Making Business Matter (MBM)

Presenting to Make an Impact

Join Darren Smith in this webinar where he discusses 10 top tips using the mnemonic 'presenting' on how to achieve impactful presenting

Find out more about how you can change the way Learners deliver impactful presentations, whether they are internal or external. Also, help learners develop their knowledge and understanding of how to convey key messages, fully engage an audience, and deliver maximum influence.

Significantly increase your impact and influence when presenting with our Presentation Skills Training Course.

10 Top Tips

Tips to help you shine!

 

Procrastination

Have you ever put a job, a task, anything off until the last minute? Maybe you are too busy because the presentation is going to take so much time and effort that you just can’t find the time to do it this week.

STOP! Many people put presentations off because of what we like to call ‘the tinkering effect’. This is because, if you start a presentation early, you will keep changing it, adding new images, better content, and changing the font. DON’T DO THIS! Create the presentation until it is ‘Good Enough’. Don’t overspend time on it.

Rewarding Stories

You can show content in a table or a graph but this can be seen as offputting, boring. If you were to talk about a rewarding story, the chances are, that these will be remembered because no one wants to sit and read graphs and tables. After all, research shows that rewarding stories are remembered 22 times more because we can all relate to a story.

Think of a time when someone has told a story while presenting. You remember it, right? Now that same presentation, what graphs and tables did they show? Not so easy. This is presenting with impact. Tell rewarding stories. It doesn’t need to be a 20-minute story, just let it flow.

End in Mind

Stephen R. Covey, author of First Things First once said, “everything is created twice”, once in the mind and then in reality. The aim is to create an end in mind within your presentation. He called this Future Thinking meaning what do you want to see, feel and hear when presenting.

Mohammed Ali, when he was training, saw Joe Frazier on the Canvas. He said in an interview that Joe Frazier would go down in round 5 with a left hook and Joe Frazier heard. This embedded in Joe Frazier’s mind and he went down in round 5. The moral of the story, share your end in mind with your audience at the start of your presentation. This will help with presenting with impact.

Sir Aristotle

Sir Aristotle had a technique for presenting. Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them then tell them what you have told them. Also known as the Army Technique.

When presenting, tell your audience what you are going to be doing. During the presentation, you will tell them the content and at the end tell the audience what you have just told them.  Start by explaining your objective, then deliver your objective and finally remind them of the objective. Embed the objective in their minds. Use the Army Technique.

Engaging Headlines

You head to a presentation. You see 4 headlines. 1. Total UK Population. 2. Total UK Population 1962 – 2022. 3. Total UK Population Growth Over 60 Years. 4. Better Health Care Doubles UK Population in 60 Years. Which one grabs your attention? It’s number 4 right?.

You read a newspaper and the thing that drawers your attention is the headline. Why? Because they are not ‘boring’ and they give an insight. Don’t just label your presentation because every part of your presentation has to earn its place. Use engaging headlines.

Nerves

Nerves will always show up when you don’t want them to. You’re about to do a presentation, you have prepared for this, you know your content, you know your stuff. You’re ready to start presenting with impact. You step out in front of your audience and bam, nerves hit you. What do you do? You have high energy, you want to calm down but you can’t because you can’t go from a high state of energy to calm in seconds.

Use this technique. You may dismiss this like many others before you but it works. Tell yourself, I am excited! This works because you can stay in a high energy state but just move from a negative to a positive high energy state. This has been researched by Molly Trainor. 

Targets

We have our end in mind, what we hear, see and feel. End in mind is the ‘right brain stuff‘. This is the left brain stuff. Set yourself a SMART target.

Setting a SMART target will clarify your ideas, focus your efforts, use your time and resources productively, and increase your chances of achieving what you want out of your presentation. This will help to understand the point of the presentation and dictate the content you deliver to your audience when presenting.

Individual

We are all individuals and we all have a preferred thinking style. You may have heard of a HBDI Profile or Myer Briggs.

Take the HBDI profile. It is separated into four quadrants. Yellow and Red, the right side of the brain, and Blue and Green, the left side of the brain. Each individual will have a preferred learning style colour. Blue is fact-based, Green is Form, Yellow is Future and Red is Feel.

As a result, If we only present in our preferred learning style, we will only engage 25% of our audience because only 25% are in the same quadrant that you are. Write a checklist. Are we covering the four ”F’s? If you do, you will be presenting with impact.

No to Powerpoint

Did you know that 89% of people default to using slides and PowerPoint when presenting? It’s natural to do this because Microsoft has done a fantastic job of creating a programme that is easy and efficient to use.

As a result, we miss crucial aspects to making a presentation with impact, to make sure you are presenting with impact. We miss out on our end in mind and our targets. Use an alternative, a flipchart, a whiteboard, a mindmap. There are many alternatives. Start with your end in mind and targets because this will enable you to then choose which format is best to use.

Grabbing our Audience

The first few minutes and the last few minutes are crucial to grabbing your audience’s attention. If you start by thanking everyone for coming it’s not an attention grabber.

Start with facts. A quiz, a few questions, get your audience’s minds racing. If you can get them to start thinking and interacting at the start and at the end, your presentation has had an impact.

Further Reading

Click the image below to read our ultimate guide to presentation skills:

Explore the HBDI Assessment Tool

Join Andy Palmer and Sarah Garratt in the tenth episode of the Weekly Training Booster. This episode is about ‘What is the H.B.D.I. Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument assessment’. Or in short, what is HBDI assessment? Exploring a number of questions to understand this assessment tool.

You Can Read the HBDI Assessment Episode Transcript Below:

Andy Palmer:

Welcome to MBM's Weekly Training Booster. We are Weekly Training Booster number 10. This week we're going to talking about what is the HBDI, Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. Today I'm joined by my colleague, Sarah, who's going to ask me some questions to help bring this to life, and I'll do my very best to answer them. Sarah, thanks for joining us this week. Great to have you here. Let's start, what's your questions for me on the HBDI assessment?

Sarah Garratt:

Okay. Thanks, Andy. First question, what is the HBDI assessment?

Andy Palmer:

Good stuff. All right. So the HBDI assessment, or the Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument, is a psychometric test that allows people to understand their thinking preferences. And once they can understand their different individual thinking preferences, they can then start to understand and value, become more tolerant of others.

So what we've really got here is a metaphoric model of how our brain works, taking into account the left and right hemispheres and the upper and lower parts of our brain. And what the HBDI profile [inaudible 00:01:06] and says is that, each of these four quadrants is responsible for different thinking, decision making and communicating preferences. Now the thing with the HBDI profile is there's no better or worse profile, there is no right or wrong. What it does, is allow us to start to understand why we have differences and similarities between different people and using this model can be truly powerful for many, many reasons.

Sarah Garratt:

Okay, thank you. And would you say that it was a personality test or not?

Click the image to watch the video

 

Andy Palmer:

No, not at all. So the HBDI profile unlike others, does not measure personality. It also doesn't measure temperament, it doesn't measure intelligence, it just purely looks at our preferences to these four different quadrants. And we can use our whole brain and that's absolutely critical to remember, we just have preferences. Now we can have a preference to what is referred to as the, A quadrant or the blue quadrant and that's about facts, it's about understanding logical, analytical, factual, here and now information. If we then continue round and I'll bring each of these quadrants to life.

So that's our blue quadrant. If we move down into the green quadrant or the B quadrant, this is about organization, it's about sequence, it's about steps and stages. So people with a high degree of preference here, super organized and they can see the steps and the stages required in terms of understanding their individual thinking processes.

We continue around and we move round into the C quadrant, which is the red quadrant, this is about feelings, it's about people's interpersonal skills, their communication skills, understanding the needs and the wishes of others is super important to those with a high preference here. And then lastly, we've got that D quadrant, the upper right or yellow quadrant.

That's about holistic, conceptual thinking. It's not about the here and now, but it's about synthesizing and integrating with other people in the future and understanding the why of what those thinking preferences are like. So not about personality, more about preferences to thinking and decision-making styles.

Sarah Garratt:

Okay. Thank you. And HBDI profile, in terms of the quadrants, are we able to utilize every quadrant or are we just limited to one specific?

Andy Palmer:

Yeah, it's a very good question. It's a very good question because more often than not, when we are introducing the whole brain thinking model, people start to do that pigeon holing thing of you're red, I'm a yellow, I'm a green in you're a blue. And the reality is we can use all of our brain. Of course, we can, it's an incredibly powerful piece of kit.

So in those initial stages of understanding and the initial stages of understanding and getting our head around the profile, people do do that pigeon holing stuff, you're a blue, you're a red, you're a yellow, you're a green. The reality is we can use all parts of our brain. We just have preferences to maybe 1, 2, 3, sometimes even all four of them. And it's about understanding the degrees of preference, not then using it as a limiting factor.

Oh sorry, I can't do that thing, I don't have a strength or a high degree of preference in a certain quadrant. So we use all of our brain and we should never be limited by the preferences that we've got. It's about embracing them.

Sarah Garratt:

Okay. Thank you. And out of the four quadrants, which quadrants work best together.

