Making Business Matter (MBM)

Sticky Learning Lunches #15: Create Your Own Personal Development Plan

Understand the 5 simple steps to create your personal development plan in Part 4 of this PDP series.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Amazing. Good afternoon people. Yes, I'm excited. We're on Thursday. We've got people arriving 30 seconds to make sure we're getting set up for success today. Gina, thank you, Chris. Gerd, Ivan. Mark. Samantha. Stewart. Great to see you. See you all arriving. Some of you got some new faces, the regulars. Really appreciate all of you being here. Hmm. Let's give it a couple more seconds. Let's make sure we got, we're getting ready for this.

Nathan Simmonds:

As always, mobile phones. First of all, let's remove all the distractions that we've got today. Mobile phones. Let's get your phones out. Let's make sure they're in airplane mode. No beeps, no buzzes, no pings, no nothing other than a full hundred percent attention to the time that we're gonna spend together. Um, going through today's content around personal development planning.

Improve your goals with a 30-day plan

 

Nathan Simmonds:

Just had a message there regarding a document I'm gonna share with you all at the end of this session. So I've got a little gift, a little bonus for you at the end of this that we've been working on this week and I'm looking forward to sharing that. Making sure you've got drinks handy, herbal teas, coffees, waters, whatever it is you're set up. And as always, making sure you've got your, uh, clean sheet notepad, pen at the ready. Now, making sure you've got plenty of ink and you're not gonna be looking for another pen halfway through this session, set that page up at the top of the page, you're gonna write keepers.

Nathan Simmonds:

Keepers are the things that we wanna remember, the keep the things we wanna keep hold of so that when we read back through those notes, it creates new thinking and it keeps the, the, the, the ideation flowing and progressing forward. Really important. We do this objective for today. We wanna be aiming for three or more keepers as we go through this session. So anything that I say, any questions that comes up or anything in the chat box, you think, oh, I need to keep hold of that. Get to on that sheet so it reminds you,

Nathan Simmonds:

Heading into this lasted a couple of people coming in. Let's get off the screenshot. Now remember to do it this time. That in itself is amazing. Before the last thing, before we get into the, the, the, the session, making sure that everyone that you are registered for tomorrow's session Friday, last day of the week, we're gonna be looking at some tools and ideas to really help keep that momentum down and get some deeper, um, introspection and reflection on what you do, why you do it, and how you make sure the plans and the strategies that we're putting in place now maintain that forward momentum and, and looking at different tools and different lenses to help you intensify your understanding of the challenges that you are setting for yourself.

Nathan Simmonds:

Because life needs challenge, we need that positive friction. When we understand what our challenges are, we can stack them in the right order. And those tools that we're gonna share tomorrow are gonna help you to do that stacking. You're gonna share a link in the, in the chat box, make sure you are registered for tomorrow. Other announcement, we have a guest speaker coming in for next week, Jeff Birch. Very funny, brilliant keynote speaker. Uh, he's talking about the the cunning sales plan strategy that you can employ. So you've got four days of Jeff Birch, there'll be jokes, there'll be entertainment well worth.

Nathan Simmonds:

Let's make sure you are registered for next week as well and maximize these free sessions. Let's do this. My name is Nathan Simmons, senior leadership trainer and coach for MBM Making Business Matter, the home of Sticky learning. And the idea of these sessions is to give you 20 minutes micro learning of, of leadership development and soft skills, which we provide to the grocery manufacturing industry for free to help you be the best version of you right now in this moment. And prepare you not only to develop yourself while you're working from home, but also for that return to work if you're going back there in the next week, two weeks, four weeks, whatever.

Nathan Simmonds:

So we're gonna share some core ideas. This is part four of the PDPs. You haven't seen the previous sessions, the links on the webpage, also on YouTube to go and see those. What have we covered so far? Let's diving in one overarching goal. We talked about this, um, on Tuesday we started to move to this. So these are your three, five year plus goals. Where do you want to be at the furthest point that you can see that? You can imagine that you can work out.

Nathan Simmonds:

You can get to if it's three years, if it's five years, if it's 50 years, this is your overarching goal. People can only see as far as they can think. And if you haven't been asked these sorts of questions before, where do you want to be in five years time? What is it you want to create in this life that benefits other people? What's the great impact that you want to, to leave for seven generations after you? If you've never been asked these questions, you won't even know what the answers are to take the time to ask them.

Nathan Simmonds:

Number two is then we're getting into 12 months goal, 12 month goals. So what we do is we take that OAG, the overarching goal and then we break it down to one year, what do I want to achieve in the next 12 months that is gonna help me move towards this? What is it I'm doing for 12 months from now that is gonna move me closer to my overarching goal and start to strategize This section three, which we're gonna dive into a little bit now, is then we wanna break it down into 90 to a hundred day planning.

Nathan Simmonds:

And we started working on this yesterday. So we want to take that 12 month plan and we want to chunk it down into three blocks, approximately of 90 to a hundred days. How do we do this and what's the best way to do it? Key question to be asking now that you've got a bit of a viewpoint on where you want to be in say three to five years from doing these sessions or you've got a bit of an idea percolating in your head, what is it you would like to achieve and or need to achieve inside the next 12 months that's gonna move you closer to that?

Nathan Simmonds:

What things can you see that need to happen? What needs to be included so that you are, when you get to the end of the 12 months from here, wherever we are now at the 30th, in the last latter end of April, 12 months from now, what do I want to have achieved in that time? And start brainstorming some ideas. You're sitting there with your pens and paper. Start just throwing some stuff down.

Nathan Simmonds:

Brain dump it out, mind map it if you need to throw things out there. And as you are doing this and you can start doing this now later on as you start doing this, you'll start to see there's some elements that kind of plug into each other and you can start grouping them together. And when you group those things together, what you will find is your 12 months

Nathan Simmonds:

Will break down into three or four categories. And as I was talking about yesterday, you'll then find that these, these groups, whatever they are, will all go into one, two, or three of these of these columns. It's making sense with everyone, everyone with me on this, see some yeses and nos. And if you're not, then we'll go in and we clarify what we need to is making sense with everyone? Yes, yes, yes. Good. So we brain dump all the activities we believe we need to take.

Nathan Simmonds:

Boom, they're on the paper. We then group them up. We then stack them into E all the, the three 100 day blocks that we've got three times, 100 days. And then we work out what the chronological order of these three, these three 100 day stacks are. As I said yesterday, I'll give you an example. If you want to change department or you want to become a consultant from where you are,

Nathan Simmonds:

You, there is no point in going for the job interview if you haven't done the research on the company that you are moving into. There is no point in attempting to sell a product as a consultant or service if you haven't built the product or haven't done the research and design potentially to say that you have enough material to create the product. So what you have to do is really understand that once I've got these things in order, like in in their stacks, how do they fall chronologically so that when one knocks into the other, knocks into the other. So it becomes a domino effect.

Nathan Simmonds:

As I complete this, it's a natural progression as I complete this, it's a natural progression. As I complete this, all of a sudden I'm there and it's the end of the 12 months and we've got success. Uh, question coming up. I've never even thought about breaking it down into three 100 day Brooks, which were very welcome. Couple of things on this. One is why isn't it 365 days? It's got nothing to do with Roman calendars or um, uh, andan calendars. Just purely for the fact that depending on how we stack our year and when we're doing our activities, when we get to places like December and January, it's a bit of a write off for certain things to happen.

Nathan Simmonds:

Now if you think that all months are made equal and you try and get some projects finished in December, I'm not sure that's really gonna work. 'cause by the time you get into the beginning of the second week of December, everyone is burning and using holiday and then all of a sudden it's the festive period. And if you are not on holiday somebody else's, so you are just not gonna get the communication you need to move forward.

Nathan Simmonds:

You are better off using kind of your,...

Sticky Learning Lunches #14: Create Your Own Personal Development Plan

Understand the 5 simple steps to create your personal development plan part 3 of this PDP series.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Rah, right. We are in getting carried away with a deep conversation looked up and it's one o'clock. Good afternoon everybody. So good to see the people here. Oh, fantastic. Seeing some wonderful people turn out. I see you. Julie's here. Evan's here. Gina, again, thank you very much for being here. My pronunciation on this is gonna be wrong, but I wanna say Carra or Ciara. You can correct me on my pronunciation. Please do . See you too. Really appreciated that you are here. Fantastic.

Nathan Simmonds:

We're just gonna give it 30 seconds just to see if anyone else is turning up like Kira. Thank you very much Kira, thank you for being here. Very appreciated. Let's making sure as we're just waiting for any last people to turn up that we are setting ourselves up for success. It is one oh one. Let's get the phones on flight mode, zero distractions. We have a drink regret to advise. This is lukewarm tea.

Improve your goals with this 12-month plan

 

Nathan Simmonds:

It's as good as it's gonna get right now. And we have a nice blank piece of paper in front of us ready to go. So on that piece of paper at the top you are gonna write keepers. These are the things that you want to remember here at Sticky Learning at MBM. This is what we refer to the reminders. So when you read back through those notes, it's gonna support your new thinking, your new thoughts, and that new learning to stay in place for a much longer period of time. So let's dive into this day three. Day three of the PDP session. Welcome to Sticky Learning Lunches with me.

Nathan Simmonds:

Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM making Business Matter, the home of Sticky learning. We are the leadership development and soft skills provider for the grocery and manufacturing industry. And the idea of these lunchtime sessions is to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do right now in this situation where you're working from home and preparing you for the return back to work so you have a whole new set of skills and thinking that's gonna help you become more incredible than yesterday. Where are we today?

Nathan Simmonds:

What actions? Let me ask this question. First of all, to everyone that's here, if you've been in the previous sessions, what actions and you've seen the other videos, what actions have you taken so far from what we've talked about in the last two days? What have you put in place? What are you doing differently? What have you written down as a result of the previous two sessions? Let's see those in the chat box, in the questions box. For those that haven't, we're gonna dive into this session. I'm gonna give you a bit of a recap shortly and then we're gonna get some momentum.

