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3 mistakes that keep small product retail businesses stuck! · The Resilient Retail Game Plan - retail insights, retail trends and best practices

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In today's episode, we're going to walk you through three mistakes that keep small product
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businesses stuck and how to avoid them so you can finally start building
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real momentum. If you feel like your sales are stuck
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in first gear, then this episode is for you.
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Maybe you're showing up on Instagram, perhaps you're boosting posts
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sporadically, perhaps running the promotion, maybe you're
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going to events or in person markets. But when you look at your
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revenue, it's still seems like you're pretty much always stuck in the
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same place, somewhere between 1 to 3k a month.
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And it's frustrating, isn't it? You're working really hard, yet the numbers
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just aren't moving. And at that point, it's easy to start questioning
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yourself, is this business ever going to grow? So if
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you're in this zone, then this is the
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episode for you. We're going to be talking about
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the reasons that people get stuck here and how you can
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fix them. Because here's the thing, being stuck at this level isn't a sign that
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you're failing. It's not a sign that nobody wants your products or the business was
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a terrible idea. More often than not, it's because of three common
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mistakes. And the good news is these are things that you can
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fix. So the first mistake that I see people making is
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that they don't have a clear plan. Often when I talk to people
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about their business, I will ask them, do you have a plan? Do you have
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a sales plan? Do you have a marketing plan? Do you have a plan for
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launching new products? Do you have a plan for what you're going to
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talk about when. And usually the answer is no. A lot of
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people don't have a clear plan mapped
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out because they're often going from one thing to the next.
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They are bouncing, they're being very reactive. Maybe an
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opportunity comes up, so they're answering that, or something else is coming up, so
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they're answering that and back. Basically, they
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are letting themselves be kind of bounced around like a ball.
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Whereas my background in retail, I've been in the business
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for 25 years. What I've learned is that the big guys spending
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nearly two decades in bigger retailers is that everything is
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planned out Now. A lot of people
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feel like planning is tough, is difficult,
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or not even so much that they feel it's difficult, but more that they feel
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like it's restrictive. Maybe you started a business because you're wanting to be creative,
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you wanted to express your creativity, and it feels like planning is the opposite
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of being creative. But I'm a really big believer that planning
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and creativity are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they very
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much feed in to one another. Once you've got a structure
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and a framework and a plan around you, you can actually be more
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creative because you know what you need to do and you just come up with
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the ideas for it, as opposed to feeling lost and feeling like
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you're kind of just being bounced around from pillar to post.
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So what I see with a lot of people is that they rely on ad
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hoc posting spur of the moment ideas. So they'll sit there on
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a Monday and think, right, I really should post something this week. And they don't
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really know what to say. They don't have a coordination between their product
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strategy and their marketing strategy. And I think for me
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that's one of the biggest missed opportunities. Because the thing about retail
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is that it varies a lot throughout the year. It's very, very
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seasonal. So what your customer wants from you and the kind of
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messages that work with them in the summer are going to be very different from
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the messages that work with them at Christmas time, or in fact
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in January or February. So there's a lot of shift and change
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throughout the year. There's lots of nuance to what
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people want from you in certain seasons, and there's lots of
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different themes and ideas and opportunities to talk about things that are different
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month on month. So, for example, very broadly,
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what you're going to talk about in February, if you are a jewelry brand,
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is going to be centered around Valentine's Day. And what you talk about in March
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is going to be sent could be centered around Mother's Day, for example. So those
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are just two very basic examples of how what you want to
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talk about is going to vary throughout the year. And if you don't
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have that all mapped out, it can feel quite overwhelming. Like I
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said, it can feel like you're a ping pong ball being bounced around thinking, oh,
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I should be doing something, maybe I should say something about Valentine's Day, oh, maybe
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I should say something about Mother's Day. And the
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upside is that although it does change a lot and it shifts week on week,
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and arguably that's what makes it so exciting, it stays
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the same year on year. So once you've cracked
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that seasonal element to your business, once you've really delved in and understood
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what your year looks like, and obviously it will shift, one year is
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not going to be the same as another year. But broadly speaking, there are going
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to be themes and ideas that work year on
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year, once you've got that, you can repeat it. It is
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repeatable. The benefit of retail, of
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product businesses over service businesses is that predictability
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and that repeatability, that opportunity
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to scale and grow because you've figured out a system
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and then you're repeating it. So,
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for example, if you don't have a plan,
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you are going to potentially miss some major opportunities
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to connect with your customers because you're not going to be zoomed out and
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looking at that big picture. For example, I was talking
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to a men's gifting brand and this was in May, and
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I asked them about Father's Day and it wasn't something that they'd considered.