Andy Palmer:

Yeah. That's a good question. I think there's no simple answer. The reality is we naturally gravitate to and get on with certain people. Now, one of the reasons that could be is because maybe they have a very similar preference to our own. So blues will naturally get on with blues, reds will naturally get on with reds, et cetera. And that's okay because it's on the same wavelength. Conversation's free flowing, thinking processes are very similar.

To take that one step further, I also believe there's a real strong connection between those that have different thinking preferences. So certainly from a personal relationship point of view, we often find that partners have very different thinking preferences to their counterparts because actually some of those analogies of chalk and cheese and opposites attract kick in, in which case they then compliment each other.

And as they start to build a level of tolerance and understanding for individual differences, they then connect, you compliment each other by maybe strengthening up an area that doesn't naturally come as well to them.

So yes, certain quadrants get on with certain quadrants, i.e. kind of within the quadrant. But actually also I think people should think broader and wider and allow the different thinking and preferences of others to help compliment their own and to work better alongside each other, by having that level of tolerance and understanding and understanding that people bring different perspectives and opinions and that's all okay.

Sarah Garratt:

And based around that, in terms of an organization, do you need all quadrants within an organization to make it successful?

Andy Palmer:

I don't know about making it successful, but I think it would help make it more successful by utilizing a whole brain thinking. And because we have our different preferences, if you've then got a team that has balance across all of the quadrants, you might have two people in the green, two people in the yellow, two in the blue, whatever that may look like, then actually you've got a real balanced set of thinking going on.

We sometimes see that companies or teams can be limited because maybe they are heavily prioritized or heavily preferenced towards one particular quadrant. In which case they may not naturally think into the other quadrants as easily.

And often people say to me, oh, can we use HBDI as a recruitment tool? Yes you can. And actually, maybe you need to do the opposite of what you would naturally do. When you're interviewing someone you go, oh, I've gotten on really well with them, we seem to think ... they feel very natural, very normal, whatever we define normal as.

Actually maybe you should employ the person that you didn't get on well with, maybe that didn't communicate in the way you expected them to, maybe didn't answer the questions in the way you would have liked them to because maybe, just maybe, they're coming at it from a different quadrant to your own, in which case they add further balance to the team. So having a balance across all quadrants for a team can be just super powerful. Yeah.

Sarah Garratt:

Okay. Thank you. And in terms of when you're under pressure, do you think it installs change?

Andy Palmer:

They can change. So its part of the questionnaire that you can complete to get your own individual HBDI profile. It also takes into account when you go under pressure, under stress and under duress.

Now some people, and we all witness this, some people have those changes in what we would pass as their behaviors, when they're under pressure, they might want to go into themselves or they may do the opposite and want to vocalize more. They may become super organized or super unorganized or whatever that may look like.

So yeah, when we're under pressure we can exhibit different behaviors and also some people stay pretty consistent. So when you see someone under pressure, they just seem to have the same sort of behaviors as they do when they're not under pressure.

And again, this profile explores that because there is no right or wrong, there is no better or worse, we are who we are. And this profile just helps us to understand that. So yes and no, it is absolutely individually based.

Sarah Garratt:

Okay. Thank you. And as a final thought, can you name a few famous people who've completed the test and what quadrant they are?

Andy Palmer:

Yeah. I'm going to answer it a little bit differently. So I'm going to bring to life some of the people throughout history. Now these people haven't filled out the Herrmann profile because it wasn't sometimes possible to do that. But we've used something called or HBDI, the Herrmann company have used something called pro-former profiling and looked throughout history at some of the stand out people, to help bring potential profiles to life.

So if I was to start with the upper right, the yellow quadrant, that's about future,...

Grocery Guru Episode #39:Russian Supermarket Discounters

Join Andrew Grant and Darren A. Smith in the thirty-ninth episode of the Grocery Guru. They discuss the Russian Supermarket Discounters Opening Stores in the UK. How it will affect the UK's supermarkets. Particularly Aldi and Lidl. Plus, supermarkets like the 'X5 Retail Group' and their innovative approach and different model.

You Can Read the Full Russian Supermarket Discounters Transcript Below:

Darren A. Smith:

Hello, and welcome to Grocery Guru. This is episode 39 and we are here with that grocery guru. Andrew, how are you?

Andrew Grant:

Morning Darren. Yes, very good. Thank you.

Darren A. Smith:

So, this week we're going to talk about the introduction into the UK of the Russian supermarket discounters, and I've got some information here, but I probably haven't got the experience you've got. What's your recollection of Russian supermarket discounters coming to Britain?

Andrew Grant:

Well, they haven't. So this is... Yeah, this is really interesting actually. They're called Mere and they want to open 30 stores in the next year, sorry 300 stores in the UK in the next year. The first one is opening towards the end of this month.

Darren A. Smith:

Yes. Now, I do remember when discounters came before, and you probably do, Europe Tesco. What's your recollection of that?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah, well this is the interesting thing, because I can remember being at Tesco, the first Aldi opened, and we'd already seen, I'd already seen Aldis in Germany and I still got this vivid recollection of going into an Aldi in Germany and in the chiller cabinet, the deli cabinet, there was a rusty knife hanging from a string and people were cutting their own lengths of salami. I'd never seen anything so unhygienic in my life.

And so, the minute we found out that the first Aldi was opening, we thought, there's no way British shoppers are going to be picking knives up out of cabinets and cutting their own lengths of salami and sausage. They won't shop in those sorts of conditions. And then of course, well everybody knows the history, Aldi and Lidl landed, just touched something within the British psyche for a quality bargain, and I think quality is the important thing, a quality bargain and together they've now got a share bigger than Asda and Sainsbury's.

Russian Supermarket Discounters

Darren A. Smith:

And I've got something similar on my recollection as a very junior buyer in, I think, it was the early 90s was, there was a guy called Tom Viner, who I think was probably CEO at the time. His initials were RTV, which I never quite understood, and then I realized his first name was Rudolph, but no one was allowed to call him Rudolph because they started doing red nose jokes.

Anyway, so Tom was at a conference at the front and he was saying, he read out this clip from newspaper. It said the discounters are coming. And his point was, we all went, "Yeah, that's bad, Tom." He went, "No, this was written in 1902." He was trying to say to us that it comes every few years, it's cyclical that the discounters come and not to worry, but actually I think he was wrong because to your point, they've got a hell of a market share.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. But I think my take is that this is actually really good news for the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury's, because it's going to give Aldi and Lidl one major pain in the whatsit to have to sort out. So this Mere group, they're planning to undercut Lidl and Aldi by 20% to 30%. I mean that is cheap, that is cheap as chips. But when you look at the pictures of the stores and anybody that's interested should have a look, there's an article of the Leipzig store that Mere recently opened.

I mean, their model is quite interesting. All the stores are leased. On the cheapest possible buildings that they can find as long as it's near a main road. But the most interesting thing about the model is, suppliers own the stock until it's sold to a customer. So suppliers deliver direct to store, the stock remains theirs until it goes through the till.

Darren A. Smith:

Wow.

Andrew Grant:

So basically the suppliers are responsible for total inventory.

Darren A. Smith:

Oh, I didn't know that. That is a very different model. We don't have that in the UK with any of our supermarkets, do we?

Andrew Grant:

Not that I know of, no. I mean, obviously I suppose you could argue that the retailers are quite good at extending their credit terms and not paying suppliers for 35, 42 days. So, technically the stock is still the suppliers, but no, this goes one whole step forward. And most of the food is... Well, it's all delivered on pallets and it's sold off pallets still in the shrink wrap. To save on refrigeration costs, there's only one refrigerator, and it's a room so that you go into a very cold room to pick up your yogurt and your milk and whatever.

Again, I've seen that operating in Europe and in Russia, and I'm not sure. I think it will give Aldi a little something to think about, because anything that cheap is going to corner a part of the market. And you only have to go around the UK post pandemic [inaudible 00:05:22] whatever the government's leveling up agenda is, if anybody actually understands what that means, there's some serious areas of [inaudible 00:05:32] around the country.

And I think if this Mere group targets those towns, the really marginalized coastal towns and some of the old industrial towns in the north and the Midlands and maybe the southwest and Wales, they will get a market. But it will be solely, I think solely at the expense of Aldi and Lidl. I can't see shoppers migrating from a Tesco and a Sainsbury's to that sort of super basic environment.

Darren A. Smith:

Okay. That's interesting. Let me just share, for anyone who hasn't got an understanding of the Russian market, just for a moment. So I've got here that the Russian market is made up of predominately eight supermarkets. Now the biggest one is the X5 Retail Group that has 12.8%, so let's call it 13%, and then Magnit, the next one, 8.8%, then DKRB with 6.6. So we've got about eight players with X5 being the biggest. Now X5, I hadn't realized this, the size of X5, they have a revenue of 28 billion. So, we're talking about a very big player here with an operating income of 1.5 billion and nearly 350,000 employees.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah, but I think this Mere group is interesting, because obviously they're Siberian, which is Russia in the refrigerator. It's not like it's Moscow or St. Petersburg. Yeah. This is a Siberian retailer. And we should probably steer away from any cultural humor, but when you look at that corporate website, I mean it is very Compare the Meerkat. It's been translated from the Russian and it doesn't quite translate to perfect English. I had a bit of a giggle, but I probably shouldn't be allowed to say that.