Nathan Simmonds:

Started to think about my exit plan. Absolutely taking a stab at where I want to be in five years. Amazing. Still trying to work out my exit strategy. The fact that you are working it out right now, that's the key thing. Started working on my PDP with the concept is not a format, it's a way of thinking. Absolutely. This written goals for myself for the next three months. Amazing Chris. Thinking about the big goal, getting it bigger. So when you set your big goal, when you put it in place, ask yourself the question, when this happens, what does it enable me to do? And then that way what we can do is start to seeing what comes after that moment.

Nathan Simmonds:

Because what happens is, is when you are setting a goal, it becomes like a conveyor belt. As you start to move towards it, it starts to evolve. So although you may achieve that goal, there'll be another goal that starts to form because you've achieved it. The faster that you work through or process this thinking and development, the quicker these goals start to to increase and expand. Five year plan started. Amazing Gareth, personal development planning. That's exactly what it says on the tennis personal. So we've got everyone here continuing the structure. We've got everything sorted. Just making sure the housekeeping's right. Yes. Good. Continuing with our structure.

Nathan Simmonds:

So yesterday we looked at the OAG, the overarching goal. This is what we started to think about and we asked three questions to help us start designing that overarching goal. The first one was what fills us with pride? The second one, what creates excitement for us? And the third one, what are our values? 'cause when we understand what creates pride for us or what we've done that created pride or what we've done or we're planning that creates excitement and what it, what our values are and how we've then what we've contributed that have created or demonstrated these things, we can start to get a real understanding of of who and why we are. Because when you can see this, you can start to be inspired.

Nathan Simmonds:

You get inspiration. Once you have inspiration, then you can use your imagination. Once you've applied your imagination, then you can put into practice your innovation and those lights are bang on that right? Bear with me. It's not much better. Goodness, it's a bit better. So once we've got the inspiration, we can apply imagination and innovation. When we start looking at those things, then we can start building our over, uh, overarching goal. They talk about necessity being the father of invention phrase that you may have heard. But the truth is, inspiration is the mother that births all of this. So when you tap into this because, and you start looking at the things that have caused these sensations, these emotions, you can tap into that inspiration

Nathan Simmonds:

Which creates this, which then leads to this the thinking that creates action. It's really important. We get into this and we start to understand, 'cause this is where your purpose comes from. This is what your purpose actually is. And by doing the analytics on these things, you can then start designing something that's actually in line with that purpose from a deeper point of view. You may have heard me say this before, and the difference between motivation versus inspiration.

Nathan Simmonds:

Motivation is external. Now the double pay overtime, the packet of Harry Bow for doing a good job, all of those things, but it's fleeting. Whereas inspiration is constant. It's an energy, it's an internal source that you can tap into at any given point in order to, he says, thank you very much Ivan for reminding me. Appreciate it. In order to create that thing that actually feels good, that creates fulfillment so that you want to go after it because it's exciting and it's engaging. That was the headline recaps number two.

Nathan Simmonds:

What we want to do though is because this can be overwhelming and it can be big and, and it can seem too far away for us, is we then wanna break it down. I'm gonna dive onto a poll here 'cause I'm interested to see out of this though, before we start giving you the structures to break it down, I wanna find out when was the last time your leader spent time helping you with your plan? So let's get, let's have a look at this first before we start getting into the internal leadership first. So we're gonna launch this poll. When was the last time your leader spent time with you?

Nathan Simmonds:

Someone's already answered that. I'm not sure we even have an answer to that on the, on the poll. When was the last time your leader spent time with you to help you with your plan? And one of the responses here was never, not surprised. So 40%, 12 months plus 10%, 12, 30%, six. We've got a few never nevers, also never crikey. I'm, I'm a part of me is not surprised. Regrettably.

Nathan Simmonds:

So 40% on here has said 12 months plus I didn't put never on here as an option because I thought every leader would've done at some point 10%, 12 months, 30%, six months, 20% or one month. So the majority is more than 12 months. And a handful of people over here saying never. How does it feel when your leaders take that little interest in what you are actually doing? Light up the question box or the chat box. How does it actually feel when your leaders show that little interest in what you are doing, whether you need it or not, to struggle shi and that's not my words, that's someone else's words only number and get not a person.

Nathan Simmonds:

Absolutely ignore, demotivate, disheartened left out, insignificant, undervalued, unhappy, bam, demotivating. It's not. Okay. So as leaders, so the people here that have leaders or, or have people in their charge, in their gift, um, you know, it is not your responsibility to run their personal development. It is your responsibility to be interested in their personal development, to ask them how they're doing. Are there any obstacles that maybe they need, um, to have cleared so they can move forward faster or to have someone to bounce the ideas off of.

Nathan Simmonds:

So if you feel like this about your leaders or whatever level you are in the business or in your, or in your organization, it doesn't matter if you feel like that, is it okay to potentially have people in your teams that feel like that as well? And I know what the answer is, but the truth is that the people that maybe your leaders haven't been in a room with me having this sort of conversation to say how important it's or how it actually feels. They've never been shown how to have the conversation, how to design their own personal development plan.

Nathan Simmonds:

So they don't know how to have that conversation with you because they don't know how to have it with themselves. Leadership development starts internally before you give it externally. You cannot lead yourself. You cannot lead anybody else....

Grocery Guru Episode #33: The Bid For Morrison's Supermarket

Join Andrew Grant and Darren A. Smith in the thirty-third episode of the Grocery Guru. They discuss the bid from United States private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, of which Terry Leahy is a Board Member, to buy Morrison's Supermarkets. But will Amazon now make a bid too? So here's today topic, Bid for Morrison's Supermarket.

You Can View the Full Bid For Morrison's Supermarket Transcript Below:

Darren A. Smith:

Welcome to episode 33 of the Grocery Guru. And we are here today with that guru, Andrew Grant. How are you?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah, morning Darren. Yes, very good. Thank you very much.

Darren A. Smith:

Now, we've both had the lurgy, but that's not why we're on video, to tell everyone we've had the lurgy.

Andrew Grant:

No, I think you're right. As I think you put it, we've done so little social interaction in the last 15 months. At the minute, you actually come near anybody else, you catch something.

Darren A. Smith:

Does seem that way, does seem that way. But more interestingly, for our viewers out there, what's in our postbox, mail bag, on your lips, on your mind today?

The Bid for Morrison's Supermarket

 

Andrew Grant:

Well, there's only one big news in the world of grocery today, I'm sure nobody's missed it. But it's the possible bid for Morrisons. Interestingly, we're doing this a couple of days late. It's Monday morning. The news broke Friday, that... What are they called? Clayton Dubilier & Rice? American venture capital group. Best known for floating B&M, Home Bargains.

Darren A. Smith:

Oh! I didn't know that. Okay.

Andrew Grant:

And have got ex Tesco CEO Terry Leahy on their board. So, they've got a bit of knowledge and a bit of experience. But yeah, that news broke Friday evening. And this morning, Morrisons' shares have gone up over 30%.

Darren A. Smith:

So, the news is that this venture capitalist, what do they want to do? I know you know this.

Andrew Grant:

Well, interestingly the supermarkets are incredibly good value. We've talked so many times in these sessions of how well we did over the pandemic, et cetera. But that hasn't been reflected in their share prices.

Darren A. Smith:

No.

Andrew Grant:

And there was an article I read yesterday, to say that Morrisons' share price prior to today, was the same as it was 20 years ago.

Darren A. Smith:

Wow! Okay.

Andrew Grant:

So, all that effort, hard work by 115,000 people who work for Morrisons has added effectively no value in 20 years.

Darren A. Smith:

And just remind anyone who hasn't seen the previous episodes, we've talked about the pandemic, that supermarket sales have gone up roughly 10%. So they've done very well, if one believes. But as an example, it's cost Sainsbury's 468 million in COVID costs, which means their profits went down by about 40%. So, they seemingly have done well, but they haven't. Sorry, back to you.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. And obviously that's what shareholders are most interested in, are they making profits? And yeah, Tesco had its Q1 results out on Friday. Sales flat, if not slightly declining. Because as we've talked about, they're now like for like with the massive boom last year, and everybody's going out to restaurants and pubs again.

Darren A. Smith:

Yes, yes.

Andrew Grant:

So yeah, the share prices of all the quoted retailers are really struggling. And they're saying that this might create a feeding frenzy, even Tesco is not too big to be taken over.

Darren A. Smith:

Well, that's very true. So this venture capitalist comes in, so what are we thinking? They might buy Morrisons? Morrisons are currently number four, their market share's about 11%. Have I got that right?

Andrew Grant:

Yep.

Darren A. Smith:

But we've also got in the wings here, Mr. Bezos and Amazon. What's your take on that?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah, your mind is thinking the same way as me, yeah. Morrisons have a pretty huge distribution agreement with Amazon. So, if you want Amazon Fresh, a lot of it is actually Morrisons' product. Now that a bid process has been initiated, I think 17th of July. So, about four weeks, anybody can basically bid to Morrisons. And for Mr. Bezos, I mean, he's probably got five or six billion, which is what Morrisons are currently valued at, in his back pocket. And just think, for Amazon, you immediately become the fourth player in the UK market. With probably, very few competition concerns, because they're not a player at the moment.

Darren A. Smith:

That's very true. Sorry, go on.

Andrew Grant:

So you buy yourself a massive slug of the UK market, it must be of interest to them. And that would really set the cat amongst the pigeons. I think if Morrisons went to a venture capitalist group, bit like ASDA, you would worry would they just strip out all the assets? Would they forget the shopper? Would it be a bit like Debenhams? Just an asset stripping exercise. I don't think though, given who Clayton Dubilier & Rice have got on their board, but you always worry with venture capitalists.

However, if Amazon bought them, that just changes the whole chess game. It would... I think it would seriously freak out the likes of Sainsbury's and Tesco.

Darren A. Smith:

I think it would, and quite rightly. I mean, you've got Amazon who'll come in, they'll be fourth players. So at the moment, they are messing about with a few stores. They've got a tie-up with Morrisons, as you said, in the UK. We've talked about Amazon Fresh, where there was the shop that you could go in, you didn't go through any checkout, you walked in, grab your groceries, and buggered off type thing. But they go from a few stores in the UK to having 10%, 11%. Wow, that's big.

