Making Business Matter (MBM)

Sticky Learning Lunch 47: Increase Your Category Opportunities

Today's topic, Increase the Number of Category Opportunities Landed Part 4.

73% of your Category Opportunities Never Make it to Store.

You will learn: - Each of the 7 parts of the MBM Category Management Funnel. - How each part is essential to creating an effective Category Management approach. - Various tools and techniques to support each stage of the process.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Good afternoon. Sticky lunches. I don't know, is that the right way? Getting this? Yeah, I'm just getting my screen up here. Bear with me while we get that going. Share screen. Oh, hold on. There we go. That was the problem. 'cause I wasn't the presenter.

Nathan Simmonds:

Okay, now we're, now we are here. Okay, we're in. Welcome everyone to today's sticky learning, uh, with me, Nathan Simmons and Andy Palmer, resident expert in category management. We're just gonna give it 30 seconds while we wait for the last people to arrive in the room. And then we are going to crack on and share stage four of the 73% funnel. Let's just give it a moment. Let's make sure we're setting ourselves up for success.

Improve your category management opportunities

 

Nathan Simmonds:

Mobile phones up and higher. Let's make sure the little plane is lit up, zero out the distraction, a hundred percent attention on you and what you are doing here. Let's make sure also that you are hydrated here, is getting warmer here in the uk. Thankfully, we might actually have a summer this time, who knows? Um, although according to the government, they have canceled some of this year, but I don't think technically you can do that.

Nathan Simmonds:

So let's make sure you're staying hydrated, you're keeping your brain lubricated. And also let's make sure you've got a fresh page for fresh thinking. So let's get these ideas. Any ideas that Andy is sharing, any questions that I asked that trigger a new thought, let's make sure we're getting them down there on that sheet so that you can go back and remember, reread and reignite that thinking to keep your learning sticky. I think we're almost on time, but do you know what?

Nathan Simmonds:

I'm actually gonna say this at the beginning of this episode, rather than at the end of it, if you have not registered for tomorrow's sticky learning lunch, I'm putting that if it's, if you cannot see it in the chat box right now, I'm putting that in the chat box. Hold on. He says, bear with me. I'm putting the link in there for tomorrow's session and all our future sessions in the chat box right now.

Nathan Simmonds:

So if you have not already registered for tomorrow's session, for next week's sessions, whatever it is, the link is there. Please click on that, get that screen ready for you to go in there and register for the future sessions. And also, it's there for you to copy and paste and share to your friends if you know someone that's gonna get value from category management. If you know someone that's gonna get value from, uh, a deep dive on their own leadership skills in the next week, share this link with them.

Nathan Simmonds:

Let them know about sticky learning lunches and get them involved in these classrooms to help them take their thinking to the next level. Let's do this. Welcome everyone to the rooms. It's good to see you all. Thank you, Tim. Good to be here. McKayla. McKayla, good to see you. First time. Fiona, Fabian, Darren Collin, thank you very much for being a greatly appreciated. Let's dive in. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM Making Business Matter.

Nathan Simmonds:

We are the leadership and development and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industry. I do with these sessions is just to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do, especially in category management. Andy, welcome back for day four of this. Thanks very much for being here. What are we covering today,

Andy Palmer:

Nathan? We are now moving down into the fourth stage of our funnel. This is around turning and analysis and understanding into opportunities. So this is where the fun sex stuff happens. Um, we back in last week, talked about green category targets and more, better understanding our shopper. Yesterday we, uh, covered understanding our channel or our supermarket. Today we're getting into turning analysis from all those various data sources and information that we have, information turning those things into opportunities. Then for the next few days, we'll then figure out how we can sell those opportunities and those opportunities in store and close off our funnel by taking some learnings back. That's what today's about.

Nathan Simmonds:

Great, and Andy dropped the word in there, sexy about the analysis side of thing. Andy is very blue, he is very analytical, so he is gonna use words like the sexy when it comes to data. It's not everyone's cup of tea. What I will say is, though data is absolutely vital, you know, we can't always make the right decision. What it is though, is when we get that information, then we can make better decisions on what it is we're gonna be doing in order to get to know our supermarkets better, in order to get better, know who are, um, our shoppers and our preparers and our eaters are, and making sure actually we're creating the right opportunities for those people when they go into our stores as well.