But look, they clearly operate on zero cost. I mean, each of the stores is only going to have eight members of staff. Three filling the store, three filling the store and four on checkouts. Completely stripped down. But they're operating all across Eastern Europe and they're now in Germany and they obviously see the UK as opportunity. I think the first store is Preston. That's right.

Darren A. Smith:

And do you think that this is the start of other supermarket brands coming over?Trying their hand in the UK market?

Andrew Grant:

We'll wait and see. I do think back to, as we said right at the start of this, Aldi coming in. Everybody fobbed them off. "Oh, it's not going to work. Hard discount isn't right for the UK." And we now eat our words odd 15, 20 years later. So never say never. If they're determined enough, and the model is sufficiently different. It's not like they use in a standard retail model and just hacking prices because anybody can do that and become massively unprofitable in the process. But if they've got a model where they're effectively holding no stock and there's no customer service. They make a point, almost Ryanair-ish, there is no customer service number, desk, or email. You want to complain, tough.

Darren A. Smith:

Let me just share a little bit more about these X5 guys, because they're the ones, I think, we really need to be worried about. And I'll tell you why. So I'm looking here and they have now launched pay with a glance bio-metrics at the checkout.

Andrew Grant:

What?

Darren A. Smith:

Just unbelievable. And what comes across from X5 is they are hugely innovative. 15,000 stores, okay? A lot of stores, of course. They seem to turn around their business in 2015 and became the market leader and are on a trajectory to absolutely dominate like Tesco. So that's really, really good. And then we talked about the subleasing here. These guys are doing it, I think it's what happened in 2015 that really turned these guys around, but the bit that really impressed me is they held a Russian version of Dragons' Den and they invited a lot of small businesses to come along, 800 startups, and they've started working with a whole bunch on new innovations that no one's ever seen before. So it's a little bit like Tesco's Red Door, yet I think these guys are ahead. They actually started it three years ago. [crosstalk 00:10:24] as a very respected, innovative business.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. But having worked, or visited Russia a few times over the last 10 years, it still... Well, I don't know. It looked, well when I visited it, it was at least 20 years behind the UK. So, it's still almost virgin territory for retail. So, anybody that's a good player, such as obviously X5 are, I think they will make hay for quite a long time. It's a very different game trying to get into a market like the UK if you're operating on the same principle model as effectively the world best in class leaders.

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah. Yeah, I get it. And what you said is they're bringing in a different model,...

Grocery Guru Episode #38: Have Morrisons and Asda Taken Their Eye Off the Ball?

Join Andrew Grant and Darren A. Smith in the thirty-eighth episode of the Grocery Guru. They discuss the latest Kantar market share showing 12 weeks to 20th July 2021. Asda and Morrisons losing share, Tesco gaining, and Aldi & Lidl showing flat growth.

You Can Read the Full Kantar Market Share Transcript Below:

Darren A. Smith:

Hello, and welcome to your weekly episode with The Grocery Guru. This is episode 38 and we are here with that guru, Andrew Grant. Andrew, how are you?

Andrew Grant:

Good morning.

Darren A. Smith:

Now, Andrew. I know that the market shares have just been published and you've got a unique take on what you think is happening.

Andrew Grant:

I'm not sure about a unique take, but yeah, we always wait for Kantar data that comes out 20th-ish of every month, because I think it's the most comprehensive view of what's happening in the market. I think we've covered it maybe two or three times since the pandemic started. And yeah, there's some subtleties in the figures for me. I mean, overall, total multiples are still up 11% on two years ago. So as we said, a few episodes ago, with the pandemic technically ending, people are going to go back out to pubs and restaurants. They're not going to do as much home shopping and therefore, the multiples are probably in a fairly rough ride during the summer.

Yeah, I wouldn't say it's a rough ride, maybe a few little bumps. I mean, they're down 4.6% on the year. Tesco down 3.7, Sainsbury's down three, so that's probably not too bad. So probably expecting worse.

What are your expectations?

 

Darren A. Smith:

Let me just put that back in people's heads. So year on two years ago for the last, what, 12 weeks to 23rd of July, the multiples are up 11%. That's right, isn't it?

Andrew Grant:

On two years ago.

Darren A. Smith:

On two years ago. So up 11%, but on a year ago they're down 5%, give or take.

Andrew Grant:

And obviously a year ago was the peak of the pandemic. So yeah, if you take a two year view, the grocers have been really successful at riding this pandemic. But within the numbers, a few interesting things. Co-op and Iceland are the worst performers, not surprisingly, a Co-op is on every street corner.

They don't have many big superstores, so they were the big winners of the pandemic when people just literally didn't want to shop at a big store where there were those other people who could potentially pass on the virus, they popped to the local Co-op. And to a lesser extent, I guess, Iceland being sort of city center or town center location. So I can understand why Co-op figures don't look brilliant, although they're us still up in double digit from two years ago.

Darren A. Smith:

So they're up 12% on two years but they're down 15% year on year?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. But what's for me is I think a little bit of the slightest star of some blue water between Tesco and Sainsbury's and Asda and Morrisons is starting to appear. So Aldi and Lidl have come back, they're flat on last year. So probably something in there about they don't have home shopping, and home shopping is down. I forget the numbers. You may have them more to have. Oh yeah. So online groceries dropped by 2.6%.

Darren A. Smith:

Yep.

Andrew Grant:

So I think Aldi and Lidl have picked that up. So Aldi and Lidl are flat. Tesco seems to be doing really well. Tesco's put on 4.4 points of market share is almost unheard of in the last 10 years, but Asda are losing market share as are Morrisons and twice the decline of Tesco and Sainsbury's on a year.

Darren A. Smith:

So we've got Tesco hitting the high of 27% market share.

Andrew Grant:

Yep.

Darren A. Smith:

They're doing well. And you think they're stealing that predominantly from Asda and Morrisons?

Andrew Grant:

No, no, actually. I think it's a bit more complex than that. I think Tesco in particular, and we've said it before, have found a way to neutralize Aldi and Lidl.

Darren A. Smith:

Okay, right.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. Their price match campaign, their club card promotions I think are fantastic, and fantastic value. I think Tesco and to a similar extent, Sainsbury's have found a way to stop the bleed of shoppers to Aldi and Lidl. I don't think Asda and to some extent Morrisons have. So I think the Aldi and Lidl bounce back is partly to the fact that less people are doing home shopping, but that home shopping could be stealing from Asda and Morrisons rather than Tesco and Sainsbury's.

Darren A. Smith:

It could be, and as you said, so online people are doing less online. They're going back to bricks and mortar shopping.

Andrew Grant:

Yep.

Darren A. Smith:

I read something in here that said, let's have a look.

Andrew Grant:

Still 13% of the market, though.

Darren A. Smith:

Yes, it is. It is. It's still huge. Yeah.

Andrew Grant:

I think it hit 18, didn't it, at the peak of the pandemic. And I think one of the grocers reported 20 odd percent online sales, but 13 is still double what it was two years ago.

Darren A. Smith:

It's very true. Very true.

Andrew Grant:

So pretty serious. And you know, yeah, just to bring the online thing into focus, Ocardo's growth, on two years ago, up 50%, I mean, absolutely flying. So as long as they can stop their robots fighting with each other, they're probably doing pretty well.

Darren A. Smith:

You're referring to the fire between the robots at say, depot recently, aren't you?

Andrew Grant:

I just thought it so funny that six robots decided to gang up on each other and have a big fist fight in the middle of the warehouse.

Darren A. Smith:

Robo wars. Ocardo robo wars. Maybe they want to start that. Maybe it'll catch on.

Andrew Grant:

I used to like [inaudible 00:06:05], yeah. It was good. So yeah. So I think it's quite an interesting time to look at what's happening in the market because obviously, pandemic technically over, obviously this week, there's all these problems of shop workers and depo workers and drivers being pinged. I think that's a short term blip, but going into the autumn, yeah, I think there's some interesting stuff going on here because I think Tesco and Sainsbury's are very well set. Asda and Morrison's, Asda's recently being taken over. That always causes problems.

So is their eye off the ball and is that going to cause longer term problems? And obviously Morrisons right in the middle of a bidding battle. That's guaranteed to take your eye off the ball. So I think Asda and Morrisons are the ones to watch through the autumn in terms of will they struggle. Aldi and Lidl I think will continue to do well. And Ocardo's steam rolling. Steam rolling on. So interesting to watch Asda and Morrisons over the next six months, I think.

Darren A. Smith:

Okay, all right. Assume it here. What other nuggets have you got from the Kantar data?

 

Andrew Grant:

I think that was it. The only other one we haven't mentioned is Waitrose. Yeah. Waitrose picking up again. I think their customers, it might be a complete generalization, but I think generally their customer's slightly older profile, probably more wary of shopping during the pandemic.

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah.

Andrew Grant:

So I think Waitrose probably hit harder, but still, their two year growth is the same as the others, but their one year growth is better. So, maybe Waitrose are starting to become a bit of a star. And I did read, was it last week? Yeah, John Lewis and Waitrose are going start building their own flats and houses and you'll have built in Waitrose food cabinets and all this sort of stuff.

