Retail Observer

RETAILOBSERVER.COM MARCH 2016 36 I n advance of painting my office, I started going through my extensive library of business books. Some were easy to put into the recycling box. A large number of speakers had sent me their self-published business books to entice me to hire them for various meetings I had planned. Most were self-help marketing books or volumes professing do-it-yourself leadership programs. As I flipped through them, most were easy to discard as either irrelevant or old news. What surprised me, though, were the ones I boxed up to put back up on my shelves again. Many are classic (as in old) business tomes written by some of the great researchers in business management. Others are less known with unique outlooks on managing staff, customer experience, financial management, leadership and general management. Here are some oldies but goodies that might be good resources to build your business, motivate your team, create happy customers and make more money. In the all-time classic, In Search of Excellence, Tom Peters sought out the best run companies of that era to compile a list of best practices that others might adopt. One of those is "The excellent companies are learning organizations. They don't wait around for the marketplace eventually to do them in; they create their own marketplace." He also coined the term MBWA—Management by Walking Around which I continually press my own consulting clients to do. The One Minute Manager, written by Kenneth Blanchard Ph.D., and Spencer Johnson M. D. and Raving Fans that Dr. Blanchard co-authored with Sheldon Bowles are as valid today as when they were first published more than twenty years ago. The One Minute Manager reminds us to find our team members doing something right—and praise them for it. Can't find anything good about your staff? Then go to Jim Collins' Good to Great and make sure you have the right people in the right seats on your bus. Open-Book Management by John Case and The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack and Bo Burlingham expound the need for not only sharing critical financial information with your employees but the imperative to give them the knowledge and expertise they need to understand manage critical financial metrics so that they are empowered to do what it takes to meet their goals. In their book, First, Break All the Rules, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman of the Gallup Organization interviewed over 80,000 managers in over 400 companies to find out what the world's best managers do differently to hire, coach and motivate their people. After interviewing literally millions of employees with hundreds of questions, they discovered that measuring the strength of any workplace came down to their employees' answers to only twelve questions. Managers, they say, should focus on only four key activities "select a person, set expectations, motivate the person and develop the person." For retailers, a must-read is Paco Underhill's Why We Buy. Underhill describes himself as a retail anthropologist studying the science of shopping. The chapter titled "Men are from Sears Hardware; Women are from Bloomingdales" describes the demographic differences between male and female shoppers. The late Stephen R. Covey's books The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and the follow-up The 8th Habit will help even the most seasoned manager become better. They are often described as the best personal leadership handbooks. My pared down library includes The Art of War by Sun Tzu, books on succession planning and family business; on strategic thinking and organizational development; and biographies like Jack Welch's book Winning and Wooden by the great coach John Wooden. Of course, I have copies of Jay Conrad Levinson's Guerrilla Marketing and my own companion book Guerrilla Retailing. But if you only want one resource, go straight to Why? Should Someone Do Business With You…Rather Than Someone Else by Sam Geist. Once you begin to search for the answer to that one single question you'll be able to start unlocking the formula for business success. Whether you're asking yourself that question or not, your customers ask it every day. "Why should I drive out of my way past six other stores selling the exact same product to buy from that other store? How does their mission, selection, knowledge and customer experience differ from others selling the same things?" Those questions—and the answers you can provide—will determine your ability "to get and keep customers, increase staff productivity and enhance business profitability." If you read some books, get some new ideas, do more things right, make some of the necessary changes, give your customers a world class experience, have a team of engaged, motivated people, your company might be Built to Last (Jim Collins and Jerry Porras). A MUST-READ 21ST CENTURY BUSINESS LIBRARY RO Elly Valas is an author, speaker and independent retail consultant. She can be reached at elly@ellyvalas.com. Her books, Guerrilla Retailing and Lessons from the Links, are available at www.amazon.com. Elly Valas Retail Views

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