I was reading another consultant’s blog the other day and they were giving tips on how to obtain business. Their advice was to ask questions until the client could not give you an answer and then bingo that was your way into their organization and how to start advising your client. It got me to thinking. So many times, we think of people in terms of objects. Whether it is an employee that we consider a resource as in human resources, a client who is a source of billing or someone that is just a pain in the butt who we regard as a….Maybe that is better off not said. What came to me though is in the past few months there seems to be something larger pulling at me. Is it time to change my business plan? Is it time to get out of the business all together? What has been slowly ticking away in my brain really has been, how can I be of service? The reason the questions given in the article I read seemed to strike home was because each of them were ways I could be of service to someone. And not to a company but to a person. Questions that an individual could be struggling with and that I may be able to help. Granted, I may look at the situation as a bottleneck of resources or inefficient use of cash or any number of different challenges we face in business. I remember teaching a class and telling my students that everything in retail boiled down to sales, shrink or staffing. Nice and clean, nothing messy about it. Everything fit into nice little compartments. When really, we all know life is nothing like that at all. Last week I was speaking with a client and they were using another consultant and I asked to see the notes so far. They felt the consultant was doing a good job but something wasn’t quite adding up. I asked how many questions they asked the consultant, what was the give and take and they replied they hadn’t asked any questions, they just read the reports. We talked a bit and I ended up giving them a full page of questions I felt they needed to ask their consultant. Nothing was meant to take away from the other consultant; I just wanted the client to get the most out of their experience. So many times the relationship suffers because one of the parties does not ask the questions that they really have on their mind and may not know how to ask. Their may be fear of hearing what they really don’t want to hear. There could be fear that they may ask the questions incorrectly. I guess my point is not to be afraid, just ask and keep asking until you get where you want to be. Whether that is in a working relationship or a personal relationship. Keep going until you get where you want to be. In a consulting relationship with a retailer some of the questions you could ask are:
Are you getting the best turns in our store?
Is the middle of the box helping you or hurting you?
How much time does your office staff or store staff spend on each part of your store?
Are you getting the return of their efforts as well as your space to sales?
What is your ROI or IRR on store sales and on the profit centers/departments in your store?
How many SKU are driving your sales and how many are just impairing your pack out? Are you functioning at the typical 80/20 rule or are you doing better than the norm?
What is the flow in your store? Is it shopper friendly?
Where are your equipment, facility and personnel at in their lifecycles?
And the biggest question of all is “Do you want to change the way you are doing business?”
This last question is really the first question we need to ask and get an honest answer to. If we can’t get past this step, we will never be able to help them, to serve them and solve the issues they may face. Ask you questions, peel back the layers carefully and hopefully they will be able to see the benefits of your services.
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