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Now, if you're a menswear, arguably you have
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or a male focused brand, arguably you have fewer
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opportunities or not such big seasonal opportunities because,
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for example, Valentine's Day tends to be more heavily skewed,
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broadly speaking, towards female gifting. And obviously Mother's
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Day is different. It's not going to work for you if you're a male
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orientated brand. However, if you miss
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Father's Day because you just didn't look at the year in a
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zoomed out way, then that is a major opportunity that you've missed.
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And I see it every single year at Christmas. Every single
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year, I speak to people in November. I ask them all the way up to
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November, even into December, I'd ask them about their plans for Christmas
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and they kind of say, oh yeah, I suppose I should come up with something.
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Well, this is the thing. You can eliminate so
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much of the last minute aspect of retail. You can plan
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it. You know, big retailers are planning 18 months in advance, two
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years in advance. Now, arguably, yes, that is the extreme version
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and it can lead them to be a little less reactive than they would like
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to be and a little more constrained. But the you can
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plan in advance and the more you plan in advance, the more you're
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able to roll with the punches when something unexpected does happen.
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If you've done lots of prep in advance, then you
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are able to deal with that without it completely derailing
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everything. And then the other reason that I
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feel that not having a plan is really difficult is because
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if you think about all of the different ways to grow your sales. So
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for example, episode 264 of the podcast was about four
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ways to grow your sales. Without a plan, you can't really ensure that you are
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tackling all those four ways consistently and
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you can't create a really nicely aligned, up
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aligned plan across all of your channels. If
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you and all of your marketing channels, all of your selling channels, and all of
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your marketing channels if you don't get it mapped out. Okay, so mistake
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number two is not having a product strategy.
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So in a similar way that people often will tell me they don't have a
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plan for their marketing, I would say that
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another common issue is that they don't really have a plan for their products.
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So I'll ask them, do you have a plan for what you introduce when?
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And the answer is usually no. And I'll ask
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them, do you know what your best sellers are? That's not always a given. Either
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some people aren't really sure or they think they know, but they haven't actually checked.
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And the reason that I think this holds people back
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is because all of retail, all of
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business, I guess, could be boiled down to do more of what works
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and do less of what doesn't work. And so if you don't have a plan
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for your products, then you are
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unable to really maximize
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the data that you've got. And yes, if your sales are lower, you might not
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have a huge amount of data. But especially if you look at it on a
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monthly basis, look at what your best sellers are, you need to understand
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what is moving the needle, what people are reacting to and what they're
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not reacting to. And I would say that in this first bit of
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the business, when you are at that kind of 1 to 3K, you need to
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be figuring out what your customer wants from you. So you need to be
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figuring out what they're reacting to, what is selling.
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And if nothing is selling, if nothing's working, then you need
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to go back to the drawing board on a repeated basis,
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checking in with your customers, what do they want from you. Trialing things in as
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low a risk as possible to try new things to move
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on. But you need to try things and learn from them. It's not about
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just scattergunning, bringing in lots and lots of different new things. It's about
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creating a hypothesis, checking it. Is that what they want? Let's
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try something else. Let's tweak it. Let's tweak what the product offer
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is. Let's tweak how I'm talking about it, how
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I'm talking about the benefits to the customer versus
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the features, all of those things. You want to test that over again, see
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what the result is, and then move on from there.