And let's imagine that happens for a moment, Amazon become the fourth player. What do you see is the impact?

Andrew Grant:

Well remember, Amazon is seen as a tech stock. They're not seen by the shareholders or the [inaudible 00:05:59] in the same way as a grocer. So, as Amazon have done in the book market, and whatever market, Amazon could desire to invest over a 15 year period to operate Morrisons at a loss.

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah.

Andrew Grant:

They could come in and afford to go, "Right, we drop all prices 25% tomorrow." And it wouldn't affect Amazon's stock price, or its profits or prospects. It's like... I'm trying to think of the analogy. It's sort of like the dinosaurs wandering around and some fantastic new beast turns up, that just eats them.

Darren A. Smith:

Love the analogy!

Andrew Grant:

Or I don't know, steam driven cars and all of a sudden somebody comes along with a petrol car and it's just game changer. I think it would be a game changer, because Amazon would not have to play by the rules that we're sort of used to in the UK. They could just decide, "We're going for it."

Darren A. Smith:

Change the rules. That's just reminded me for a moment of that famous quote from Henry Ford where someone said something like, "Why didn't you ask the customers what they wanted, or the shoppers?" And he said, "Well, if I'd asked them they would have wanted faster horses."

Andrew Grant:

Yes, I like that.

Darren A. Smith:

Brilliant, isn't it? So, Amazon aren't looking for faster horses, they're looking for, "Okay, we're going to bring in the motor car."

Andrew Grant:

Yeah.

Darren A. Smith:

Could be a game changer.

Andrew Grant:

Unless, to build on your analogy, Amazon are thinking, well actually supermarkets are in their own way dinosaurs and we don't need to buy 155-odd Morrisons stores. We'll just keep plugging away at home delivery and take it over that way.

Darren A. Smith:

Could be, could be. All right, so scary thoughts; you said it's roughly four weeks before we find out. So over the next four weeks, there's a bidding frenzy going on and then we find the winner, is that how this thing works?

Andrew Grant:

Well no, it depends. I mean, Clayton Dubilier & Rice have shown interest, therefore they have four weeks to put up or shut up. Then they can't make any other bid for six months. But obviously, anybody else; other private equity firms, Amazon, whoever, during this process, a bit like a feeding frenzy. They can jump into the pond and start making splashes themselves. So, it's going to be a fascinating four weeks.

You know I'm famous for making my predictions, yeah, I think Morrisons will be sold in four weeks. I won't say to who. But I'd probably put a £5 bet on Amazon.

Darren A. Smith:

Okay, all right. Well, you heard it here. Andrew's put £5 of his money and anyone who knows Andrew knows that rarely happens.

Andrew Grant:

Well, I said £5 but I'll charge it against you, Darren.

Darren A. Smith:

Okay, that makes sense. All right, Andrew, thank you for your guru-ing this week. That's useful, good insight. And we'll talk to you next week. Hope the lurgy-

Andrew Grant:

[crosstalk 00:09:00] Take care.

Darren A. Smith:

Take care, bye.

Take a look at the Bid For Morrison's Supermarket video on our YouTube Channel. Also, check out our award-winning blog.

Grocery Guru Episode #32: Preliminary GSCOP Survey Results & Sainsbury's Range Reset

Join Andrew Grant and Darren A. Smith in the thirty-second episode of the Grocery Guru. They discuss the preliminary results of the latest GSCOP supplier survey, whilst the announcement of the Groceries Code Adjudicator's concern about Sainsbury's range reset and how they are dealing with their suppliers.

You Can View the Full Preliminary GSCOP Survey Results Transcript Below

Darren A. Smith:

Hello, and welcome to episode 32 of The Grocery Guru. We are here with that guru. That is Andrew Grant. Andrew, how are you?

Andrew Grant:

Morning, Darren. Yes, very well. Enjoying this lovely, lovely weather we're having.

Darren A. Smith:

We are having lovely weather. So now lovely weather, moving on to regulatory stuff. There's a lot going on in the media right now, The Grocer and others, and I think you're going to tell us more about it.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah, no, we're always trying to keep up with what's happening out there in grocery world. And this week, it is quite interesting, you feel sorry for the politicians sometimes, or maybe you shouldn't, but they go from hero to zero in a flick of a finger. I think with this government it's been the other way around; they go from zero being blamed for the whole pandemic, even though I don't think it was quite their fault, to now suddenly being heroes because of the success of the vaccine rollout. And the flip of that is the grocers, as we've been reporting for the last 30-odd episodes, I mean they really pulled out every stop during the pandemic; they kept the nation fed, they've kept us safe, they've spent gazillions on repurposing their stores, et cetera.

And what happens the minute we're now seeing light at the end of the tunnel of the pandemic, Morrison shareholders veto David Potts's bonus, I'm sure a very well-earned bonus. So yesterday 70% of the shareholders vetoed his bonus for all the hard work that they praised him for during the pandemic and then the Grocery Code Adjudicator, Mark Davis, the new kid on the block-

Preliminary GSCOP survey results

 

Darren A. Smith:

Mark White?

Andrew Grant:

Sorry, Mark White, sorry. Yes. Mark White. Where did Mark Davis come from? Mark White. Yeah, he published his Annual Supplier Survey, praising Sainsbury's for topping Aldi to the top of the tree. So ever since the survey has been done, Aldi had been top of the tree. Sainsbury's number one this year; 97% compliance, according to suppliers, with the code. So well done, Sainsbury's.

Darren A. Smith:

That's very good to top Aldi, as you say, they've been top of the tree for a very long time. I sense a "but" coming.

Andrew Grant:

I was just to say but Mark has now, with the same breath, almost the same press release, announces he's concerned about Sainsbury's range reset, having heard from a number of suppliers about allegedly non-code compliant practices. So yeah, Sainsbury's are doing a range reset, most of the retailers have post-pandemic, because, as we've been talking about, shopping habits have changed.

Darren A. Smith:

Yes, [inaudible 00:03:11], of course they have.

Andrew Grant:

But yeah, he's been approached by a number of Sainsbury's suppliers alleging that Sainsbury's are giving very short notice of D-lists and, I can't quite believe this number but it's in the press, it's black and white, asking for up to 20% of a supplier's sales turnover as a range reset or business fee.

Darren A. Smith:

And I read that too; 20%. So if you are a 5 million pound supplier end-sales, you need to hand over 1 million pounds as a lump sum to keep your business?

Andrew Grant:

Well, it's more than that. If you think of some of Sainsbury's biggest branded suppliers and you can name those as well as me, they will have 100 million pound businesses. Are they really going to hand over 20 million quid? I don't think so.

Darren A. Smith:

They're not. They don't make the profit of 20 million quid on it. So that's an odd one and I'm not quite sure whether that's based in a single small supplier. I suspect it is, I don't know.

Andrew Grant:

I mean, you can remember back to our day, I mean, in a industry where the margins are sub 5%, you're lucky to get one or two percent, and then you think you've been very successful, been pushing it. So yeah, I find that 20 very, very strange.

Darren A. Smith:

I agree. So what do you think will happen over the next coming weeks in terms of Mark and Sainsbury's and suppliers? Can you predict, yes?

Andrew Grant:

Well, obviously now Mark has gone public saying he has a concern, I imagine that flood gates will open. And you can imagine the poor old bars in Holborn sort of hunkering down, going through every single email they've sent in the last six months and worrying, I guess. They're doing their job, but obviously the code is there for a reason, but it is very, very strange, isn't it? That Sainsbury's get voted 97% compliance and yet all of a sudden there's a problem.

Darren A. Smith:

And Andrew, what do you think we'll see from Sainsbury's? Yes, their hunkering down, they're trying to make sure they're absolutely [inaudible 00:05:31], they're probably not in some places, they're going to have to chat with Mark. What else is going to happen with supplier's range reset, do you think?

Andrew Grant:

I don't think it will stop Sainsbury's in what they're doing. I think the language will be a lot more careful. I'm sure the legal team will be working over-time with the commercial department, but I don't think it will change. I mean, it's business. But it is interesting, isn't it? That it's... I'm just trying to find the figure here. I think only 6%, in the Grocery Code Survey, I think only 6% of suppliers said they had a problem with any of the named retailers. The lowest since the survey's being done.

And the only issue that had increased was payments for better positioning of products.

Darren A. Smith:

Right.

Andrew Grant:

Which sort of speaks to range reset, actually. It's going to be interesting to watch it over the next few weeks and months, what happens because obviously Mark's, what? Six months in past his classic 100 days, if I was him, I'd be wanting to make a bit of a mark for myself.

Darren A. Smith:

Mark makes a mark.

Andrew Grant:

Mark making a mark, I guess. I see what you did there. Yes. This is his opportunity.

Darren A. Smith:

So let's step back. What do you think is happening to our industry? I would guess in more regulated, we're becoming more compliant, we're accepting this stuff. Although it's taken us 10 years for it to come in and the code to become effective. What do you think is going to happen?

Andrew Grant:

Well, I think this is, we've talked about it in previous episodes, there'll be... we're moving into a new normal, the supermarkets for all they're success during the pandemic and now having to live with the reverse of that. So they're having to live with last year's massive sales-peaks. And even though we've got the football coming up and they'll sell a lot of beer this weekend, I don't think that's going to make up for the whole nation being locked down and ordering... basically only having the grocers to shop in.

So quite naturally their commercial beasts they make, as we've said before, very, very... In the face of it, very, very low profits; 2p in the pound, typically. They're having to work with their suppliers, I think that's the phrase to use, "Work with their suppliers," to move themselves on commercially. So on the flip of that, you've got suppliers who have equally been impacted by the pandemic. They may have seen very healthy volumes as the retailers did, but massive costs to keep going during the pandemic, Brexit costs, labor problems as we talked about last week, a perfect storm of cost increases.

And so you've got those two immovable objects coming together; retailers needing more money this side and suppliers needing cost price increases this side. There's going to be tension and that's probably what Mark has been picking up.