Andy Palmer:

Absolutely. I thought it was worth, uh, me just kind of caveating the, the blue comment, uh, as opposed to blue may, may have certain meanings, um, but it also from, from our kind of, uh, terminology means I am very analytical, very left brain thinking. It's one of those, uh, psychometric profiles that puts me in a quadrant that happens to be colored blue as opposed to maybe how I

Nathan Simmonds:

Your actual emotion .

Andy Palmer:

Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how big a hole I was digging. Um, but there we go.

Nathan Simmonds:

But look, you know, and that's a great, that's a great lead. I was gonna say, that leads us on, we have looked to booking in some future sessions around HBDI and profiling, um, and I think that's a great lead into that. Now, if you are interested in understanding your, your psychometrics psychoanalysis on what we do in those, on those profiling, there's also that link that's gonna take you through to those future sections. We'll cover some of that as well, so we can get into that in a bit more as we progress in the coming weeks. So let's dive in. What does, what does section number four this funnel look like? And I'm gonna skip along that slide so you can see a bit more of this as we go in and

Andy Palmer:

Great stuff. Um, yeah, so it, it's taking all of the information that we've got and right now out in the world, there is a ton of data. We know that qualitative data, quantitative data, and, and typically we see most category managers and category analysts get lost in the data. There is just such a volume of it. Um, they jump into the data, uh, and effectively we look at it, it's a bit like a black hole. They just kinda get sucked into this thing.

Andy Palmer:

And then the time is spent generating charts and tables and graphs and hundreds of these various different pages. But actually what we're really looking to do is challenge the people we work with to come up with insight, true insight that leads to recommendation. We talked about it yesterday. Let is absolutely more, it's not about presenting. A nice big deck is about presenting real hard, powerful category management opportunities that can drive a category forward.

Andy Palmer:

Um, I've got a huge toolbox of techniques and calculations and formulas and things like that. Now we're not gonna be able to cover all of those. So I've got a sample that we can share with you today. If you're hungry for this and you want to know more because this is an area where maybe you wanna improve on, then hey, let's, let's start that conversation, uh, um, later on this afternoon. More than happy to kind of, uh, explore that with you to ensure that, uh, you're, you're getting this bit right because getting this bit right just means everything we do with our category management is underpinned with solid data, powerful recommendations.

Nathan Simmonds:

Good. I'm just looking here, just making sure I've got all the right information to hand. So where have you seen, and when you talk to other companies about this and look for examples, where have you seen good examples of this data being used?

Andy Palmer:

I think it's, it's any company that has clarity on what we talked about on day one, having that target and then tailoring what they're doing to achieve that. So there are 1,000,001 examples of where it's done particularly well. And equally there is the, a whole range of suppliers out there that are not doing it well. They're, they're getting all this data and then they're not focusing on what's really important. What's really important is using the data to back up things like hypotheses. And for me, I believe briefly mentioned this the other day, this is one of my biggest tips.

Andy Palmer:

If we can start with hypothesis or hippos as we, uh, lovingly call them, um, we can then more better focus our, our time and our effort into understanding those. So it's that stuff that starts, I believe market share's going out. I believe we've got less customers than we had last year.

Andy Palmer:

I believe there's an opportunity by driving X, Y, or Z. And then it's about testing them. If we can develop those hypotheses first, as opposed to just jumping into the data, data and, you know, getting lost in 101 Excel tabs, then test it, prove it right or wrong, we will then be able to start on a journey of understanding where the true category recommendations are. Um, there's 1,000,...

Sticky Learning Lunch 46: Increase Your Category Opportunities

Today's topic, Increase the Number of Category Opportunities Landed Part 3.

73% of your Category Opportunities Never Make it to Store.

You will learn: - Each of the 7 parts of the MBM Category Management Funnel. - How each part is essential to creating an effective Category Management approach. - Various tools and techniques to support each stage of the process.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to Monday. Welcome to Sticky Learning Lunches. And welcome to the first day of the week. We are gonna be diving back into the category Management funnel with Andy Palmer and myself, Nathan Simmons. We're just gonna give it 30 seconds while we wait for the last people to arrive in the room. And then we are gonna crack on with part three of this funnel. Let's just give us a moment to make sure everyone's here. Let's get everyone set up for success right now.

Nathan Simmonds:

First of all, before we get into introductions and, and the recaps, mobile phones, let's make sure they're on flight mode. Let's zero out the distraction and get a hundred percent attention what it is we're doing right here in this investment in ourselves and the businesses that we love and work in. Secondly, making sure that we've got our hydration in place, making sure we're staying hydrated, keeping the brain lubricated and making sure that we're just looking after ourselves.

