customer management system that is flexible and customizable. An Excel spreadsheet doesn’t go very far when it comes to customization. With a CRM, you can fine tune the platform to fit your business’ specific needs. Regardless of industry or size, you can flex a CRM to work perfectly for your customer management efforts. Access your data easily With a CRM system that’s web-based, you can access your data from any computer or mobile device with an internet connection. Whether you’re on a business trip, working from home, or simply not in the office, a CRM is the more effective tool for accessing your data on the go. It’s pretty clear that a CRM is much more efficient than Excel for customer management. If you are still using spreadsheets to manage your business, it would be highly advisable to make the switch to a CRM system. Not only are many systems easy to use, but affordable and flexible enough for any business. Unquote The beauty of CRM's is that the data collection happens as a result of your activities and interactions with clients. You do not have to spend time manually trawling through records to report these in a spreadsheet. Future interactions with clients can be programmed in the CRM along with auto emails and phone calls. The CRM is a holistic live tool the spreadsheet is not. One should not underestimate the task of getting staff to use the CRM. Many staff are stuck in their ways and reluctant to adapt. Sales staff like to keep their client relationships to themselves and are usually not the best process driven people. This criticism can also be levied at a spreadsheet, however, it is up to management to ensure the use of any system is adopted. If you would like to learn more about how to automate your business and make it more efficient book a free consultation here Over the years I have used many CRM systems; Salesforce, Sage Act, Sugar, Hubspot, Navision, Microsoft Dynamics. One of my businesses was a marketing agency that relied on tracking data for our clients so a CRM was a must. So why then did I plump for Zoho? Life's too short I could do a tedious comparison here between the various platforms to prove my logic. But this is not a beauty parade. Price, ease of use, support are all very important but all platforms have their merits and failures, that's life. No, although I think Zoho wins on most of these fronts, quite simply put Zoho is complete. It reflects my business life and has an INHOUSE built solution for all the tools I need. Zoho One, is a one stop shop for your business needs, over 40 products for a monthly affordable fee. Do I use it....No, at the moment I don't need all modules but I do use some products all which can be controlled from the CRM, no need to keep swapping between different programmes. what Do I use?
Zoho CRM - at they very centre of what we do. All our sales are controlled from here from lead generation right through to invoicing all my interactions with my clients are held in one place. Zoho - SalesIQ - Website visitor tracking. All visits to our website is tracked and the results are recorded against a lead or contact in the CRM. Zoho social - Our main brands on social media can be tracked, we can post from, here and monitor our contacts social media activities. This again is displayed and controlled from the CRM. Zoho meetings - Online meetings better than Zoom in my view, you get it I am a fan. Track your meetings, organise and host them without leaving your CRM. (There's a theme running here.) Zoho Campaigns - Email marketing, a robust and easy to use platform, guess where you can see the results! Clue the answer is in all the above. Zoho Books - Soup to nuts, invoice and get paid, do your Vat returns from the comfort of your CRM. Zoho mail and the equivalent of Office suite. A word processor, Spreadsheet, Presentation etc etc Coming soon to my usage is an online training platform. Manage your guests, get paid, present the training with interactive tools like whiteboards and do a survey afterwards of the attendees. It's a doddle. The beauty is Zoho builds theses all in house and does not rely on 3rd parties to provide the services. That means each product syncs perfectly with each other. Click on the links above to learn more and have a free trial. Some of the bigger players are equally flexible but that comes at a price I am not prepared to pay, Zoho gives you a free trial and if you don't want to pay you can still use the product only at reduced performance, now you can't say fairer than that! The writings on the wall!
This Pandemic has made us re-evaluate the way we work.
Although Skype and now Teams has been part of our life for years, new kids on the block Zoom seems to have stolen the march on the competition. With great surges in business comes great challenges also. Many articles have been written on the security issues surrounding Zoom. I am not going to regurgitate them here but suffice to say "look before you leap" seems appropriate. Zoom is a great platform, but another great one is Zoho meetings. I have been an evangelist of Zoho for years. I first started by using their CRM which I found intuitive and fitted seamlessly with my digital life. All my notes, phone calls, emails, deals and invoices were in one place. All my e-mail marketing, which I did a lot of, were also controlled and reported in Zoho CRM. Since then they have continued to add products that can be controlled from the CRM that add value and ease to my business life. From accounting and expenses, email campaigners, meetings right through to websites and website visitor tracking I can run my business without ever leaving my CRM. They even control my social media footprint. I have now become a reseller of their products, not for gain but because I believe in their products. OK and for some gain. Have a look at our Zoho Page. Working from home has accelerated my learning and my leaning on technology. Meetings in coffee houses are now a distant memory (Ironically I am drinking more coffee as a result!) gone are the lunches. I am attending team meetings and webinars without leaving my office. Thank goodness they have re-opened the golf courses, I intend to make this even more a choice of meeting venue in the future. Wonder if Zoho are bringing out a golf app? Now there's a thought! Time to make plans!