Darren A. Smith:

And do you think we will see more back-lash, more investigation, more suppliers reporting on supermarkets of their practices over the last year, as they perhaps wrestle with the pandemic and deal with stuff with speed?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. As I said, I think it's a bit like my politics analogy in reverse that we started with, is everybody hunkered down, be it suppliers or retailers, and they kept the nation fed, and fair play to them. Now, obviously we're getting back to some semblance of normality, people are looking to leverage that advantage, to improve that position or whatever phrase you want to use, and so I think there will be more noise around this. I think if you look at that survey and say that, whether it's Sainsbury's or Co-Op or Aldi, 90 plus percent compliance with the code is pretty good.

I think the lowest, very lowest, Iceland, was 90%. So that's the thing, that's from the suppliers own mouths. It's a completely confidential survey so they've got nothing to worry about. And so the suppliers are saying that the supermarkets are incredibly compliant. So I think it's around the edges. There's always going to be, if you have a range reset, there's going to be losers. Those losers may feel, rightly or wrongly, that they've lost out as a result of some regulatory mishap.

I'd be surprised if it becomes a big major news item. I think it's the noise caused by the natural friction of negotiation. That's quite the phrase.

Darren A. Smith:

I like that, it's a good phrase. All right. One last question for you, Andrew, and think about the preliminary GSCOP results survey, how many supply agreements are there in place now? Because it was running around one and two. What is it now?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah, I don't know if you got ahead of me on this press release because it is only a press release rather than the full details

Weekly Training Booster #3: Improve Your Communication Skills

Join Andy Palmer and Darren A. Smith in the third episode of the Weekly Training Booster. This episode is about how to improve your communication skills using HBDI. Know someone that you just can't seem to communicate with effectively? I bet you are speaking a different 'language'.

You Can Read the How to Improve Your Communication Skills Episode Transcript Below and Watch the Video:

Darren A. Smith:

Hello, and welcome to the Weekly Training Booster. We're week three and our booster this week is Andy. Andy, how you doing?

Andy Palmer:

I'm good. Thank you. Yeah, I'm good. So we're talking about how to improve your communication skills.

Darren A. Smith:

We are. So how to improve your communication skills. I'm interviewing this week. I'm asking Andy because it's his specialist topic, and we're particularly talking about it around HBDI, a psychometric test, but let's come back to that. Andy, how to improve your communication skills. Where would you start?

Andy Palmer:

Good opening question. Where would I start? I think I would start with understanding the simplicity of communication. I think all too often people are far too motivated to complicate stuff and say too much when actually just sometimes that whole principle of less is more, getting to the point and being absolutely clear on the message you're trying to deliver.

Darren A. Smith:

Yep. Absolutely agree with that. You hear people influence and communicate by repetition. Ah, it drives me nuts. They keep telling you the same thing.

All right. So let's build into communication. You're an expert in HBDI. What the hell is that?

Click to watch the video

 

Andy Palmer:

All right. HBDI, so the HBDI is the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. It's a psychometric tests. You will have heard of many of the Myers-Briggs, Belbin. There's a whole host of them, all particularly good in their own individual way. For me, I favor the Herrmann profile, the HBDI profile because it's incredibly easy to understand. And once you've understood it, it's incredibly powerful and simple in how you then apply it.

So the understanding and the thinking behind it is that we have four quadrants of our brain. So it's a metaphoric model. It's an incredibly complicated pieces of kit that we've got upstairs. But actually where it starts to understand these, the differences between our left-hand and our right-hand hemispheres and then our upper and lower parts of our brain.

So we're talking about our limbic motor at the bottom, our cerebral motor at the top. And then the thinking behind the whole brain thinking of HBDI is that each of these quadrants are responsible for different thinking preferences. So it's about how we prefer to think, how we prefer to communicate and how we prefer to make decisions. It's why we as individuals have differences and it's why we can start to appreciate and understand what we have ourselves and then that of others.

Darren A. Smith:

Okay. All right. Got it. So it sounds a little bit like the L'Oreal advert. There's the sciencey bit over here. All right. So let's see now if we can get into, if I understand this HBDI thing, I've got four quadrants type of thinking preference, how does that help me improve my communication skills?

Andy Palmer:

Sure. Okay. So each of these quadrants, and we're not going to do it any justice within our 10 minute video here today, but actually the value comes through understanding what those different quadrants deliver. So a very, very top-line level. We've got our upper left quadrant, our blue quadrants. These are the people that are very factual and logical and want precise facts. So when we're either being communicated to or from a blue, it's going to be here and now. It's going to be matter of fact, it's going to be precise and very logical and very rational.

If we then come down into the lower left-hand side. This is our green quadrant. This is more about how. These guys expect punctuality and neatness and they need to see the sequential order and stages of that particular piece of thinking and how that can be done. So when we're communicating with those guys, we want to make sure it's a low level of risk, we're understanding the steps that are involved in order to get that, and we can then tailor what we're talking about to more better resonate with those guys.

If we come over to the right-hand side of the brain. We've got our far more creative side. So that starts with the upper right-hand quadrant. This is our yellow quadrant, and this is all about why. Now these guys prefer concepts and metaphors and linking in with a far more level of flexibility and fun and we can be really creative in how we're communicating to them and it's more about the big picture. It's more about the future, less about that stuff that we saw over on the very logical left-hand side of the brain.

The last quadrant lower right-hand side is our red quadrant. This is about who. It's the interpersonal skills. It's the importance of understanding me and understanding you. So it's about communicating with enthusiasm and passion and being really mindful of the individual's needs and what the impact it could be on people.

So why, and I'm a big fan of the HBDI, and why we can offer people to understand what their profile is and what their assessment is. We can put the link for that in the video at the end. What we can't always do is go, "Oh, would you mind filling out this questionnaire so I can communicate with you more effectively?" But what we can do is try to put a tick in each of those boxes. Because by default, we talk in our own style.

For me, as a blue, I talk matter of fact, here and now, and sometimes I can forget that other people don't think quite as normally. Jokes. Don't think in the same process that I do. So I try to put a tick in each of those boxes, with that mixture of the what, the how, the why, and the who.

Darren A. Smith:

All right, got it, got it. So we've got four quadrants. Let's say I retain that and I know that people think in different ways, therefore I need to communicate differently. Let's put a real example to you and let's try and push you. So you're ignore a blue, you're presenting to a crazy yellow. What do you do differently?

Andy Palmer:

Yeah, sure. What do we I differently? So the crazy yellows, they're going to appreciate understanding why they're even there, what this is going to mean to them in the future. It's not about the detail. In fact, I'm not going to put up too many charts, tables, and graphs. I'm going to use metaphors and use images. I'm going to try and bring it to life in a fun way that allows them to go, "I get why we're doing this and what this means to me and I can see what the impact is going to be in the future." So bringing that to life with conceptualization is going to be super powerful for them.

This often comes back to my example between you and I. You and I as a crazy yellow, me as a blue, it works both ways. So you might come up with an idea, which comes very naturally to you. You'll then tell me about it. Because it's then done as a concept, I've got to try and interpret what you're really seeing. So the power and reliance then comes on me to make sure I'm using questioning techniques with you to get to the what. Is it like this? Is it blue? Does it have spots on? Da, da, da, da, da.

Darren A. Smith:

Brilliant. All right.

Andy Palmer:

You then can also be mindful that I need that detail as well. So we start to become tolerant of each other in terms of how we then have those conversations and those dialogues when we're communicating.

Darren A. Smith:

And let's say that the outside world don't get most, and this the guys who will watch in a sort of intrigued and half thinking, "Okay, I see that." And if they think they're miscommunication or not resonating with someone, what's likely going on between those two people if it's not working?

Andy Palmer:

If it's not working, then there's always that thing of, "Oh, I've told them what I want. I can't see why they just don't understand it and why they're getting it." And it usually comes back to the stuff that we've just talked about. So it's about then seeking clarity.

In your words, "hat does that look like to you? Can you almost reiterate what I've just said, just to make sure I've been clear with you? So it's that importance of just almost double-checking and taking and giving yourself that time to check in and make sure it came across as it should have done. Because we can't just presume because some words that come out of our mouth that makes sense up in our own heads that it's going to make sense to everyone else.

Darren A. Smith:

And let's say we've got an account manager presenting to a buyer. What's your tip for them if they're thinking, "I just can't seem to present this and they're getting it." Either that the buyer's thick or something else.

Andy Palmer:

And we know that's not going to be the case, but we do know that actually if you keep doing what you've always done and you're getting the same results and then not the results you're wanting, you've got to try it differently. And it comes back to that point of try and get a tick in each of those boxes. Are you delivering on the what, the why, the who, and the when? And you're just improving your chances of success by maybe taking yourself out of your own comfort zone and maybe trying something a bit differently that may give a different result.

Darren A. Smith:

I'm going to change the names in the story you once told me. It was a green, which are a sort of mind of their own, structured people and our next step people on our reds, who are our people-people. And let's call it Bob and we'll call her Julie and Julie said to Bob, "Bob, do you still love me?" And Bob said, "I told you on our wedding day that I did and if that ever changes in the last 20 years,...

Grocery Guru Ep #31: Supermarket Cost Price Increase

Join Andrew Grant and Darren A. Smith in the thirty-first episode of the Grocery Guru. They discuss increasing costs for suppliers. From diesel to cargo costs, to minimum wage labour. Whilst the supermarkets slug it out in a potential price war. And, all of this whilst everyone in the supply chain tries to recover Covid costs.

You Can View the Full Supermarket Cost Price Increase Transcript Below:

Darren A. Smith:

Hello and welcome to Episode 31 of the Grocery Guru. We're here with that guru, Andrew Grant. Andrew, how are you?

Andrew Grant:

Good morning, Darren. Yes. Very good. Thank you very much.

Darren A. Smith:

Good. Good. All right. Short week, this week. We're Friday. What's been happening in the world of grocery this week?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. Something that I picked up on through the various news feeds we get access to, the nasty word inflation.

Whilst covid costs are still here, suppliers are increasing their costs

 

Darren A. Smith:

Oh, okay. All right.

Andrew Grant:

And a bit of a perfect storm brewing, I think, for grocery suppliers in that just about everything seems to be going up in price or is in severe shortage.