Nathan Simmonds:

Temperature space, we're going up here. Again, let's make sure we're looking after ourselves physically so we can increase what we're doing mentally. Third part to this then is fresh page, fresh thinking. We're gonna be covering some new ideas that potentially you haven't seen before that may be there to support you, invigorating what it is you do inside your business. And this page is gonna be those things that you want to remember.

Nathan Simmonds:

So whether it's things that Andy says, or questions that I ask, or questions or ideas that we share with each other in this group, that we wanna take a note of that so that we can go back and remind ourselves and remember what it is by rereading these ideas. That just helps take our thinking up another level and keeps that learning sticky, which is the whole idea of MBM Ready for this. Andy?

 

7 Simple Ways To Understand The Category Management Process

 

Andy Palmer:

Ready? Nathan?

Nathan Simmonds:

Good. So, welcome to today's Sticky Learning Lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM. Also joined by Andy Palmer, expert in category management, who's gonna be delivering part three of today's session. We are the leadership development and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industry, MBM making business Matter, and it's all about making that learning stick. As I said earlier, Andy, day three, all yours. Where are we going to next?

Andy Palmer:

Thank you, Nathan. Roy, as you said, we're gonna go stage three, which is getting into the crux of understanding our supermarket or our channel or whatever route to market that we've got. So, brief recap on what we covered at the back end of last week came in at the top of the funnel talking about agreeing targets, where we looked at this stuff around here, way of purchase frequency of purchase penetration, selecting a target that you can focus all your efforts and resources and time into achieving.

Andy Palmer:

From there, we then came down into Thursday and we talked about understanding your shopper, exploded that apart and started talking about shopper preparers and eaters. Those three very distinct group with a nice overlap. And again, more better understanding how we can use things like pen portraits or purchases and hierarchies to get into the crux of what their motivations are, what their barriers are.

Andy Palmer:

Today we're continuing down, and stage three, we are looking at knowing your supermarket or knowing your channel depending upon the market you're in. So this, this one kind of on face values, pretty almost self-explanatory. The bit, I wanna just try and take thinking a little bit further, that actually if you've got if you've got an alignment of the recommendations that you want to make and you're not getting them over the line it's about making sure that you understand your, your supermarket as well as you can.

Andy Palmer:

That you are then making recommendations that are aligned with their thinking, and that's in line with the buyers KPIs to, to ensure that you're just setting yourself up for success. We've seen it so many times that we've seen suppliers going in and they're making recommendations that suit their business. Sometimes they suits the the customer shopper, the pair of the eater, but what they're not doing is fitting perfectly with that corporate requirement or that need that the buyer has and the buyer.

Andy Palmer:

When we're talking about the buyer, we're talking about the person sat in the retailer's head office making the decision responsible for these purchasing decisions. So all the recommendations we want to, we wanna make sure they're absolutely aligned with what their need. Now what in reality does that look like? It looks like you guys more better understanding their needs, so the needs of the buyer. And we can come at that from their personal point of view by understanding what their targets and their goals are for their categories that they own. And at the same time, more better understanding the corporate requirements.

Andy Palmer:

So we look at corporate social responsibility. We can look at the retailer's overall vision or overall strategy. That way when we're then coming down, we're making our recommendations to absolutely fit with what works for them. Soon as before where a supplier was trying to drive they're trying to drive spend into the category, they're trying to trade people up and move them up through various tiers trying to expand weight of purchase, weight of consumption, and all the recommendations were aligned to achieving that.

Andy Palmer:

That was their target. The challenge that they had was that the supermarket was trying to really push through a period of value for money. They were trying to almost kind of position themself in the market that they had good value for money and actually how they were trying to set up and manage their, their particular area was looking to achieve those things. So in one hand, we've got, let's drive value for money. In the other hand, we've got the supply trying to drive spend.

Andy Palmer:

And as you can imagine, there was a conflict as the suppliers were coming in or the supplier was coming in and making their presentations and their recommendations. It was, no, no, doesn't work, not gonna work for us right now. Maybe one for the future, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You may have experienced these kind of, these pushbacks and these challenges.

Andy Palmer:

You can more, I guess more get yourself set nicely by making sure that you know what the buyer's requirements are, what the retailer's requirements are. Once you've got that, then you are, you are, you're making recommendations that just align perfectly with the with their category their category requirements. How can you do that? It's reasonably straightforward. This isn't a massive, complicated part of the funnel.