T'is the season to be jolly we are told. More than that it is a time when we eat far too much. Drink too much (if that is at all possible) spend huge amounts on presents that hopefully the recipient wants, and celebrate with family and friends. No doubt there will be the usual tales of good will to all men on Telly. Why do all the Xmas stories seem to be set in America, mind you they are closer to the North Pole than most, probably on Santas outbound delivery route. I am looking forward to falling asleep in front of one of them after my enormous Turkey dinner to wake up just before someone suggests we have Turkey sandwiches, cold meats and pickles! Got to get rid of the Turkey somehow. No wonder we only eat it once per year! When boxing day is over and so have the visits to ageing relatives, the kids and Grandkids toys are now just a distant memory, (why did Uncle George buy little Billy that drum kit, I'll get him back!) As a business owner our thoughts turn to the year ahead! Time to make plans, time to grow the business, time to rally the troops, time to take over the world!!!! Where to start? Why not find the plan you made last year and do it again. In fact as you never implemented the plan why not just change the dates and add a few more targets and action plans! Job Done! Business don't plan to fail they fail to plan! We have all heard this expression trotted out with regularity and business seminars and events. It is not, in itself incorrect, but I go a stage further. Business don't plan to fail they fail to implement the plan they have made! Why should this be, after all you spent ages pouring over company records, analysing the market, preparing production, finance and marketing plans. You have calculated what staff you will need. Looked at the equipment you have got, even considered moving premises and put that in your plan. You have spreadsheets forecasting profit and the more tech savvy have even plugged these forecasts into their accounting system ready to hit 2020 at a sprint.. So why does it all fall apart. Life. Day to Day Life gets in the way. You turn up in January ready to start ploughing through your ideas and initiatives and then the phone rings! One of your much loved clients has a problem which now has become your problem and you have to sort it out! An email arrives which diverts your attention. You fire up your laptop and a tweet from someone catches your eye and before you know it it is December once more and the business plan is just a dusty document in your bottom drawer. What can be done to break this habit! A New Year's resolution is a great thing, lets stop procrastinating and get on with the plan. How can we ensure that this happens. Shameful plug but get a Business Coach or Non Executive Director in. They will have regular meetings with you and hold you to account. If you think you cannot afford this, think what it is costing you by not getting your plan implemented. They will help you by doing all or some of the following, you can of course do this yourself, but if the day to day gets in the way will you be disciplined enough to get back to the plan thereafter? Set aside time to work on your business. The meetings to start with should sense check your plans, are they robust? Have you considered all the implications of your plans? Can you afford to do what you say you are going to do. Will cash flow kill you off, more businesses go bust coming out of a recession than going into one. Break your plans into manageable chunks. I recommend doing a 90 Day plan for each key member of your management team. Ensure these plans are aligned with the overall business plan for the year. Have a weekly meeting with your staff. Get them to report back on what they have achieved and what's left to do. You can use this data with your monthly meeting with your NED or coach. Set up Key Performance Indicators. Make sure you are measuring the right things. Decide what you need to be doing to be successful and measure that. Ensure you publish your results so that everyone can see their impact on the targets. I ran a marketing business with a team of cold callers. I had a 60 inch TV on the wall linked to a PC that ran a software product that should how many calls each caller made. This inspired the callers to try and out do each other and be the most proactive by the end of the day. It worked for us. Look at your accounts, what are they telling you? Are you pricing correctly? Can you cut your margins and improve your Profits? More of that in another blog. Celebrate success. When your team hits or exceeds their targets show them some love! It does not have to be a big thing, a figurative pack on the back might be all that is needed. Adapt your plans to changing circumstances. History is littered with companies that failed to adapt when the world had moved on and their businesses failed as a result. Just because you have the best product does not mean you are going to be a success. For those of you that are old enough to remember video tape, Betamax had the best product but VHS won the war! Try and be unemotional about your business. You need to make the right decisions not ones caught up in relationships both past and present. In some family businesses they go on trading way after they should have ceased or changed direction because of some loyalty to previous generations. An NED or coach will be unemotional and will steer you down the right path. If you can do all the above by yourselves then please do and let me how you are getting on during the course of the year, Good luck and Merry Christmas and a very Happy and Prosperous New Year. Written by: Martin Reynolds Perato Principle states that for many events 80% of effects come from 20% of causes. This simple law has been proven to hold true in so many walks of life. In a recent study of a Franchise Network performance it proved virtually 100% correct when we looked at income versus customers. 80% of Turnover came from only 20% of the customer base. We also know as a truism that it is 5 times more expensive to gain a new customer than it is keep an existing one.
