Understand how to put together a great local store

Ken Segall spent 12 years working for Steve Jobs on advertising Apple products and is famous for developing the “think different” campaign and putting the ‘i’ in iMac.

His latest book, Think Simple, contains some brilliant stories of his experiences with Jobs that will energise any business leader.

You will probably have watched the video of Jobs’s Stanford commencement address when he said: “You’ve got to find what you love. The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to do what you love.”

Yet read this against the Jobs anecdote that Segall shares on page 90 of the Portfolio Penguin version and you will be challenged in a whole new way.

Segall’s retail examples are a level above the independent store. However, the lessons are easily applied and three of them are worth thinking about. What is your mission? What are your values? And how do you lead your people?

If you have not visited Whole Foods and experienced this then you should add it to your New Year resolution list

“Most people today want to work for something that’s bigger than a paycheck,” Walter Robb, co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, tells Segall.

“They want to feel like they’re making a difference in people’s lives – including their own.”

Whole Foods has grown in the past 30 years on the back of an idea that healthier food matters. Its core culture has two key elements says Robb: “to satisfy and delight the customer and to create team member happiness.”

The culture depends upon delivering the mission, which is: “We carry nothing with artificial flavours, colours or ingredients. Nothing, nothing, nothing. There are no exceptions…

“There’s a kernel of simplicity [that] when you walk in the store, you just feel good. And that’s different from what you feel in other supermarkets.”

If you have not visited Whole Foods and experienced this, you should add it to your New Year resolution list. They have a great flagship store in London that will inspire you. It’s not that you have to become like Whole Foods. It is more that you just have to understand how to put together a great local store. Does it matter? I think so.

Kip Tindell, CEO of the Container Store, a US chain that sells boxes and tops the charts of great places to work, invests 263 hours of training in every new employee in their first year “because there is nothing worse that being put onto a retail sales floor without knowing anything about the products.”

Lou Carbone, an expert in customer and employee experience, says this works because the first 25% of an employee’s effort is devoted to basic productivity. The remaining 75% is purely voluntary. How much of this you get depends on how much they like what they’re selling, how they feel about their boss and so on. Most retailers get only the 25%. Tindell’s stores enjoy employee productivity in the 80% range.

Segall’s book will help you to think differently about your business. Just what you need for 2017!