Darren A. Smith:

Okay. If I take you back to the '80s, there were price increase negotiations every year and they always went up about 3%,4%, 5%. The supplier asked for 11, we got it down. Okay. Now, what's happening is we got inflation coming again, but it's not the typical round that used to happen, is it?

Andrew Grant:

No. It's going to be really awkward, I think, for the poor old suppliers out there. Remember, everybody's trying to recover from this pandemic. Not only if you look at global food commodity prices, whether it's wheat or soya bean or whatever, they're in orbit. Well, actually, what worries me is, it's all those ancillary costs that buyers are really, really good at swiping away are going up like nobody's business. The price of a shipping container from China, $1,700 to $8,000.

Darren A. Smith:

Wow!

Andrew Grant:

That's a six fold increase.

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah. 100% increase. Wow.

Andrew Grant:

All of us have probably had to fill our car up for the first time in a year. That's gone up from what, about $1.08 for diesel to $1.28 plus?

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah. I think there was a point where Morrisons got it below a pound. But yeah, it's up now. I think I saw it yesterday, $1.38. Yeah, diesel's up.

Andrew Grant:

25% plus rise in your transportation costs. If you can get minimum wage labor, you're having to compete with the restaurant sector and everybody else. If you need somebody for your factory or to pick stuff in your fields, the shortages of labor and the cost of that labor is going up. Obviously, you've also got the COVID costs. You're probably having to run your factory with safe distancing rules and all sorts of various extra costs as a result of COVID. All of those costs will now be building up and building some severe pressure on supplier's cost bases. And unfortunately, it's those costs that buyers are so, so good at batting away.

Darren A. Smith:

Yes.

Andrew Grant:

I know you and I will have done it. It's very easy to say, "Well, you need to break down exactly what your make up of cost is." You say, "Shipping costs have gone up from 1,700 to 8,000," and I'll say, "Oh yeah, but you're using a spot price based in Shanghai. I've got the three month Singaporean index in my hand and that's flat." You're just then in a world of pain.

Darren A. Smith:

Very true. We've got costs going up in the supply chain of [inaudible 00:03:36] ancillary costs. Plus we've also got supermarkets that are trying to recover from what was a good increase in sales. We talked here a few weeks ago about the average increase was let's say 10% across the supermarkets. The but is that Sainsbury's for instance, I think it was 468 million pounds worth of costs on COVID.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. Yeah. We talked about the struggles that the supermarkets will have this year, trying to lap that phenomenal sales peak of last year, because everybody was eating at home, eating and drinking at home. They've got their own pressures. A little bit of inflation is not a bad thing for a supermarket. A couple of percent inflation if you could control your costs, just goes straight to your bottom line.

Darren A. Smith:

Absolutely.

Andrew Grant:

As always, I think it will be the suppliers that get squeezed. And I guess it's one of the things we do is we have cost price increase workshops. We can help suppliers or walk suppliers through that torturous maze that is a cost price increase. And I think the message out there would be, you need to start thinking about a cost price increase now. It's a minimum 12 week notice period. You can in theory, put a price increase through quicker because a supplier's cost price is the same as a retailers retail price. And they don't give you or I notification when the cost of four cans of Boddingtons goes up. And they don't give us a reason to do they?

Darren A. Smith:

They certainly don't. I think the biggest thing that I would take away is buyers don't like surprises. Ta daa, here's a cost price increase. Know at some point, yes, there's going to be a first introduction of it, but it's managing that message through, it's having the influencing and persuasion skills to be able to do so.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. Second only to running over their dog, it's probably the worst news you can give them that you're tabling a cost price increase, because it's a direct challenge to what they do.

Darren A. Smith:

And it's also another thing to think about in a busy day like we all have, buyers have busy jobs as do account managers, it's just a whole nother thing now to think about, to manage, to try and convince people to manage it internally, think about future margin. It's tough. It's tough.

Andrew Grant:

I think you're talking the minimum of giving them 12 weeks notice. You probably need two, three, four weeks yourself to prepare and get the messaging right. You're talking about a four month process. You're talking beginning of June. June, July, August, September. You're talking about September, October increases. And if anything, now is the time because most of the supermarkets, some of them are still in Q1. Certainly they're in, if they're not in Q1, they're in early Q2. There isn't quite that year end pressure that you get in Q3 and Q4. Trying to put a price increase through over Christmas and into their landing zone of the end of their Q4, worst possible time. If you're going to do a price increase, for most of the UK supermarkets, you do it between February and May, June. The windows rapidly closing if you want to get an effective price increase through this year, will be my opinion.

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah. Sorry, it's kind of slightly fuzzy, but I think we've got the message. And I was going to add that the window, there's a window that happens now, as you said, or February to June, and then it's got to close before Christmas. Oh, we'll think about Christmas, come back to me in the new year, will be one of the tactics.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah.

Darren A. Smith:

Okay. All right.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. Obviously we're in a new normal, but in the old world where everybody disappears on a holiday 15th of July, so nothing happens until the beginning of September. The minute, and traditionally it was always Halloween started the Christmas season obviously. You went Halloween, Bonfire Night, full-on Christmas and to get a buyers attention after about the 30th of October, particularly with a price increase, forget it.

Darren A. Smith:

Yes.

Andrew Grant:

You've probably got two price increases over the year. You've got mid-January [inaudible 00:08:21] 30th of October in our experience and our opinion.

Darren A. Smith:

Andrew, sorry, it went a little bit fuzzy. Just tell us those two windows. You talked about mid-Jan to...

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. Mid-Jan to probably around now, middle of June. The bigger window. And then 1st of September through to the 30th of October. Looking at it another way, you can blank out November through to January.

Darren A. Smith:

Yes. Good. Okay. It went a little bit fuzzy, I wanted to make sure we got that message across. Okay. That's really good. All right. My other thoughts is that don't take a price increase in with either a spreadsheet that looks like something that was built by Stephen Hawking as in having a million numbers that no one understands. My second thought is don't have a PowerPoint presentation that roughly says it's a price increase, but over 50 slides.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. As I said, it's not going to be good news. It's not going to be greeted with a smile and come and have a cup of coffee. It needs to be a very black and white suitable message and be prepared for it to be a very short initial conversation that ends with a N-O.

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah. Fair enough. All right. Okay, Andrew, brilliant. Love it. What's our take away from here?

Andrew Grant:

I think it is for our audience, which are mainly grocery suppliers, if you haven't already felt some significant cost pressures, and I'd be staggered if you haven't, and you haven't started thinking about a price increase, you're running out of time to get something this year.

Darren A. Smith:

Love it. Good. Nice. Simple and clear.

Andrew Grant:

And obviously, the reason we do these podcasts is we're here to help.

Darren A. Smith:

All right. Andrew, Grocery Guru, thank you. We'll let you enjoy your Friday and your weekend and we'll see you next week.

Andrew Grant:

Bye-bye.

Darren A. Smith:

Bye.

Take a look at the Supermarket Cost Price Increase video on our YouTube Channel. Also, check out our award-winning blog.

Weekly Training Booster #2: Improve Your Time Management Skills

Join Andy Palmer and Darren A. Smith in the second episode of the Weekly Training Booster. This episode was about how to improve your time management skills with frogs, badgers, and woolly mammoths. Plus, the 7 hurdles of time management.

You Can Read the How to Improve Your Time Management Skills Episode Transcript Below:

Andy:

Good stuff. Okay. Welcome to this week's MBM weekly training booster. Good afternoon, or good morning, depending on when you're watching this video. I'm Andy from MBM here with my colleague Darren. Today, we're talking about how to improve your time management skills. So for me, this is certainly the skill that unlocks all others. If we get this stuff right with a solid foundation to our core time management principles, everything else just magically falls into place. So let me throw that out there. Darren, how would you more better define time management?

Darren A. Smith:

Time management for me is the king of skills. It's the key that unlocks the door. If you can get this one wrong, you can be a great influencer, a great negotiator, all those things, but if you haven't got any time managed, then A, you don't really know what you're here trying to achieve ultimately, and B, you probably can't do it because you're all over the place. And you don't look like a credible confident leader. You're not really prepared for your negotiations. Your [inaudible 00:01:05] is done, but it's natural, it's not prepared, it's not improved. So for me, it's the key that unlocks all the doors. And it's the one that a lot of people chase and never get right.

Andy:

Okay, cool. And if I was to throw it out there, just because I find it a little bit contentious. You can't manage time, but you can manage the things that you do within that time. What's your view on that kind of thinking?

Episode 2 discusses how to improve time management skills

 

Darren A. Smith:

Well, I love the phrase that goes time flies, but the good news is you're pilot. Which is quite nice and that suits my right brain thinking. If I had my way I'd call it stuff management, not time management. Because you cannot manage time, you can only manage all the stuff. And when I say all the stuff, in our head, we don't have work and home, we have things. So you have to manage both the home and the work stuff together. So when you've got a to-do list, it has a home and work on it. It's not like, I'm at work, I'm at home. And particularly now that we're all mostly working from home, although we might go back, it's stuff, you've got to manage all the stuff.

Andy:

I think it makes good sense. I kind of liked the term stuff because actually it doesn't matter if it's big or it's small, where that that can then take us then is how we then prioritize that stuff. And one of the best things I learned over the years was then how to prioritize the important stuff first, because I think we've seen it so often, people just tend to get the quick fun and easy done first. If we were to look about how you can improve your time management skills, not you personally, but how people can improve their time management skills, what for you would be that single simple, but yet powerful suggestion?

Darren A. Smith:

What I see, and particularly we're pretty good on Google, is I see a lot of people searching for time management tips. They're looking for the really small, easy win that makes the bigger difference. And here's the bit that they're going to hate me for, it doesn't exist. Now for someone who used to be rubbish at time management that had to learn it over 15 years, I know it doesn't exist because I've tried them all. So unfortunately this stuff is about mindset. And the one I'd like to share with people is eat that frog. So it came from a phrase of, if you do the biggest horriblest thing first, the frog, then the rest of the day is going to be easy. And as someone who does it, the euphoria of getting that big, horrible thing out of the way first, is amazing.