Why, therefore, are we so poor at communicating with our customers and building more business with them? When I coached business owners I would ask do you market to your current customers. The answer was invariably that they did not as the customer "Gives us everything they have got!" I would then ask if they had ever visited a customer's premises to find the local competitor providing a service for the customer. "Oh yes happens all the time they would say". Its this Urika moment that gets them awakened to start spending more time telling the customers what they did. Often we think because we have done great marketing that everyone knows what we do for a living. Just because we know what we do for a living and we have told someone else does not mean that they have understood what we have said or retained that information. I spent 6 months in a Business Networking Group getting up at some ungodly hour to stand up for my 1 minute and trot out what I did. I had one to one meetings and was convinced that I had made headway with developing my brand. You can imagine my surprise when I got out of hospital having recovered from a serious illness that a) My competitor (not a member of the group) had been given a 45 minute lecture slot for the group and b) One of the members approached the competitor saying that they have been looking for someone to do that particular service for ages! My flabber was gasted! Then it was my fault for not getting across what I thought I had. Another example of my failings in this arena was in my logistics business. I had a friend who approached me and asked for my company to provide haulage for his company every week. Every week our sign written vehicles would be in his factory and every week we would send an invoice in with our logo headed paper and description of our services. It was a shocker for me when, after 5 years of this contract, in a local pub my friend asked if I knew anyone who had storage facilities locally. Our main business was warehousing with nearly 200,000 square feet very close to him. There was quite a bit of joking between the two of us about why he should have known but in the end the truth is I did not make it obvious to him and therefore I probably did not make it obvious to the rest of my top 20% either. The moral of the story is spend as much time on talking with your current customers cross and up selling as you do trying to get new customers! It will be quicker and cheaper to get business from them than it will to land a new customer. What factors should you consider when choosing a business coach? Experience running a business! I put this as number one. Running any business comes with its challenges. A good business coach is a person who has run one before. They know and can empathise with the business owner, about what keeps them awake at night Like any coach a business coach can be impartial and unemotional with the business. They will help with steering the business forward and hold the Directors to account. It does not greatly matter what type of business they have run before, all businesses have the same factors and issues, some just have more noughts after the first digits than the others. As a massive generalisation, but one based on coaching many business owners and athletes, the failure of the business is not usually down to external factors but is down to the lack of action of the business owners. Sure lots of competition is a factor, but lots of competition in a geographical area means there is lots of business in that area also so get out there and get it. The dirty word Brexit, might have delayed a few larger projects but has not affected trade in lots of businesses I deal with. In the Sign Industry the largest UK sign company (70 + branches) are 8 % up on turnover compared to last year! Again get out there and get it. Experience in the Industry? No it is not a prerequisite. In fact it can be a hindrance! ? Why? Well you can become a consultant and not a coach. The main benefit of a coach is their ability to draw the owner away from the day to day and start focusing on the bigger picture. If you have detailed knowledge of the industry you could become embroiled in questions on detail and lose the focus to get the business moving forward. My biggest successes have come from industry's where I have not worked in before. I am able to ask questions that need asking but are often overlooked because of industry knowledge. A good business coach leads you to develop YOUR business plan. They should not install their plan for your business. They should harness your passion for the business you have grown and ensure that you take the right steps for your business at the right time. A good coach is one that shines a torch on areas of you and your business that you feel too uncomfortable to face up to. As Pro Actions, Essex based business coaches puts it, "We are your best friend but harshest critic." There is no point hiring someone who is going to give you false praise as they do not want to upset you. Never be afraid of hiring the person that upsets you, they are not trying to be rude, they are trying to help. Can the information we have be trusted to make decisions with? In my last Blog I postulated about how knowing your numbers is vital for success, I am not going to argue with myself here ( I have two expert children and a wife for that!), but what I will ask is what we are measuring the correct things in order to be making informed decisions? For example, I once did some work for a very large retail company. Being a multi-national and a household name they measured absolutely everything. Not quite sure what happened with all the data, but I am sure it was used to make informed decisions! One area that was measured and the results displayed in a leader