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So bestsellers, understanding your bestsellers are really, really important.
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They, they help give you confidence and they help you really understand what you should
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be focusing on in Your marketing, that's another issue that I
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see people having is that they think that, oh, well, if something's selling, I
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don't need to be shouting about it. Whereas actually you often get much more traction
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by really shouting about your best sellers. Because this is all a game of
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probability. You want to really focus on what your customer is
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most likely to purchase from you, and that may well be
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the thing that you sell the most off. So you want to focus on that
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and you want to lean into it.
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So if you don't really look at your products and really understand
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what they're telling you, then you're going to miss some really important clues,
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really important green shoots if you like, to help move you
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forward. And then the other thing is
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that if you don't have a really considered plan for your products,
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it feeds back into my first point about no clear plan overall for the
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business. Because really your marketing plan and your product
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plan are very, very closely intertwined. Because
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if you go through and you look at your year and you understand, right, these
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are going to be my peak selling times, well, then you want to coordinate your
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products. If you're going to bring new products in, make sure that the
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products are coming in at the right time, seasonally speaking, making
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sure that they are the right products for the right time. And you really want
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the whole thing to be tied up together. But if you, you don't have a
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plan for your marketing and you don't have a plan for your product, then what
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you're left with is two very disjointed activities that
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are really time consuming. Marketing's really time consuming. Product development
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or product making new products or sourcing new products is hugely time
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intensive as well. And if you're not doing it in a coordinated fashion, it can
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end up getting very, very messy. And then
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the third mistake that I see people make that really holds
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them back is related to this idea of
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knowing what's working. But if you don't have a
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plan and you're doing everything in a very reactive way,
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then the other thing is that you don't really
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have a good idea of what you're doing, what's
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working, and what you need to lean into in the same way that we talked
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about for your products. That goes for everything that you're doing in terms of your
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sales channels and your marketing as well. So sales
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start to feel sporadic. You have good days and bad days with no clear
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explanation. Now, here's something else that I would say to you as well.
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One of the things that is particularly True, especially at this early stage, is
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that everything feels really, really personal. So lots of
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people I know will say that I just feel,
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on a quiet day, it completely wipes my confidence.
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And I totally get that because nobody tells you when you start a business
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how nerve wracking it is to create or curate things that you
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feel really strongly about, to put them out in front of other people and
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to say to them, hey, buy this from me. It
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can feel incredibly challenging, incredibly
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triggering for a lot of people, and it can feel just
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really, really difficult if you're not getting the response that you
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want. So what happens is when you're not really
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closely tracking your numbers and you're not really closely tracking
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your actions, it feels,
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it can feel very sporadic. So one week things will do great and the
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next week things will go really quiet.
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And you can feel, therefore a lot of.
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There's a, it's a real roller coaster for a lot of founders. They feel very
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personally upset when things are quiet. They say
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to themselves, oh, I must be really bad at this. People really hate what I
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do. This is such a bad idea. Everyone thinks it's a joke, what I'm doing,
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all of those things. And it just really feeds
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into this cycle of not having a plan and not having a structure because
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it doesn't feel, you don't feel like you have the right to
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have a plan, or it doesn't feel like this is something that
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you should do, because this is. You're maybe not
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giving having enough confidence in the business to say, right, no, this is what I'm
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planning to do. Because the nervousness I see from a lot of people is that
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they feel like, well, if I make a plan and I don't hit it, am
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I going to feel even worse? Whereas what we're really talking about here is
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not so much, oh, you can only have a plan if things are going
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well. But we want to try and shift as much as possible
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from a subjective point of view to an objective point of view.
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And this is the benefit that I have from my long years of experience
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in the retail industry and two decades in big retailers,
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is that they have to be completely objective.