You should see people who think when everyone's gone home or after six o'clock when I stop getting all these emails, all these phone calls, I'll get the big thing done. So those big things, the bit that's important in our job and takes most of our energy, but when we're absolutely knackered after a 12 hour day, we're trying to do the biggest thing.

Andy:

I like that. And conversely, from your right brain thinking to my left brain thinking, which is a far more logical and rational, in my world normal, joke, normal approach. I think what it does is it allows you to free up brain bandwidth. That it's that space in your head to focus on the minutia. And yet all the other stuff that then comes throughout the day because you've got that big thing done. And why I don't think there's, and as you said, there's not one silver bullet to improving your time management skills, getting that stuff done fist can be super powerful to then unlock your day and unlock your time.

Darren A. Smith:

It really does. If you can eat that frog, and it's a mindset shift, and remember, it takes 21 times to develop the habit. Once you do it, it is amazing. You will see people, as you say, doing the quick fun and easy. "I'll just get this done, this email. I'll just talk to Bob. I'll just go to this meeting. And then when I've got all that done, I'll do the big stuff." Actually, the big stuff then comes at six o'clock at night when you've just had enough.

Andy:

Yeah, that's good. I think something you taught me a number of years ago and it's always resonated with me was how to manage the time bandits. How to manage those people who come and steal your time. And I think for me, that's both within people that do that, they rock up to your desk and give you a phone call. They're trying to jump you on a call. They're kind of managing their own agenda. But I also think it works from an email perspective. And maybe it's that latter part that we are, I guess, shackled to our inboxes at times, can be for me one of the single biggest distractions to my day. What's your thoughts because I know you've got them and I also think we're going to probably connect to...

Darren A. Smith:

I've always got an opinion. They might like it, they might not. My metaphor for this, I call it the four minute badger. So the four minute badger is, imagine you're driving and every four minutes a badger runs out in front of you. Now we all know how to drive and we do it really naturally without thinking, but a badger running out, I've got to stop, I've got to think, I've got to swerve, and then I can get back into driving. It's the same with emails and notifications. So we on average receive 121 emails a day. That's one every four minutes. And what we do is the email notification pops up and I just look there, click, have a look, have a read, not urgent, go back to what I'm doing.

But I've got to come out the task I'm doing, do that and go back in. Now imagine if that was a machine, every four minutes the machine went off and did something else for 10 seconds and came back. You'd take a sledgehammer to that machine. You'd call it inefficient. Yet that's what we do, the four minute badger. So my top tip, turn off your email notifications. Queue hate mail because they'll tell me why they can't do it.

Andy:

That's okay. You get the hate mail, the good news is you won't see it until you choose to go into your inbox and see it. All right. I like that. Good. All right. So yeah, emails, time bandits, those people and things that steal our time. Conversely, where do you see other people doing that badly? Because I think we're at risk of maybe being beholden to our inboxes and blaming everyone else, but yeah, I think we're also quite guilty of that ourselves at times.

Darren A. Smith:

I think a mindset we've unfortunately got ourselves into of one of being "busy," and it's so easy to be busy. If I had a sign here where I'd put up the word busy equals job. If you've got a job, you're busy. I don't know anyone who's got a job and sort of has Friday afternoon off or Monday morning and has a bit thing. They don't. Life's like that. So let's just accept we're going to be busy. Let's accept that we've got more stuff to do than we have time. So now it's about what's really going to make the difference and how can we be most productive and most efficient? Part of that is getting out of our inbox and getting on with big stuff that we don't want to do. Because if we're busy, it's a reason not to do the big horrible stuff, but it's the big horrible stuff that makes the difference. It's the big projects we've been putting off for years that we've got to get done.

Andy:

I'm mindful of kind of time and we could probably spend the next three or four hours, if not days talking about time management, and actually we do during our training courses. But actually, is there a way that people could take something even more practical away from today in terms of how they can improve their time management skills? Is there something that we can kind of challenge them with to say, "Here, go and embrace this and see where it takes you."

Darren A. Smith:

Okay. So one other thing I'd ask them to do is create a daily to-do list. Now I can almost hear people's eyes rolling. I've heard it before and I get it. Now what most people have is they either fall into the group of, I just have a bunch of things over here on post it notes they sort of look at and it's all in a bit of a mess and I'll get on with my inbox. Or they have a list, a stream of tasks that are all in a big pile. Or the really effective time managers have a daily to-do list. And I'm talking about an A4 sheet, I put, stuff I'm going to get done today. And each day they write a new list. Now my top tip is if you've a laptop, I won't do it here, [inaudible 00:08:57], but I would put that list in my laptop, shut the lid....

Weekly Training Booster Ep#1: Improve Your Negotiation Skills

Join Andy Palmer and Darren A. Smith in the first episode of the Weekly Training Booster. This episode is about how to improve your negotiation skills with better preparation. Darren and Andy discuss using the squaredance, being more ambitious, and knowing that there are 8 methods of resolving conflict.

You Can Read the How to Improve Your Negotiation Skills Episode Transcript Below:

Andy Palmer:

All right. Good morning. Welcome to MBM's Weekly Training Booster. Over the next few weeks, we are going to be covering a whole host of soft skills. Here at MBM, the home of Sticky Learning, we are looking to improve those soft skills that you've got, very practically and pragmatically in the workplace. I'm Andy from MBM. My colleague here is Darren, and today we are going to talk about how to improve your negotiation skills. So our Weekly Booster is how to improve your negotiation skills. Darren, let's kick off. For you, what is negotiation skills?

Darren A. Smith:

Negotiation skills. Yeah, it's a question we get asked a lot and we have over the last 20 years of training. Most people think that when they haggle, they're negotiating. They're not. They're not. There are eight ways of resolving conflict. The one I'm going to talk about right now is haggling versus negotiation. So, you know when you go to a market, a foreign market, and you buy a pair of Roy-Bans. And Roy-Bans, you got them for €5 and they're worth about €900; they're not.

Haggling is you start here, I start here, we meet in the middle. That is not negotiating. That is one valid form of resolving a conflict, but haggling and negotiating are different. Negotiation is where we are discussing and we have more than one variable. So haggling is one variable, price, negotiation is one, two, three, four, five variables.

Andy Palmer:

Awesome. Brilliant. Great overview. You mentioned eight stages, eight stages to negotiations and how you can improve those negotiation skills. Can you give us a flavor for some of them?

The first episode of the Weekly Training Booster with Andy and Darren

Darren A. Smith:

Okay. There are eight methods of resolving a conflict. So we've got haggling, negotiation, surrender, where you just give in, normally with the kids, we've got problem solving, we've got unilateral action, and so on. So there are eight, but the one we're really talking about today is negotiation. And we have to be careful when we think we're "negotiating" ... hate doing that ... where it's normally we're either haggling or we're problem solving. They're both absolutely valid, but we're not negotiating.

Negotiating has four stages to it. And those four stages, so we prepare, which most people don't do. Then we go in and we ask a bunch of questions; we poke around. Then we propose, and then we count the winnings, right? So really four stages. And the one that most people miss is the prepare one.

Andy Palmer:

Cool. And if we were to kind of just talk about preparing for a moment, what one thing in your mind and the experience that you've got stands out to being the best way you can prepare for a negotiation?

Darren A. Smith:

Okay. So when most people prepare for a negotiation, they do one of two things. They either have a bit of a think about it and then they go into a negotiation, hit a brick wall, wonder how they got there. Or they do the dreaded PowerPoint. You open up PowerPoint, start typing away, and present. Actually, that's not negotiation either. We created a Squaredance, a simple template, A4 template of how you can prepare for your negotiation with competence. So it's a Squaredance, and we named it something rather apt, silly, so you can find it on the web. So if you just search Squaredance Negotiation, you get a free template, please use and abuse it as you wish.

Andy Palmer:

Good stuff. All right, so maybe we can include that template in the video and we'll certainly put the link around somewhere towards the end. Absolutely take that template, figure out how you can improve your negotiation skills by using it, because it's going to give you various ways of preparing for it powerfully, but allowing you to improve your confidence. And for me, and with any of the soft skills that we cover, ultimately what sits behind that is a person's self-belief and their confidence in order for them to be able to go off and do that stuff. Template is going to be a good way to help boost that confidence. What other ways in your experience do you think people can boost their confidence when it comes to negotiation skills?

Darren A. Smith:

So this is where we get to the peripheral stuff that people will see as a bit pink and fluffy. I get it. We talk about soft skills and there's no silver bullet. There's nothing that's absolutely hard that you can do, but there is something that you can do to prepare and improve your confidence. One of those is to watch Amy Cuddy's video. Amy Cuddy is a researcher for Harvard, a professor at Harvard, and she come up with the cracking video about how your body language can change how you think. So I really, really recommend you watch that and it will help.

The second thing you can do is word on head, and we won't have time to explain that now, but let's say I came into this conference call with you now and I had a post-it note in my head, a metaphorical post-it note, and I had written on it "nervous". You don't see me doing a bit of this and I wasn't really sure, but actually what I said to myself before I started this is "confident". And my tone, my body language, my words changed to meet my post-it note. So we need to choose the word we're going to have on our head before we go into negotiation. A lot of our clients have the word "buggered" and then they go in and they get [inaudible 00:05:07].

Andy Palmer:

That self-fulfilling prophecy just kicks in, and all of that stuff that goes behind it with the nervousness, that built up excitement, can just do them damage because ultimately they're going to do whatever their brain tells them to do. I think for me, one of the most powerful techniques, and yet one of the most simplest ones, is to let us control our breathing because the risk is we go in, we're a bit kind of pumped up, a bit excited, we're breathing a little bit faster. Our body's kind of saying, "Actually, I'm not sure I want to get here. I don't want to be here. Get me out of here." Fight or flight starts to kick in, our oxygen levels drop in our brains because they're actually going out to our extremities to get us the heck out of there.

Actually, just sometimes slowing down, taking a few breaths in, holding it, letting our breaths come out, but actually controlling that in, hold, and out cycle. Doing that a few times can just allow us to come back to a much stronger position of control and a much stronger position of feeling in control, which is super powerful.