Darren A. Smith:

And also there was the departure, I think it was six months ago now, of the commercial director at Waitrose, Rupert Thomas, who I think is chief commercial officer at Fortnum & Mason, I think.

Andrew Grant:

Okay.

Darren A. Smith:

[inaudible 00:08:37] moved there, so maybe that's bringing some changes as well. The only other thing I picked up that I thought was useful was Morrisons still doing very well with counters. Obviously most retailers are cutting back on counters and Morrison's must be picking that up to some extent.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. It is their USP and always has been, hasn't it?

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah, no, an interesting month to review that Kantar data. We'll see what August brings.

Darren A. Smith:

Okay. Okay. All right, Andrew, we'll talk to you next week. Thanks very much.

Andrew Grant:

Take care.

Darren A. Smith:

Bye-bye.

Take a look at the Kantar Market Share video on our YouTube Channel. Also, check out our award-winning blog.

Grocery Guru Episode #37: Ultra Fast Groceries

Join Andrew Grant and Darren A. Smith in the thirty-seventh episode of the Grocery Guru. They discuss the rise of rapid groceries, also known as ultra fast groceries. These start-ups are being discussed by JP Morgan and Credit Suisse as having the ability to take serious market share in the UK.

You Can Read the Full Ultra Fast Groceries Transcript Below:

Darren A. Smith:

Hello, and welcome to the Grocery Guru. We are episode 37 and we are here with that Grocery Guru, Andrew Grant. How are you?

Andrew Grant:

Very, very warm, Darren.

Darren A. Smith:

Yes. It's 31 here in town. It's hot.

Andrew Grant:

Well yeah, the official temperature is 31, but I think in this office, it feels like 40. So yes.

Darren A. Smith:

Now, if I was very smart, I'd make the link between hot weather and ultra-fast groceries, but I'm not that smart. So would you tell us about an ultra-fast grocery?

This week Darren and Andrew discuss ultra-fast grocery deliveries

 

Andrew Grant:

Well, I think you could say that their share prices are on fire.

Darren A. Smith:

They're going like hotcakes?

Andrew Grant:

Something like that, yeah. So no, we spoke about it a few weeks ago, didn't we? This rapid grocer I think is going to be the term that is used. So people like Getir and what have you, where they promise to deliver in 10 minutes. And I think both you and I are a little bit cynical, where to say okay, it's a nice thing to have and the odd person in a city center might run out of crisps or something, but the reason I've brought this back today is J.P. Morgan, the investment house, I read an article last week where they reckon, and the headline of the article was Rapid Grocery Will Create an Existential Threat to Mainstream Grocery. They're predicting, wait for this, that the rapid delivery grocers could capture 50% of the UK grocery market worth 200 billion a year.

Darren A. Smith:

And for someone like J.P. Morgan to make that forecast, we're putting a lot of stead by that, and so we should.

Andrew Grant:

Well, I don't know. It depends how cynical you are. I know both you and I have healthy doses of cynicism running through our veins, but I've always thought don't brokers come up with stories in order to pump up a share price and then come up with another story to deflate the share price that they make money on the up and the down? Isn't that what they do?

Darren A. Smith:

Well, a bit like Elon Musk with Bitcoin or Dogecoin.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. So whether it's one of these things, let's just pump the hype so that we can make even more money out of the shares that we've hedged, or leveraged, or whatever they do. But they were reckoning, and this is the bit that got me is whether you believe they'll get 50% of the market or not, but they're [inaudible 00:02:39] these startups, this says why so much money is going into them and why the share prices have gone crazy is they're making net returns of 10 to 15%. Now, we've spoken on here many times about UK grocers being the most profitable in the world, but they still only make about two and a half P net profit in the pound, which is a lot of hard time, effort, and energy for two and a half P for every pound you sell. They reckon these guys, because they're operating out of dark warehouses on industrialist estates and under railway arches, they're using transient labor, are getting 10 to 15% returns. Now, just do the maths, Tesco worth what? 80 billion, 100 billion, making 4%. If these guys suddenly carve out 200 billion making 12%, whoa.

Darren A. Smith:

That is staggering. Now, on top of what you said, so one of these guys is Gorilla.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah.

Darren A. Smith:

Gorillas, excuse me. Gorillas. And I had a look, and these guys are already in ... Don't know if you're able to see that, but this many countries. So we're not just talking about a UK phenomenon here, we're talking about eight European countries that they're already in. And Gorillas are saying one, thousands of products all at retail prices, so they're not charging more, two, everything at your fingertips, it's an app, and three, within 10 minutes, delivered by our legendary rider crew.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. So is it a classic story of tech bubble stocks or could it happen? I mean I don't know. The other thing that made me giggle a little bit is obviously this is quite low tech and the startup costs are very, very low, so the input capital's low. Don't know if you saw over the weekend, Ocado had a little problem with six of their robots getting into a fight.

Darren A. Smith:

Yes, they had a fire, didn't they?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah, six of their robots decided to beat each other up and set themselves on fire, which I just thought was brilliant.

Darren A. Smith:

Robot wars. Now, let me share some of the facts [crosstalk 00:05:00].

Andrew Grant:

Clearly they were England fans.

Darren A. Smith:

We've got the guys Getir, we've got the Gorillas guys, we've got Weezy, and these guys are saying the nationwide rollout, for instance, seeing a potential for 5,000 warehouses in the UK alone, which compares to Tesco and Sainsbury's, with only 2,000 convenience stores. That's pretty staggering stuff. These guys are going to move into this very, very quickly.

Andrew Grant:

And I think one of the interesting things, if you think back to what we spoke about last week with HFSS and impulse foods being slowly strangled out of grocery, what if these guys somehow found a way around the rules? Because they're not chain players at the moment, the legislation's not written for them because they're well under the radar. What if all of a sudden you are PepsiCo, Mars, Coca-Cola, suddenly finding that your sales are literally drying up in the grocers and there's this whole new channel that literally the words impulse, you don't get much more impulse than 10 minutes.

Darren A. Smith:

And these guys, because of their size, they might go under the [GSCOP 00:06:27] radar, they'll go under the HFSS. So just for everyone else, that's high fat, high salt, high sugar foods. We've got legislation which is coming in about April next year which says that you cannot volume promote those products, so that's ice cream, confectionary, and also you can't secondary display them. Now, these guys, as you say, could get around all of that with their app, maybe.

Andrew Grant:

Well, the proposal, although they're online players and the proposed legislation is going to cover online, it only covers people operating in stores of two and a half thousand square foot and above. These guys are running railway arches and don't have retail space.

Darren A. Smith:

Maybe it's the smartest move.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. And then the other thing as well, again, I love the stats, Just Eat, I think it was, has the highest returning rate of any of the delivery apps. 76% of their customers are returning customers. Just imagine when somebody like Getir or Gorillas, whatever, efficiently partner up with a Deliveroo or a Just Eat. So within 10 minutes, you get your hot tasty takeaway dinner, your bottle of pop, your chocolates for afterwards, your cigarettes, your beer, whatever it might be, all delivered on the back of one rickety motorbike.

Darren A. Smith:

Wow.

Andrew Grant:

Do you ever need to go to Tesco again?

Darren A. Smith:

So what's our advice for everyone watching? If they're putting some shares up, maybe we ought to get some, you just got to pick which one.

Andrew Grant:

Well, I think for our audience, mainly account managers and brands that sell into grocery, I think you need to watch it really closely. I don't think it is a tech bubble anymore, it's something that if you don't keep an eye on, you could wake up in 18 months time and it's a mega, mega, mega new channel.

Darren A. Smith:

It could be, and maybe that's why J.P. Morgan's ears are pricking up, and Credit Suisse are having a look at them, and so on, as this report says. Wow. So we're talking about ultra-fast grocery or ultra-rapid groceries, as it's becoming known, a whole new market opening up. The growth is absolutely going exponentially through the roof. Now, just the last part, Justin King's involved in Weezy, is that right?

Andrew Grant:

You've got me there. He's involved in one of them, he's put money into, yeah.

Darren A. Smith:

Involved in one of them, okay. So they're buying in huge experience as well. Justin being ex-CEO of Sainsbury's for many years, did very well, and has brought Sainsbury's back from poor growth to great growth, so he may do the same.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. So I think the watch word is watch this space.

Darren A. Smith:

Watch this space. Andrew, thank you very much for bringing that to our attention. We'll let you go and sunbathe in the heat, and we'll talk to you next week.

Andrew Grant:

Bye-bye.

Darren A. Smith:

Bye.

Take a look at the Football Bonus video on our YouTube Channel. Also, check out our award-winning blog.

Weekly Training Booster Episode #9: Telling Stories at work

Join Andy Palmer and Darren A. Smith in the ninth episode of the Weekly Training Booster. This episode was about telling stories at work and how to improve your presentation skills. Using stories to achieve greater engagement with your audience. Everyone can tell stories - Tell me about an accident you had, or a time you were embarrassed.