board of the best employee, was in the home delivery department. Like with most modern companies the home deliveries were tracked by a handheld device. Each week the driver with the least errors reported was declared the Driver of the Week. Quite logical you might agree. But no, not at all. What the management rewarded here was the driver that had got all jobs allocated to them signed in the exact time slot and with no complaints received. The driver that won each week was the same person who was actually the driver the “Team Leaders” could not trust to get all jobs done, rather than face up to this and train or fire they put him on “runs” that had a far less deliveries than all of the other drivers. He had 5 jobs per shift versus everyone else’s of 15 to 20. Yes the KPI should have been correct but in the absence of full performance statistics no corrective management action was taken, instead the worst driver was rewarded as being the best! A Cynic is a person that knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing ….. Oscar Wilde Measuring the wrong thing can lead us to making incorrect decisions. When I ran a marketing company that specialised in B2B appointment setting for our clients a question I was invariably asked was “How much does your service cost per appointment?”. “Why do you want to know?” I would counter. “Well to find out how you compare to the competition” would be the response. “Oh I can guarantee my company will be far more costly per appointment than all of my competition, but I will also guarantee that we will make you far more money than all the others also.” I would continue “The real KPI you should be measuring is what is the return on investment, not what is the cost per appointment. After all your Bank Manager won’t allow you to pay into your current account appointments made but he will let you pay in monies made.” We qualified our client’s prospects so well that we only sent them to appointments where they had a 75% chance of closing the deal. We might only set 5 appointments per month but these would result in great business. We only got our new clients by recommendation, which is testament that this approach certainly worked. Is the measure we use a measure of success of the business or just a measure of success of the measure itself? With all the advancements in technology and social media, our marketing spend can be far more accurately tracked these days than in the past. Even so do we use the information to make changes in our Marketing efficiency or do they become a success in themselves. This came home to me when I was presenting a workshop on using social media to drive business. A businessman in the audience listened intently to the content and at the end said a simple short sentence. “Show me the money” His argument was measuring how many likes you get, mentions, retweets etc was all well and good but if it did not result in more turnover then it was no more than “of interest”. He was right, these measurements should have an outcome and not be seen as a result in themselves. The work is not done when we have re-branded our business, produced a new brochure, got to number one on the google rankings; it is over when we have money in the bank. With the way High Streets are failing these days and the internet is taking over the need for companies to be result driven marketing organisations is greater than ever before. If you have a department for Marketing and a separate one for Sales it is imperative that they work together and do not see that marketing create the lead and sales closes it. They must work together feeding information both ways to make the offering to the client is irresistible. Wikipedia defines Marketing promotion as In marketing, promotion refers to any type of marketing communication used to inform or persuade target audiences of the relative merits of a product, service, brand or issue. The aim of promotion is to increase awareness, create interest, generate sales or create brand loyalty. It is one of the basic elements of the market mix, which includes the four Ps, i.e., product, price, place, and promotion.[1] Promotion is also one of the elements in the promotional mix or promotional plan. These are personal selling, advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing publicity and may also include event marketing, exhibitions and trade shows.[2] A promotional plan specifies how much attention to pay to each of the elements in the promotional mix, and what proportion of the budget should be allocated to each element. Sales is merely one form of promotion of marketing and not a separate discipline. Thus if the other forms of promotion are resulting in the wrong types of enquiry then we must alter our marketing to get better enquiries. If enquiries are not being converted because our sales process is wrong we must alter the process to increase our conversion rates. We cannot view this as a relay race with marketing departments handing over to a sales department and then abdicating any further involvement , I will leave this blog with a quote from another’s blog . Geckoboard
§ A key performance indicator is: A measurement of activity (often referred to as a metric) that reveals how a business or team is performing against its goals. KPIs are the most critical metrics that measure the success of specific activities used to meet business goals - measured against a specific target or benchmark, adding context to each activity being measured. § What a KPI is NOT: If a measurement of activity or metric does not directly influence your achievement of business goals, then it is not a KPI, it is simply a metric. Not all measurements are equally important, therefore, not all metrics are KPIs. |
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