All right, good stuff. Let's come back to how to improve negotiation skills. What's the one thing that you've seen done really badly over the years? That kind of thing, that mistake that just seems to crop up time and time again?

Darren A. Smith:

In my experience, when I talk about open and closed questions as a trainer with a group of learners, everyone either nods violently or roll their eyes. They go, "Oh, I know this." And that's cool. We get open and closed questions. And when you explore it with them, go, "Yes, Darren, a closed question is yes or no." Okay. So what's an open question? And the really smart ones get to five bums on rugby posts with the why, the what, the how, blah, blah, blah. Cool.

In my experience, this many people actually do it. Zero. They get it. "Intellectually, Darren, I've got it." Put them in practice, and all their questions are closed. "Is that the best deal you've got? Does it come with glue? Does it look like this?" And they get into closed questions and then they get stuck because they're not extracting any information from their opponent, all they're doing is confirming what they already knew. So closed questions, and it's really hard. And even now I can almost hear the viewers going, "Yeah, we know this, Darren." And my challenge to you, you don't use open questions.

Andy Palmer:

All right. Good stuff. Love that. All right, so that's one of the biggest pitfalls that you've seen that people fall into. In terms of the flip side of that coin, what stuff have you seen done really well? And I know we've talked about preparation and using our Squaredance to improve our negotiation skills, what stuff have you seen done really well that you think, "Do you know what, if everyone did that, that would just rock"?

Darren A. Smith:

Okay. Well, I'm going to sort of flip that coin in what I just said; it's all about questions again. And the salespeople, the account managers out there are going to hate me. Over the last 20 years, if I was to put my money on whether I'd put an account manager into a negotiation or a marketeer, I'd put a marketeer every time. And the reason is the marketers are more curious, they're more inquisitive. Your account manager's going a bit like this. They're ready for a fight. They know the buyers, they understand it. The marketeers less want a fight and more want to understand. And that's why the marketeers, most of the time, win more deals than the account managers.

Andy Palmer:

Nice. I like that. That's interesting. And I guess it's those different styles that can be kind of accommodating, compromising, competing. There's some others, I'm sure. It's then the style and that kind of character that we choose to play and why I think we should always be ourselves. We can, in turn, dial certain things up and dial certain things down based on that situation and based on the audience that we've got. And it becomes for me an understanding of who they are, what their needs are,...

Grocery Guru Episode #30: The Rise of Rapid Groceries

Join Andrew Grant and Darren A. Smith in the thirtieth episode of the Grocery Guru. They discuss Rapid Groceries - The Rise of 10-minute Window Deliveries by 8 Start-Ups. Plus, the moves by Tesco and Sainsbury's with 'Whoosh' and 'Chop-Chop', to compete.

You Can Read the Rapid Groceries Episode Transcript Below:

Darren A. Smith:

Hello, and welcome to Episode 30 of the Grocery Guru. We're here with our guru, which is Andrew Grant. Andrew, how are you?

Andrew Grant:

Morning, Darren. Happy, happy new week.

Darren A. Smith:

Yes. A new week twice. We've just had a bank holiday. Andrew, what's in the press at the moment around the world of grocery?

Andrew Grant:

Well, let me throw some words at you, Darren. See if they spark anything. Gorillas, fancy, wheezy, deja, zap.

Darren A. Smith:

Is that them calling?

Andrew Grant:

Jiffy. It was them calling, yeah. Zap, jiffy, deja, wheezy, gorillas, get here.

Darren A. Smith:

Okay. So what's in my mind is animals with asthma.

Andrew Grant:

Oh, okay. Aren't they all plays on fast, nippy, quick? I think that's what they're supposed to conjure up. But yeah, the world of rapid groceries.

Darren A. Smith:

Oh, okay. So we talked about this a few episodes ago, around there was one that Justin King had put some money into. Am I right?

Andrew Grant:

Snappy.

Darren A. Smith:

Snappy, right? Remember. Yeah, cool.

Andrew Grant:

I know a couple of weeks ago you were gently chiding me about getting a prediction wrong about Jack's stores and Tesco Metros.

Darren A. Smith:

I certainly was.

Andrew Grant:

But I'm quite pleased that I picked up this trend, I don't know how many episodes ago, and all of a sudden it's like double feature in the Sunday Times.

Darren A. Smith:

Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, you picked up on snappy and Justin King made an investment, I think of a hundred thousand pounds, and we talked about short windows, weren't we? Narrow windows.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. But the crazy thing is 19 billion of venture startup money has gone into these businesses in the last five years.

Darren A. Smith:

Wow.

Andrew Grant:

This blew my mind away. Have you any idea? You used to work there. What's the market capitalization of Sainsbury's?

Darren A. Smith:

Gosh. Now you're asking.

Andrew Grant:

I know.

Darren A. Smith:

It's start of the week. No idea.

Andrew Grant:

Okay, it's 5.9 billion.

Darren A. Smith:

Oh, okay. I was going to say 12. I don't know why 12. All right.

Andrew Grant:

Okay. Share price times the number of shares, basically what the business is worth.

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah, it's expected. Okay.

Andrew Grant:

Gopuff, which is a American rapid delivery service, just arriving in this country. What do you think their market capitalization is?

Darren A. Smith:

Oh, I don't know. But they sound like they're new. They sound like they're not worth much. 10 million.

Andrew Grant:

Well, 6.3 billion. So bigger than Sainsbury's. More valuable than Sainsbury's.

Darren A. Smith:

Wow.

Andrew Grant:

GetHere, that's already over here, five billion. Morrisons is only 4.3. So these businesses, literally only just starting, are worth more than our second and fourth biggest supermarket chains.

Darren A. Smith:

Wow. So let me just get this right. These start up speedy delivery companies have a worth at the market. The stock market believes these things will be worth more than Morrisons and Sainsbury's.

Andrew Grant:

Are worth more [crosstalk 00:03:07].

Darren A. Smith:

Are worth more because basically they have potential of what's possible.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. Now it's got all the hallmarks of a bubble that's going to burst big time at some point. Because I don't know how many I read out, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight players are in the market. There can't be that many people who want a 10 minute delivery service to keep that many businesses going.

Darren A. Smith:

Well, I imagine these are just in cities? they must be.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. I think to get it... I mean, they talk here about two minutes to pick your order. Seven minutes to get it to your door, and a minute to ring the bell and you answer it. That's their 10 minute model.

Darren A. Smith:

That's a lot of mopeds.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. It's a lot of mopeds. Clearly can only work in a urban situation. But do you really need something with 10 minutes? I imagine if you're cooking and you're just getting the bechamel sauce, and you run out of a key ingredient, and you want to keep an eye on the stove, maybe. You've just discovered you've got no wine and you're about to sit down for dinner, maybe.

Darren A. Smith:

Maybe. I mean, you and I could brainstorm a bunch of scenarios, but really are they absolutely needed? I could see it for a birthday present, mother's day, some flowers. Could see it, but are there enough? What's their range like? They're not offering everything, they're offering what? What are they offering? Does it say?

Andrew Grant:

Well, it's interesting. There's some analyst quoted here saying the market is going to develop in two ways, the grocery shop or the I've run out emergency type delivery. So most of them are developing a broad range of groceries.

Darren A. Smith:

Wow. Okay.

Andrew Grant:

It's interesting. There's a punter here, a customer, and it says yeah look, the convenience just gets to you. It's dumb and it's super lazy, but it is great.

Darren A. Smith:

Well, that's a good punt. I love that. So, does it say there... Are we talking about okay, I want to order a bottle of wine. Is it just an expensive bottle of wine, plus I've got to pay £10 delivery, or is it how simplified?

The rise of 10-minute window deliveries

 

Andrew Grant:

Obviously, each one have different models. Most of them charge about three quid delivery.

Darren A. Smith:

Honestly.

Andrew Grant:

But they're saying a lot of them aren't that much more expensive than the supermarkets. So an example here with, I think Gorillas, is Ben and Jerry's ice cream, £5 compared to £4.50 at Tesco.

Darren A. Smith:

Plus you've got delivery.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. But all of them are offering sort of introductory spend £20, save £5 or free delivery with your first order.

Darren A. Smith:

Great. And I guess there's an app that surrounds every single one of these, I would imagine.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah.

Darren A. Smith:

I order on the app, and okay. All right. Fair enough. So... Sorry, go on.

Andrew Grant:

I just said my view, and again, I make maybe a fateful prediction. This is just an internet bubble, isn't it? This is dot.com boom written all over it.

Darren A. Smith:

It certainly does feel like that. What's the impact on our traditional supermarkets? Do you think they're going to try and squeeze their home delivery windows or offer something else in addition?

Andrew Grant:

Well, okay. This is where I may be proved wrong. Have a guess what Sainsbury's and Tesco are calling their rapid delivery services.

Darren A. Smith:

I don't know. Go on.

Andrew Grant:

Tesco are calling it Whoosh, which I quite like.

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah. Whoosh, yeah.

Andrew Grant:

Sainsbury's may be even better, Chop Chop. I don't know if there's a slight racist overtone in that, but...

Darren A. Smith:

They're not going to get away with that.

Andrew Grant:

They're both trialing. So Tesco are trialing it out of their Wolverhampton store, in the West Midlands, so maybe our colleague, Andy, wants to give it a try. So they're trying Whoosh out of Wolverhampton store. And Sainsbury's are trialing Chop Chop. So they're obviously looking at it. Whether they're worried, I think, is another thing.

Darren A. Smith:

And do we have a generic term for this stuff yet? Is there one called [crosstalk 00:07:17].

Andrew Grant:

Rapid groceries, I think, is what it's going to be called.

Darren A. Smith:

Rapid groceries. Okay. So we can imagine that search term on Google will start going up. Rapid groceries. Everyone's getting in. Okay. And they're eight players, you say, at the moment so who's going to win? The one with the most capital investment? The one with the biggest reach? What's your guess?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. No, in the end, I think it will be the one that manages to hoover up the most loyal customers that keep coming back, because the costs of operation will be quite high. They're all operating out of what they call dark warehouses. So again, cheap. They're typically renting railway arches or renting cheap storage on industrial estates in less than pleasant parts of a city, and then picking dark and sending out the moped drivers to deliver.