You Can Read the Storytelling Episode Transcript Below:

Darren A. Smith:

Hello and welcome to week nine with Andy Palmer. We're talking about the Weekly Training Booster. And this week, Andy, we're going to talk about storytelling and how to tell stories at work.

Andy Palmer:

Yeah, absolutely. So I think for me, this is one of those learned skills that actually become incredibly useful because the majority of us spend a lot of time influencing, persuading, communicating, ultimately presenting to people. And what we're ultimately looking to do is to improve that ability by becoming far more persuasive. And storytelling can just be a super powerful way of doing that.

Darren A. Smith:

And my understanding of storytelling is it comes from when our ancestors sat around a cave, where we can sometimes see Dances with Wolves with Kevin Costner. And they're telling stories around the campfire and they're really intriguing. And partly, there's no telly to distract them or mobile phone, but the storytelling, that's how it was passed on for years and years and generations.

Andy Palmer:

Absolutely. So, I mean, way before recorded history, at any time before recorded history, it's the vehicle in which humanity passed information from generation to generation. And yeah, I think it still plays out true now.

And yes, there's all those influences, but actually, if we all think back, we can probably remember that story our grandmother told us when we were a kid. Maybe, that cartoon that we saw on the TV when we were five, maybe the thing we learned in school about how the telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell. And they're the things that stay with us because we have such strong emotional connections to stories, as opposed to just simple information gives.

Darren A. Smith:

And one of the stories that I remember was back when I was in corporate and this guy was doing a training course on time management. Now, I got intrigued by time management, as you know for the last 20 years.

But, the story that stuck with me from that whole day was this guy said, "I want you to remember, I've got tickets."

Now, he started with that and that was intriguing. I have no idea what he was on about, he's a mad American. And then, he told this story about how he had tickets for a baseball game. And did I know that during that day, he was the most productive he's ever been? Because at five o'clock he had to leave the office because he had tickets. And were we surprised how productive he was? No, we weren't, because he had a goal. And it was brilliant, loved it.

Andy Palmer:

For me, that is the power of bringing stories to life by having a single central clear message. His clear message was, "I have tickets." Now, there was a whole load of other stuff going on, but that's the bit that stuck with you.

When we can come up with that simple clear message and that could be as much as, "I've got tickets," or, "I want to launch a new line," or, "I want to run a promotion, I want to negate," whatever that thing may be, if we're absolutely crystal clear on what it is, and then we can surround it with an appropriate narrative, we become so much more engaging in the way in which we're delivering that thing, whatever that thing may be.

Darren A. Smith:

And I agree. I was at a workshop, a different workshop some years later, with a guy called Richard White. God bless him, he's now passed on. But, we were in a storytelling workshop. There was 30 of us there and most of us started moaning as people, I think, were watching.

"I can't tell stories, Richard, I can't."

He said, "Okay, get into groups in pairs right now. Tell a story about an accident."

We were there an hour. I told the story about my hand with 80 stitches in it. I had them roaring. 20 minutes, I told that story.

Andy Palmer:

And I think that's a perfect example. And I use a very, very similar one. Most people, as you've said, will put their hands up and go, "I can't do stories that feels too big, scary, horrible."

They start to feel anxious about it, they start to feel very nervous about it, but yet the reality is we can all do it. And actually, if we take it away from our personal experiences that we can bring to life really, really easy, we're trying to then translate that to our professional or work environment, simply put the stories are just the stages and steps that you are going through or went through, in order to get you to that place that you are.

So if we're talking about you're in a recommendation space, it's just about saying, "Well, this is what I initially observed from the data. My analysis then allowed me to explore this and that."

I think sometimes it's really powerful to then talk about the obstacles and the barriers that you faced because conflict will exist, in which case stories become engaging.

"Went over here, turned out it wasn't this. That led me onto this here."

And you just play the story out, much like a book, chapters, chapters, chapters, all the way through to your end, your summary. And you're then able to make that recommendation. But, people have come on that journey. What did you see? Why did you find it or what was the observation? The reason behind the observation, our insight. What's the recommendation off the back of it? It's a very simple example.

And the story is just literally bringing to life the experience that you've had in a way that people can relate to. It doesn't need to be wrapped up in a Jackanory, once upon a time type narrative. It can just be brought down into the journey that you took to get to that point, that you're actually at, at that exact moment.

Darren A. Smith:

I like that. I like that, that's good. Because so often in business, we get into this theoretical, we need to talk in this business way and have 500 PowerPoint slides. Whereas actually, we can have much fewer slides, and bring it to life with our words and our animation.

Andy Palmer:

You're absolutely right, because the default is to go, "I'm going to spend four hours up, putting together my PowerPoint presentation, beautifully crafted, even managed to put a bit of animation in," and then we just talk through those slides.

But, we give ourselves no time to prepare. It's all about the slides. And all we do is talk through these slides, thinking they're our presentation. No. Breaking news, you are the presentation. The slides support you and not the other way round. When we can use stories and the slides then support us, our engagement, persuasion skills, influencing skills, go absolutely through the roof because we are that presentation, not the slides.

Darren A. Smith:

I really like that. So storytelling is really important, we know that. And as you said, it helps with influencing, helps with persuasion, helps with engagement. If we can move away from PowerPoint, that sounds good as well.

Okay, the guys that are thinking out there, "I'm not sure about the storytelling. I get what you're saying. I conceptually get it."

Where do they start?

Andy Palmer:

With your end in mind. I think, for me, everything starts with the end in mind. Let's talk Stephen Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, as he said, "Everything's created twice. First up here, then, in the physical."

If we figure out what our end in mind is for that particular meeting, or presentation, or communication, we can then work to achieving that. The single probably easiest thing that most people feel reluctant to do is maybe just storyboard it. What are the seven stages that I'm going to talk through? What's my start, my middle and my end?

From that, we can then start to weave a story around it, but the story is literally just bringing to life each of those stages. Now, if we can link it in with personal experiences, then that's fantastic. But sometimes, it just needs to be, or can simply be, that journey that we've got on to achieve that end in mind, at that end.

Darren A. Smith:

I love that. And I've seen you before take seven A3 sheets with the client, some marker pens, and start scribbling. Love that. Love it.

Andy Palmer:

Yeah, it feels very unnatural for people to do that because actually we must be in front of a keyboard, we must be in front of a monitor or four. Actually, why not just grab a simple pad and paper and storyboard it?

You talked earlier, in the previous video, number eight I think it was, about discretionary time. Stepping away from my desk, a bit of paper, pen, just story-boarding out. I've got six boxes on a bit of paper. I'm going to go roughly, conceptually get some thoughts out of my head and what each of those areas can look like. Then, I might come to PowerPoint and start putting something together, but never the other way round.

Darren A. Smith:

Brilliant, love that. Love it. All right. We're wrapping up. One take away for our viewers on storytelling?

Andy Palmer:

Break down those barriers, the perception that it's something more than it actually is. Everyone, I believe, can tell a story of a personal experience they've been through in their life. That's easier to do when it's retrospective.

I think this still plays out as well, when you're bringing to life a presentation using stories. You are just talking through the stages and the steps that you went through. You're going to meander off and say, "These were some of the black holes," or, "These are some of the dead ends," that you maybe experienced. But, that's good, it shows humility. And it shows that you didn't always get it right fir

Weekly Training Booster Episode #8: The Urgent and Important Matrix

Join Andy Palmer and Darren A. Smith in the eighth episode of the Weekly Training Booster. This episode was about understanding the urgent and important matrix. Also known as the Eisenhower matrix. A tool for helping you to understand how to improve your time management.

You Can Read the Urgent and Important Matrix Episode Transcript Below:

Andy Palmer:

Welcome to week number eight of our MBM weekly training booster. Good afternoon, for those that are watching it live, and hello to anyone else. It's a hot Friday afternoon here for us. Today, Darren, we are going to talk about the Urgent versus Important Matrix of helping to support a time management system, sometimes called the Eisenhower model. So I'm going to ask you to give us a brief overview and then we'll get in and explore it further.

Darren A. Smith:

Cool. This is a cracking tool, the Urgent versus Important, or Important versus Urgent Boston Matrix. So imagine a Boston Matrix. I'm going to flash one up, but I don't think everyone will be able to see that quickly. And what it says is, there's two axis. Urgent, and there's another axis of important. And once you cross check those and you get your four windows, you end up with what you can do and how you can think about time management, and whether a task is urgent, or whether it's important and how it overlaps with each other.

Andy Palmer:

That makes great sense. And I keep referring to situational base needs. Whenever I'm doing training of late, whether it's people management, situational leadership, or whether it's category management and talking about situational category management, adapting to the situation. And I think this is just another good example of, based on a situation that you've got and your situation be dictated by urgent and important allows, and that then, of course, dictates the options that you've got. So from what you've just said about those four quadrants, what sits within those four quadrants? How would you bring that to life?

Darren A. Smith:

So let's roll through. The reasons it's called the Eisenhower Matrix, is supposedly, President Eisenhower came up with it. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. I guess it doesn't matter. So you can either call U and I Matrix, or the Eisenhower Matrix, or the Urgent and Important Matrix. If we take that Matrix, and we say something is neither urgent, so we look at this axis, or important, then it's right down here. So we've got a time demand or a task that's neither urgent or important. Now this is the crazy space you get into. You say, "Well, if it's not urgent and it's not important, what should I do with it?" What do you think?