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And what I mean by being objective is that that they
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really put a plan in place and then
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every week they're looking at the plan and they're seeing whether or not
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they've hit it on what they need to do to adjust it. So it's about
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a process. And obviously in big retailers
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there is much less room for people to be so caught up in
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that kind of personal, oh, I failed or I've done something wrong. I mean,
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obviously everyone has personal feelings and people have
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selected products that haven't worked and that can feel really difficult too. But
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ultimately what it's about is the setting a goal, setting a plan
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in place and then reacting to it. And that's what I'm talking about
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when we're thinking about being more objective than being
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subjective. And what can happen if you get too
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caught up into the emotion of it? You start making
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knee jerk reactions. So, for example, you launch
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something it hasn't sold, you think, oh, maybe I should take some money off it,
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discount it, instead of thinking, right, okay, did I do
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enough promotion? It's almost like we get these negative feelings and
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we want to just do something to try and alleviate them rather than actually looking
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into it and saying, right, what was the actual plan? So
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it's, it's also something that I would really stress that
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the benefit of having that plan is that retail
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fluctuates a huge amount. It fluctuates a lot, month to month.
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But as I've mentioned before, it's on an
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annual cycle. It does repeat. So learning things like when
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you're going to be quiet can really help with that confidence building and
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really help you understand when you're going to naturally
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be quieter and then get to helping you get ready for the busiest times
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as well. So if you set yourself a
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plan, then yes, of course you may have weeks and months where
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you don't hit it. But it's still better to have that plan in place
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than for you to be so caught up in the emotional
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side of it that you really end up
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almost beating yourself up if things aren't going so well as instead of
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thinking, right, what do I need to do now? What can I try next?
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So what I would suggest that you do is take the
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time to set those goals and make some time
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to, Even if it's 10 minutes a week to really look at, right, how am
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I doing? How am I selling? How am I
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doing compared to my plan? What's working, what's not working? And
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which of my sales channels are really are performing for me.
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And it, I totally understand why people don't
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do this because it can feel very upsetting if you look at something
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and you think, wow, actually I'm not really selling that much or this is not
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what I thought it would be. But I really do believe
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that there's a lot of power that comes from really
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knowing the truth of your situation. Whenever I've had
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times in my Business where I've stuck my head in the sand and not really
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addressed what's going on. I've always felt so much better
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when I've taken the time to sit down and really go through things and get
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an actual accurate picture. And also, I can't tell you the number
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of times that people will have sit down and run their numbers and
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actually they're better than they thought they were. In fact, somebody
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in the club mentioned that they had always thought to
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themselves that they would feel like they'd done well when they hit a certain
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revenue number. And it turns out because they'd been not
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looking at these things, they were feeling stuck and in denial. They hadn't
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looked at their numbers and they'd actually hit the revenue number that they'd been aiming
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for. But they hadn't realized it because they hadn't looked, they hadn't engaged because
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they caught up in these feelings of insecurity and
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just not feeling like they, they wanted to engage with the numbers because
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they were scared of what they might show them. So if you're stuck
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then around that 1-3k month,
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1-3k of sales a month level, then it's probably not because you're doing
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anything wrong. It's because of
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these particular mistakes that I see people
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make. Those are things like, for example, not having a
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clear plan, not having a product strategy, not having visibility of what's
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working and all of those things that keep you on a
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sales plateau. So the good news is, is that every single one of them is
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fixable. You can definitely take the time to work
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your way through and. And maybe it's sitting down and
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sketching out a seasonal plan. Maybe it's identifying your bestsellers,
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maybe it's starting a sales check in with yourself. But
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whatever you choose, make that one small step towards helping move you
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past that plateau. And if you'd like some more support with this,
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then we have the retail sales game plan. The doors are open
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for this course. It is the first time I'm running this course. I'm really
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excited about it. We are going to look at everything that you need to
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put some plans into place, some structure, some
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strategy and help you really get a grip on with how to grow your product
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business. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next
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week.