Darren A. Smith:

So, it really is the one that will win will be the one with the slickest, most efficient, but most effective operations, is where this is really going to work.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. I think it said in this paper, somebody said somebody who can deliver Amazon levels of service in 10 minutes will be the one that wins.

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah. Okay. And I guess the customers that try it for the first time are looking at reviews, what's the rating and they'll creep up. Okay. So I'm guessing once this establishes then we've got Amazon who are probably going to buy one of them.

Andrew Grant:

Well, yes, exactly. Exactly. But I mean, you look at... I'm almost a bit of a dinosaur, but I ordered my first Uber Eats last week, and its excellent.

Darren A. Smith:

Right.

Andrew Grant:

Absolutely excellent.

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah, brilliant.

Andrew Grant:

So now it is almost second nature to order any form of takeaway from delivery, Uber eats or Just Eat. Everybody's doing it. Maybe, in five years time, everybody will be ordering their top up groceries through one of these rapid services.

Darren A. Smith:

Maybe it could be. Maybe it could.

Andrew Grant:

I think it is crazy. I mean, 10 minutes. Talk about-

Darren A. Smith:

That's crazy.

Andrew Grant:

...

Grocery Guru Ep #29: Tesco Metro's Demise and Fewer Formats for Tesco

Join Andrew Grant and Darren A. Smith in the twenty-ninth episode about the demise of Tesco Metro, what is happening to the Tesco Jack's format, and maybe the start of Tesco managing fewer formats.

You Can Read the Demise of Tesco Metro Episode Transcript Below:

Darren A. Smith:

Hello, and welcome to episode 29 of the Grocery Guru. We're here with Andrew Grant. Andrew, how are you doing?

Andrew Grant:

Morning, Darren. You well?

Darren A. Smith:

Yes, I'm very good. I'm very good. We'll ignore all the technical issues we've just had, because no one cares, but we've just had a few. What are we talking about this week?

Andrew Grant:

Well, I picked up the news. We often try and bring the most topical items in the grocery world. So yeah, I picked up this week, didn't get a lot of press, but the demise of the Tesco Metro. It will be no more.

Darren A. Smith:

Oh really? Okay. Tell us more.

Darren and Andrew discuss Tesco Jack's format and the demise of Tesco Metro

Andrew Grant:

Yeah, so I've got to do some very quick math here. 147 Tesco Metros, all being rebranded either as Tesco Express or as Tesco Superstores, which I find interesting. I can understand 89 of them becoming Expresses.

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah. I can.

Andrew Grant:

58 Superstores, god, there must be some big monsters out there forgotten about.

Darren A. Smith:

That seems odd, so just remind us what is a Tesco Metro?

Andrew Grant:

Well, originally it was a reason to take... So if you think back to what Tesco's original heyday of operation check-out and Green Shield Stamps, all their stores were in bustling town centers.

Darren A. Smith:

Yep. Very true.

Andrew Grant:

So, you and I are probably old enough to go back that far, but your quintessential high street with your Woolies, your Marks & Spencer, your Boots, and your Tesco. [crosstalk 00:01:46] So Tesco ended up in the 80s as it was starting to build their out of town estate, which was the making of them, left with all of these city and town center stores on a high street, and they thought, "What the hell do we do with them?" And they came up with a Metro format. But essentially all they did was took an existing small supermarket and stuck a camp sandwich cabinet and some soft drinks chillers at the front, and still to this day most metros have far more range probably than the shoppers need. And it was interesting in the press release, Tesco said that 70% of the shopping missions in Metros are for top-up shops.

Darren A. Smith:

Oh okay. All right. So we've got a good understanding of Tesco Metro. All right. So these guys are saying, they're going to take 80... How many was it? 89?

Andrew Grant:

89 into Tesco Express format, and I'm 58 into the Superstore format.

Darren A. Smith:

Okay. So does this mean that Tesco Metro format will be gone completely?

Andrew Grant:

It's like the proverbial parrot. It is no more. It is dead.

Darren A. Smith:

All right. Okay. Okay. So do you think this is about head office trying to manage fewer formats, or the other format's more popular? What's your take on this?

Andrew Grant:

No, I think, again, it shows the power of shopper insight and club card. They know precisely what every single one of their shoppers is buying in every single store, every single minute of the day, and it's fine tuning a very, very well honed engine.

Darren A. Smith:

Okay. All right. So I get that. I get the insight into shoppers, but why remove Metro? What does it add, or what does it add by removing it?

Andrew Grant:

Well, no, I think you said it as you said that first, what does it add? Express is a phenomenally successful C-store concept, the out of town extras again phenomenally successful. Why do you want a Metro stuck in the middle, which is neither one thing or the other. It's not a full on c-store, and it's definitely not a full range, weekly supermarket shop store. And of course we know, many town centers out there and it's sad. The ones I visited, really sad what this pandemic has done to the traditional town center, and interestingly, maybe a slighter side of BBC news last night, worth watching actually. The regeneration of town centers. I don't know if you've ever been to Nottingham.

Darren A. Smith:

No.

Andrew Grant:

The Broadmarsh Centre in Nottingham is perfect example of 70s planning terrorism. I mean, it is just horrific.

Darren A. Smith:

Okay. Well, we'll let the link at the bottom of the video to the regeneration. I've just written it down, BBC.

Andrew Grant:

What they're looking at is basically taking out this 70s concrete covered shopping center and restoring the original medieval winding streets.

Darren A. Smith:

Oh, okay. Okay. So a lot more like a Cheltenham or Gloucester town center.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. And they then contrasted that with Maidenhead down in the affluent south, about to get the east west rail link. So, Maidenhead, and part of the tech corridor of Slough to Redding, and they've done exactly the same thing. They're taking a 70s covered shopping center, ripped the roof off, and moved it to, I think 30% shops, 30% residential, 30% leisure.

Darren A. Smith:

Wow. Okay.

Andrew Grant:

And literally breathing life back into the town centers. So, interesting that Tesco haven't said they're offloading any of this estate. Maybe they'll wait a couple of years until property values, or until commercial property values rise again, and they'll have another think about it.

Darren A. Smith:

And just coming back to your other points, so the other format they're going to move some of them into are superstore. So some of them aren't small. These are big stores that they're moving or changing.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. I guess it depends on the location. I can't think of any specifically, but there will be some that are by the town car park, or by the town multi-story. So in theory, you could take your car in there, do a full trolley shop, and it's still practicable, but equally there's ones I can think of where they're landlocked in these dying little town centers. And yeah, you can imagine why Tesco would have taken a good close look at them.

Darren A. Smith:

That makes sense. All right. So let's throw it into the mix Jack's. I know you did for The Grocer probably 18 months ago, a review of Jack's out in Chatteris . So how does that feature in this thought?

Andrew Grant:

Well, I was afraid you were going to bring that up. I think it's the only time I've made a false prediction. So please don't add the link to The Grocer article to this. [crosstalk 00:07:10] Yeah. I remember on a particularly cold wet unpleasant East Anglia day being sent out to Chatteris, which is literally in the middle of deep, deep Finland, and yeah. Doing a review of the new Jack's format, which Dave Lewis, Tesco CEO at the time, was very, very excited about. And it was their answer to Aldi and Lidl.

Darren A. Smith:

Oh, we see. So there are what, 10, 12 Jack's out there?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. 12 of them, yeah, basically they are a British Aldi. Almost carbon copy of an Aldi with the special buys down the middle, very, very simply merchandised, and fitted out. And some very limited, but pretty high quality range. And I'm sure you'll remember at the time, me making this grand prediction that wouldn't it make perfect sense to transport the Jack's brand into all of these oversized Tesco Metros, where they're not quite sure whether they're a c-store or a supermarket, but hey, for my grand strategies.

Darren A. Smith:

I think I do remember now, if that's the only prediction you've got wrong, we'll ask you for the lottery numbers in a minute.

Andrew Grant:

Okay.

Darren A. Smith:

So, excuse me, we've got these 12 Jack's out there. How are they performing? What do you think they'll do with those in the future?

Andrew Grant:

Well, it's interesting. If you Google Jack's there's nothing. There's the corporate website, but it doesn't look particularly loved. Everything says copyright 2018. So it looks like it's not had a lot of updating and love. I would imagine that Tesco's, we know, have been phenomenally successful in their main [inaudible 00:09:16] Aldi. The Aldi price match [inaudible 00:09:20] changing products, stop the flow of customers to Aldi. It's been massively successful. And they probably think we actually don't need something that will go head to head with an Aldi, but could actually end up damaging Tesco.

Darren A. Smith:

[inaudible 00:09:41] So what's your prediction for Jack's for the future?

Andrew Grant:

Oh, thank you for that. I think it will go the way of Tesco Metro very quietly.

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah. I would have thought so, because it doesn't seem to be adding anything from what we can see. It was a good trial, worth testing, didn't work, and making the other formats work more successfully would be my guess.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. I think they found the answer to how to neutralize Aldi. We talked about it three episodes ago, the latest [inaudible 00:10:11] data. I was [inaudible 00:10:13] the Aldi was one of the slowest growing of the grocers. Half the growth rate of Tesco.

Darren A. Smith:

Yes.

Andrew Grant:

So Tesco have found that sweet spot to neutralize the threat of the discounters. So yeah. Why do you need a Jack's?

Darren A. Smith:

Very true. Very true. Okay. All right, Andrew, before we go and thank you for your guru-ness, what's the takeaway you want to give our viewers?

Andrew Grant:

What's the takeaway? Yeah, just again, it just shows how fast grocery moves. Jack's less than three years old. We're questioning that. The changes on the high street just phenomenal, but as ever Tesco very, very quick to move ahead of the pack.

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah. I did hear that Tesco used the phrase, "Ready, fire, aim." A lot. And it seems to be working for them.

Andrew Grant:

[inaudible 00:11:12]. Yeah.

Darren A. Smith:

All right,...