Andy Palmer:

What should you do with it? Well, it's actually probably not do anything with it, but again, you don't need it slipping through your system. So I'm going to hazard a guess that some sort of reminder, some sort of park it somewhere, put a date on it, come back to it. That type of [crosstalk 00:02:32].

Darren A. Smith:

It could be that. I mean, if it's not urgent and it's not important, you probably shouldn't do it now. Now if you get some JFBI's in your business, we all know what that acronym stands for. And sometimes, you've just got to get these things done. "That's okay. The boss wants it, the customer wants it. I'll just get it done. Fine. Not particularly urgent, it's not important, but over the next couple of weeks." So what we ought to do with this, is try and do as few of these as possible, because you can imagine, if you and I are operating in a space where it's neither urgent or important, what the hell are we doing? We can't be being productive.

Andy Palmer:

Yeah. Absolutely. All right. That makes sense. So we can either dismiss that, get rid of it. If then we were to dial up one of those axis, and let's say, something becomes more important, what does that look like?

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah. All right. So we've got something that's important, but not urgent... An example of that might be an account manager's got a meeting with Morrisons in four weeks, big presentation. So it's not happening right now, we're not on a burning platform. It's important because it's in four weeks and there's five squillion quid on the table available. So this, they could work through gently. You and I have a term of, "Get the hare's running," which is, "Maybe I'll go get the marketing guys to get me some data," or, "Maybe I'll get the graphic designer to work up some graphics." So we can get the hare's running. We've got some time. It's important, but not urgent.

Andy Palmer:

That makes sense in kind of alluding to the greyhound racing, getting something off started, as and when you then catch up with it, you've got those things ready that you need and to hand. Makes good sense. All right. We'll continue round. If things then become urgent and important because time has now caught up with us and we have that important thing, what does that then look like?

Darren A. Smith:

Okay. I'll describe what most people's time management looks like. If you see this graphic, you'll see that all four boxes are the same size. Now, actually, the way most people operate is, if I took those boxes and made these three really small, but the urgent and important really big, that's when most people operate. They operate in this system, but the urgent and important box is huge. Everything's in it, everything's urgent, everything's important. And they run round like a hamster on a wheel. The reason is, they're never getting off that burning platform. So yes, they've got to get these things done, that isn't going to change. The challenge is to use their discretionary time, which are all those little bits of time you have during the day, to try and get ahead, try and get the hare's moving, try working up a box. So that not everything is fire fighting, coming up against the wackiness in place every day.

Andy Palmer:

This sounds much like it's the reactive box. You literally have, stuff's coming in, you're doing it, everything's needed yesterday, and you're just reacting in the moment as opposed to, I guess... I like this saying. It's, your time is managing you, as opposed to you managing your time. Does that makes sense? If people are full on up against it, what I think you were talking about, was actually, we've got to then move down and we should ideally try and work in the next box, our last box. So what is that last box?

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah, so that last box... Let me just make sure we go round. We've got the not urgent and important. So we've now got the unimportant, but urgent. This is a strange old box, because if you want to explore that for a moment, what's urgent, but not important? So again, we want and try and get rid of these tasks, these time demands, as much possible because they're almost an oxymoron. How can you have something that's not important, but urgent? Now they do exist, but we want to make sure it's a small part of our time management system. The challenge for all of us when we manage all these time demands, and I call it stuff management, because there's neither work in my head or personal, it's all up there together, is to try and work in that box that is important but not urgent. So I'm going to try and get stuff moving gently that I can see coming in the distance. And that's how you have a less stressful life and you don't get overwhelmed.

Andy Palmer:

Good, good. All right. So they're our four quadrants of the Urgent and Important Matrix. I really like that last pitch about time management, which is actually more about stuff management, which goes hand-in-hand with priority management. And I think we've probably got maybe just another 60 seconds to go. It's that question, the most powerful question we can ask when we're in time management, why are you on the payroll? So that, to be able to dictate whether things are urgent and important, which you've got absolute genuine clarity on why you're on the payroll, you can then use this Matrix to support yourself.

Darren A. Smith:

Absolutely can. I'm just going to add one more thing, and that is, the way that we can throw all of that out the window and just be really, really busy, is to stay in our inbox. And what we find is, people who are stuck in their inbox, don't make the big differences because they're doing basically whatever comes into their inbox. And all I can guarantee them, is at the end of that inbox pipe, is a lot of work. Whether it's the right work, I don't know, but there'll be a lot of it. So it's our choice to decide, "Why are we on the payroll? What are the big things that are going to make the difference?" Switch off from our inbox, and try and get more of the big stuff done and not put it off.

Andy Palmer:

Very good. All right. Excellent. Darren, thank you. For those that have got interest in this particular model and maybe a wider interest in time management, we're going to put links in the bottom of this video for you to refer to, maybe continue that learning. But for now, that was week number eight of our weekly training booster, looking at the Urgent and Important time management Matrix. Thank you, Darren.

Darren A. Smith:

Okay. Good.

Take a look at the Urgent and Important Matrix video on our YouTube Channel. Also, check out our award-winning blog.

Grocery Guru Episode #36: Football Bonus, HFSS, Morrisons & A Tough Autumn

Join Andrew Grant and Darren A. Smith in the Football Bonus episode of the Grocery Guru. They discuss England being in the Euro 2020 final which gives a football bonus & stress on the supply chain, driver shortage, labour shortages for frowers, rapid groceries - Wheezy, HFSS, Morrison's bids and a tough Autumn Ahead for the grocers and their suppliers.

You Can Read the Full Football Bonus Transcript Below:

Darren A. Smith:

Hello, and welcome to the Grocery Guru. This is episode 36, and we are here with that guru, Andrew Grant. How you doing?

Andrew Grant:

Morning Darren. Yes. Pretty good. Thank you.

Darren A. Smith:

Lots going on at the moment. I know we've got a few things we want to share with our audience, but we can't not mention the football.

Andrew Grant:

What's that? Sorry, Das, I missed it.

Darren A. Smith:

It's a sort of football-like brown thing we might win.

Andrew Grant:

Oh, yes. There's a small match on Sunday evening, I believe.

Darren A. Smith:

There very much is. And I know you're a big football fan.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, it's one of those weekends, obviously putting aside the sort of, the passion for the national team, but as an [inaudible 00:00:48], we all remember these weekends. They don't come around very often, but a Royal wedding, a Brit winning Wimbledon, England football team getting through to the semifinals and now the finals; it's not in your budget. You weren't expecting it. You've spent this whole week ordering in gazillions of whatever it might be; crates of beer, burger buns, barbecue briquettes, whatever. And it's all froth on the top of your budget, I mean, happy days.

England football team being in the final have meant a football bonus and driver shortages

 

Darren A. Smith:

It's like getting a football bonus, isn't it? You didn't know it was coming and there it is. Lovely.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. And then obviously the trick is by this time next year, make sure you've moved categories because you're going to have the mother of all spikes to try and overcome.

Darren A. Smith:

Can't you still just blame COVID? Can this not go on for years?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah, but it doesn't get taken out of your budget, unfortunately. I'm not sure finance directors know that there's things such as football and COVID, it's just next year's budget is.

Darren A. Smith:

So we've got lots of people planning for this bonus weekend. It gives them extra on top of their budget. Fabulous. All right. That makes sense. And what about taking that forward? What does that look like?

Andrew Grant:

Well, it's an interesting time, isn't it? Because we spoke, I think a few episodes ago, about the challenges the grocers are going to have this year. Obviously they got a massive pandemic boost when everybody... when all the other shops were shut. And they're now obviously in the... they're now lapping that fantastic performance. And I saw some stuff from NielsenIQ this week, which said that actually sales in supermarkets fell 2.4% in the four weeks to the 19th of June, which actually probably isn't bad. If you think, they got something like 10% bonus, only to be 2.4% now a year later, is pretty good.

Darren A. Smith:

Well, that's much better than I would have thought. The average was 10% up in sales, so now we're saying only 8% up, minus two. Okay. [inaudible 00:03:10].

Andrew Grant:

We had Sainsbury's quarterly update performance. They increased their profit expectations, I think; doing pretty well, growing market share. And interestingly, the takeout I took from it, was their online business, their online grocery business, as opposed to Argos, is now steadying out. The growth rate is steadying out, but at 20% of their overall business.

Darren A. Smith:

Oh, one in five. Okay.

Andrew Grant:

So if you remember a year ago, we said it had doubled to 20%. So it doubled in a year, sort of five years worth of growth in a year, but it now looks as if the new normal is sort of one in five customers shopping online.

Darren A. Smith:

Right. Okay. Okay. All right. Interesting. All right. And when we look forward to the Ultimate's coming up, what's your predictions for what the UK grocery world's going to look like?

Andrew Grant:

Well, I think, as I say, if you're a bar and grocery, enjoy this weekend, because there's a whole storm of stuff coming down the pipeline at the grocery sector, yet alone business. We saw this week, Haribo can't deliver those nice little sweets because they've got no drivers.

Darren A. Smith:

Yes.

Andrew Grant:

So I think, the HGV situation is quite serious. I read a whole load of stuff about farmers in East Anglia having to plow in their summer crops because there's nobody to pick the lettuces or pick the asparagus or leaks or whatever it might be. So there's some real... and back [inaudible 00:04:55], again, desperately trying to hire workers for their convenience factories. So some real challenges around labor and supply.

Darren A. Smith:

So we've got driving shortages, labor shortages. Okay. Yep. Sorry, go on.

Andrew Grant:

Lots of food inflation, lots of commodity food-input price inflation, which I know the retailers are desperately trying to bat-off at the moment. And as I said, still those challenging like-for-likes from last year. And then put on top of that, bid-frenzy fever [inaudible 00:05:36] bid-frenzy fever, with... It looks like a bidding war for Morrisons, but will that spill over into a bid for Sainsbury's? Because when you look at it, going back to what we originally said, the grocery market has done really well through the pandemic. It's come through the other side, almost unscathed, as the rest of the economy opens up, and yet the share prices, and I know this, are where they were 25 years ago. So not surprised these clever Americans are looking at UK grocers and going, "Hey guys, we'll have some of this."

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah. And also not forgetting during COVID whilst the supermarkets did well with increases of sales around the 10% mark, they also spent a fortune on COVID costs. I think about four episodes ago, we said Sainsbury's COVID cost was 468 million.

Andrew Grant:

And obviously that's... it's going to be nothing like that this year, so that's straight back onto the bottom line. I mean, okay, they had a huge rates' relief, which they paid back, which would have dented their profits, but with every like-for-like downside, there is an upside, and they won't have all of those COVID costs this year.

Darren A. Smith:

True. And then I'm just thinking of two other things that are coming down the line. We've got people like Weezy, the London-based delivery shopping window of 10 minutes? Those guys are coming in, we talked about those a couple of episodes ago. I think Justin King was one of their investors.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. Yeah. So super fast home delivery. Rapid grocer, I think it's becoming known as. I think we said at the time, Darren, it's a bubble.

Darren A. Smith:

It feels like a .com. It really does, because the 10-minute window, "Yeah, great, I got it the first time, that was exciting," but do I really want it all the time? I don't think so. But what do we know? We're not just thinking-

Andrew Grant:

Well, if it gets to 10:30 on Sunday night and it's penalties and you've run out of beer, I can see the benefit of a 10-minute delivery window.

Darren A. Smith:

I certainly can. In fact, I might want to in five minutes, but I hear what you're saying. And then the other thing that's coming down the line possibly April next year, we've talked about HFSS, which is the biggest change, you said to me, in enforced diets since the Second World War? Did I get that wrong?

Andrew Grant:

Yep. Yeah, effectively. HFSS, high fat, sugar and salt foods, the government has... Depends on your point of view, but the government has waged war on advertising these products in schools, et cetera. It's now going a whole step further as far as the grocers are concerned, in that they will not be able to volume-promote or display these products. And for me, because this legislation is due in April next year, I do need to check when April is... Sorry, not when April is, when Easter is next year, but as the proposed legislation stands, you could see headlines like, "Boris kills the Easter bunny," which with no Easter egg displays allowed, which would be mind blowing.

Darren A. Smith:

So the two principles are, you can't volume price promote anymore and you cannot secondary site. Is that right?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. Broadly. So no bog-offs, no two-for's, three-for's, just straight price promotion and no secondary siting. No foyer displays, till displays, et cetera. And you think, Easter is the one that really springs to my mind because think of the pallet displays of Easter eggs that the grocers put out there.

Darren A. Smith:

Well, I'm thinking, I'm sure we walked into ASDA last year at Easter, and there were two, three pallets of these Easter eggs, from the 10 pound ones to the pound ones. You couldn't move past the lobby for them. Sorry, come April next year, it won't be possible.

Andrew Grant:

Well, it all depends, the legislation is still to go through parliament. I'm sure the big retailers and the big three confectionary giants will lobby hard against it. And can you see a government not letting us have our Easter eggs? I don't know, we'll see.

Darren A. Smith:

We'll see. All right. Andrew, final takeaway? Before we let you get on with your house buying, which I think you're doing at the moment.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah, no, the final takeaway is get that Domino's order in early this weekend because I think they'll struggle for half time.

Darren A. Smith:

Oh, and your prediction for score Sunday? What do you think?

Andrew Grant:

Oh my God.

Darren A. Smith:

I put you on the spot, haven't I?

Andrew Grant:

...

Weekly Training Booster Ep#7: Use the GROW Model For Your Employees

Join Andy Palmer and Darren A. Smith in the seventh episode of the Weekly Training Booster. This episode was about the GROW Coaching model; Goal, Reality, Options, and Way Forward. An overview of this coaching model to help you to begin coaching.

You Can Read the GROW Coaching Model Episode Transcript Below:

Andy Palmer:

Welcome to our next MBM Weekly Training Booster. We're at number seven. Today, we're going to be talking about the GROW Coaching Model and how to use the GROW Coaching Model. So Darren I've got, and as I've said before, in previous videos, I've got issues. Another one that I've identified is my inability to manage time. So you said you would kindly sit down with me, use something called GROW to make me better. Can you give us an overview of what this GROW thing is you keep pushing at me?

Darren A. Smith:

I can, there are a number of coaching models out there, like Oscar, GROW, a bunch of others. The one I really want to focus on because it's the most popular is G-R-O-W, the four stages of GROW. It was designed by a guy called Sir John Whitmore, who was originally a racing driver, not many people know that. And he came up with this four stage model for helping someone to coach someone else. G is the goal, where do I want to get to? R is for reality. Where am I right now? O is for options. What things could I do? A way forward is basically choose the options before I'm going to go into.

Andy Palmer:

Brilliant. So if we decided that I do need to resolve my time management issues, how would you be using each of those stages with me, to help unlock this?

Darren A. Smith:

So the first question we'd ask you around the first stage, which is goal. So one of my questions would be where do you want to get to on your time management? And you might say, where I want to get to, Darren, is... What you say?

Andy Palmer:

Finishing on time more often, being able to prioritize my workflow, because I tend to work on all the wrong stuff at the wrong times. And ultimately, maybe to try and manage when stress, cause I'm just incredibly busy. [inaudible 00:01:49] I've got a job.

Darren A. Smith:

And they will be great answers, because I would then follow up that with some subsequent questions to try and get you to define that goal. What does it look like when you're there? How were you feeling? What does it look like? What does it smell like? How euphoric would that be?

Andy Palmer:

Good stuff. All right. So once we've got our goal, we know what we're aiming for. We can then move into our reality stage of trying to figure out maybe what's not working so well right now. Is that right?

Learn how to use the GROW coach model

 

Darren A. Smith:

It could be. So we've got our bit over here. Where does Andy want to get to on time management? But now trying to establish, how far is he away? That's his reality. So I might say to you, considering your goal, how would you compare that to your reality? If this is nine out of 10, what score would you give yourself now?

Andy Palmer:

And I guess flushing out with a number of different questions coming at it from multiple different angles just helps that we're, [inaudible 00:02:43] classes that kind of conscious incompetence. I now know what I didn't think I knew before. I know with the view to help understand that differential between where I want to get to and actually the real reality of where I am now. That then moves us into our options. And again, we're looking to explore things that can help solve it, I guess?

Darren A. Smith:

They are, so again, GROW and coaching's all about the answers within you, all I'm trying to do is ask you the right questions to pull it out your head. What I'm not doing is giving you the answers, because we move into more mentoring, which is very different. This is all about, I should be able to coach you to do anything, as a coach. I don't need to be a subject matter expert. So I might say to you, what have you tried before? What's worked, what hasn't worked, what have other people done that you've seen work? What things float your boat, do books float your boat? Videos? Online training? And I'm trying to prod and poke your brains when you go oh, it's these things over here I quite like to do.

Andy Palmer:

Because that develops, creates a bunch of options for us, which then allows us to move forward into that way forward, that wrap up parts of the model. What does that look like?

Darren A. Smith:

So that might be me saying too, when you think about those three things that you've chosen to do, it might be an online training course. I'll have some coaching from someone else and I'll go and do three activities. I might say, well, which one of those isn't going to work for you? And I'm trying to poke and prod to look to the future to see, well, where is Andy going to fall over? Because I'm trying to look forward ahead through you to see what might and might not work.

Andy Palmer:

I guess, following this work for me, the GROW coaching, we're very much a cycle. One that often kind of recycles, but allows, and that's kind of close that circle and move us towards create a plan to help achieve that goal.

Darren A. Smith:

Absolutely, absolutely. They're the four stages of the GROW model. A lot of people don't want to coach because they just want to tell, but actually the difference in coaching is you're much more likely to do it because it's coming from within you, rather than me just say, "Andy, go and read that from the book."

Andy Palmer:

People have an emotional connections to the things that they help create. And if they're then help creating their own plan, their own training, their own development, then they're in a really strong place. So what's one top tip. And it's very leading question. If people want to embrace the GROW model, what suggestion have you got to help them take that on board?

Darren A. Smith:

Well, I've got a pitfall that people fall into, then a solution. The pitfall most people fall into is they talk too much as a coach. So my top tip is 80/20. Make sure as a coach, you're only talking for about 20% of the time, come up with cracking big open questions and almost watch your coachee in the nicest possible way, squirm a little looking for the answers. That would be my top tip. [inaudible 00:05:40] Would be to buy our coaching cards. We now have 17 decks of coaching cards. They look like playing cards. There's about a hundred in a deck. They're only about seven pound 50, and they enable amateur coaches to become more professional coaches.

Andy Palmer:

So, let's put a link to all those coaching decks in there. I know there's one specifically around GROW. There's also an advanced GROW deck as well. Prompt example questions across a number of different subject matters. Tell people to help unlock the potential in both themselves and others around them. Good stuff. All right. Thank you, Darren. That was our weekly training booster for this week. I'm not going to retake that because we've been here for too long already. That was how to use the GROW Coaching Model. Thank you.

Take a look at the 6 Thinking Hats video on our YouTube Channel. Also, check out our award-winning blog.

Weekly Training Booster Ep#6: How to Use the Six Thinking Hats Theory

Join Andy Palmer and Darren A. Smith in the sixth episode of the Weekly Training Booster. This episode was about the six thinking hats. Designed by Edward De Bono, these 6 hats help teams to solve problems with this incredible problem-solving tool. You can choose how you sequence the hats to get the best results.

You Can Read the 6 Thinking Hats Episode Transcript Below:

Andy Palmer:

Okay, good afternoon or good morning, depending on when you're watching this. Welcome to MBM's weekly training booster. This is number six; how the time flies when you're having fun. Okay. Today is about how to use, and how to understand the Six Thinking Hats, the tool that's been developed by Edward De Bono. For me, Thinking Hats is a super powerful way of helping unlock the potential and to support team thinking. So Darren, give us an overview of De Bono's Six Thinking Hats.

Darren A. Smith:

It's a way of problem-solving as a team. That's its best application, I think, having used it for the last 20 years. It can really help a team to focus, without having to worry about being sidetracked on positioning themselves in the discussion, my opinions here, your opinions here. So it can really help a team to focus and solve a problem. And the Six Hats are various colors, they were created by, as you said, Edward De Bono, and I'd like to share them all with you.

Andy Palmer:

All right, good stuff. So what I'm going to ask you to do then is pick a hat, give us an overview of any one of them, anyone that comes to mind for you?

Darren A. Smith:

Well, let's do the one that people would most heard of, which is the black hat.

Find out how to apply the 6 thinking hats theory with this training booster

Andy Palmer:

Okay, and what's the black hat?

Darren A. Smith:

The black hat is being a naysayer or a negative Nellie as some people would call it. So you're in a discussion, and the idea is that the team together wear each hat at a time, a metaphorical putting on a colored hat. So at this point, each member puts on the black hat altogether, and we have a problem to solve. And the problem might be that project XYZ isn't working. And then what we do on a flip chart is write down all the problems with this project, "Well, it doesn't work because Bob's not engaged, the client doesn't like it, we're going to run out of money." And we'd list all the problems, all the things that are going to go wrong, all the negativity.

Andy Palmer:

Good stuff. And I guess that then allows people to get those thoughts out of their head and, at the same time, manage their own perception that maybe they're not being negative. They're actually just trying to spot stuff that can happen, the risks that are going to be associated with the project, to then figure out if we need to accept, mitigate, transfer them, or whatever we need to do with them. So it's a good way of unlocking that thinking where naturally the majority just don't want to go to that black hat thinking. But this helps us to take us there.

Darren A. Smith:

And you can also imagine Bob and Ron in a room, and maybe Bob's negative and Ron's saying, "Oh, but we don't want to be negative." You can see the tussle going on. Whereas if we'd all agree to put on the black hat and we're all negative together for a few minutes, great.

Andy Palmer:

All right, absolutely. Good stuff. All right. Pick another hat, what other colors and what [crosstalk 00:02:54]?

Darren A. Smith:

Okay, we'll go opposite and we'll talk about the white hat of the six thinking hats. Or, as we call it an MBM terms, the detective hat. And this is saying, "What do we not have? What facts and information should we go and seek in order to solve this problem?" So we don't understand enough about the customer on this project, or we don't have enough data, or we need to find out what the shopper thinks. That's our white hat.

Andy Palmer:

Good stuff. And it'd be particularly useful when we're trying to validate maybe the opportunity, or to consider if it's even a goer, because we can't make decisions without having the facts. We need to go and get them to allow us to make informed decisions. All right.

Darren A. Smith:

Yes. It's a particularly good hat for... I'm at risk of mixing my metaphors and colors, but it's good for the HBDI blues. If anyone's done HBDI, you'll know the blue guys love the facts; this is their hat.

Andy Palmer:

All right. Yes, that makes sense to me. Let's put a link in the bottom of the video today for people are going, "HBDI, what's that?" We'll bring that to life as well. Albeit, let's not go there right now. Okay. I'm going to pick a hat from the six thinking hats. I'll pick the red hat. The red hat's about... And actually, this does align to Hermann, more about feelings and hunches and intuition.

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah, so this is about giving the group permission. We all put on the red hat and for, let's say, four, five minutes, "What are our feelings on this project?" "Well, I'm pissed off with Bob," and, "Ron's doing really well, but I fear this." It allows us to put our feelings forward, and particularly as a British male, we're not allowed to do that. But with the hat on, we can, which is great.

Andy Palmer:

Okay, fair enough. Yeah, and I think this is important for a number of reasons. One, because yes, we can look at projects as being one dimensional things. But actually they have impact on people, whether that's internally, externally, maybe customers further afield, to consider those groups in a much, dare I say, detailed, much greater level of detail can be powerful.

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah, very true.

Andy Palmer:

All right. All right, so that's our red hat, that's our black hat, and our white hat. Pick another one for me?

Darren A. Smith:

Okay, so let's talk about our green hat, and in MBM terms, it's our entrepreneurial hat. It's our creative ideas hat. So this is where us yellows in HBDI terms, or the right brain-ers, put this hat on and they go for it. So the group all put on the same hat and we list all the ideas that we've got to solve this problem. Now, one of the tools that you and I know works very well here, is random word tool, and again, we'll put a link to that. But sticking with De Bono, this is all about how many ideas have we got? How many solutions? How many crazy thoughts to solve this bad boy?

Andy Palmer:

Yeah, we're talking about a good level of brainstorming, getting it all out there, no idea's a bad idea. Then we filter them, prioritize them, remove the duplication, and get down to the ones that are going to help solve our particular problem when we're doing a problem-solving. Good. Okay, good. Tell me about the blue hat?

Darren A. Smith:

Okay, the blue hat is our policemen hat or our film director hat. It's the process hat. So this is the hat we put on at the start and at a end of the sequence, I'll come back to those in a moment. But at the start, before we all start putting on a red hat, or a white hat, or black hat, we have a process which says, "As a team, we're going to do this for about 20 minutes, five minutes per hat", let's say. "We are going to evaluate at the end of the blue hat again." And this is making sure that our journey is going to solve our problem. So the blue hat is about setting it up correctly, which hats are we going to use for how long, and then evaluating again at the end. So blue to blue with other colors in the middle.

Andy Palmer:

Lovely. Well, last but not least then, our yellow hat?

Darren A. Smith:

So our yellow hat is the opposite, I guess, of our naysayer black hat. The yellow hat is all about optimism. It's all about, "Okay. What about if we found a hundred thousand pounds and threw that into the project, how could we solve it?" Or, "What if we all worked every day for the next 10 days, how would that work?" So we've got to try and split the ideas into the optimism. These hats are quite close, but optimism is the exact opposite of the black hat.

Andy Palmer:

Brilliant. All right. All right, it's a great overview of how De Bono's Six Hats can help facilitate our own thinking. And the bit that I really liked, depending upon the situation you're in or the thing you're trying to explore, you can select a sequence of hats. Sometimes it might be the blue, the red, and the green. Other times it might be all six. And as you talked about earlier, sometimes you might start with one hat and finish with that same hat, and do some other stuff in the middle. So while I don't think we're getting into all those different permutations and scenarios, maybe we can, again, add a link at the end of this video for people can then see how they can practically apply it.

Darren A. Smith:

We do have some sequences that we've written down in the link which we'll put in. I'll just share with you a couple that I've seen work really well. If you're new to the Six Hats thinking, then I would take a blue hat, consider with your team, "We'll do all the colors of the hats", and finish with a blue. That seems to be the basic choice. When you get more advanced, you might just do blue, black, and white, and then blue again, that's possible. And remember that this thing shouldn't take that long. The hats, you only wear a hat for up to about five minutes. We're not talking about hours of discussion.

Andy Palmer:

Great stuff. All right, fabulous, top tip. Let's wrap it up there. We're going to put some additional information in the link. Today's video was about Edward De Bono's Six Thinking Hats and how you can use them to solve problems and improve communication within teams.

Darren A. Smith:

Brilliant, thanks, Andy.

Take a look at the 6 Thinking Hats video on our YouTube Channel. Also, check out our award-winning blog.