Andy Palmer:

You go that saying that you're gonna be attending conferences, whether that's one's run by the, the retailer or run by someone like the IGD who do some superb conferences each year to get really into the importance of that particular retailer strategy. You could do something very, very pragmatic and set up something like Google Alerts where every day or every week you could dictate this yourself. Every day or every week you would get an alert come through to your inbox giving you the most up-to-date relevant news that's coming outta them.

Andy Palmer:

So is they're issuing press releases and they're making statements in the in the media to the city or what have you. You can ensure you are at the absolute forefront of that. Likewise, in the UK we've got something called Cam City where we get key account management news. It's created from various different data sources. And again, you can have something like that delivered to your inbox. So you are absolutely at the forefront of knowing what's going on out there. Again, what's going on out there? It's down to you as well. Can you get out to store more often? Can you challenge your colleagues to become the eyes and the ears on the high street so you can see what's going on.

Andy Palmer:

See what's happening in other categories, and get a feel for the things that are moving for you to then say, actually that's gonna work with us. And then it's about those discussions with the buyer around, here's what we're suggesting, here's what we're suggesting it, here's the background data to back it up and we know it's aligned to your strategy. 'cause We're listening. Once you've got that, your credibility goes through the roof, the buyer knows you are there and you, you've aligned yourself nicely with their requirements. So Nathan, is that making sense so far? I'm just kind of appreciate scratching the surface as as ever with our half hour that we have.

Nathan Simmonds:

Yeah, for me it is making absolute sense. I guess the key thing to take it into, and I'm already coming up with some ideas and concepts in my head, but now have you got any examples of where this understanding has had a significant impact on a change when delivering to a supermarket?

Andy Palmer:

Yeah. something I'm get into. So yes is the, the short answer, the slightly longer answer is something I'm really looking forward to covering on Thursday when we get into understanding credibility, and it's those suppliers that are going in with that stuff in their head and able to articulate it,...

Sticky Learning Lunch 45: Increase Your Category Opportunities

Today's topic, Increase the Number of Category Opportunities Landed Part 2.

73% of your Category Opportunities Never Make it to Store.

You will learn: - Each of the 7 parts of the MBM Category Management Funnel. - How each part is essential to creating an effective Category Management approach. - Various tools and techniques to support each stage of the process.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Good afternoon. Welcome to Sticky Learning Lunches with me, Nathan Simmons, and also the delectable Andy Palmer delivering to this week. And for the next week, we're just gonna give it a few minutes while the last people arrive, and then we're gonna dive into today's content. Just gonna give it another 30 seconds or so. While we're doing that, let's just make sure we're setting ourselves up for success. And I'll give people a reminder when we go back into this very briefly, let's make sure we're lighting up those phones.

Nathan Simmonds:

Get the little airplane, lift up, zero out the distraction, a hundred percent attention on what we're doing here today. The investment in yourself and the learning that you're about to get. Also, making sure that you've got a fresh sheet, fresh sheet for fresh thinking at the top of that page. You're gonna write keepers. Those keepers are gonna be the things that you want to remember and remind yourself about so that you can reread them and reignite that thinking.

Nathan Simmonds:

So as you are looking at the category management funnel, it's gonna help you get more clarity on what your targets are, know who your customer is, and knowing who your clients and your supermarkets are, all these key elements, by making sure you're documenting these key points can be absolutely vital, right? Today we're not gonna be doing too much screen sharing. So we've got Andy on camera one. We've got me on camera two.

Nathan Simmonds:

I'm gonna be here to be asking questions as we go through to making sure we get these points across. We're gonna start with a recap from part one just to make sure we're following that train of thought. And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna fly in and start looking at how to understand your shopper is absolutely vital for making this work. Andy, what have we got for day two?

7 Simple Ways To Understand The Category Management Process

 

Andy Palmer:

Excellent. So yeah, thank you Nathan. Today, absolutely more about understanding the shopper, keeping the shopper at the heart of all the decisions we make to help grow our category sales, our category profit, whatever measure we've got in place, which links us nicely. Back to what we talked about yesterday, right off the top of the funnel. Agreeing category targets the importance of having ideally a single focused point with a timeline that we want to achieve it and making sure we hit it focuses all our time and all of our efforts on getting what we want from this category.

Andy Palmer:

So yesterday we briefly talked about what f and pen, which was how much people are spending, how often they're buying, and how many people we've got buying, and maybe picking one of those as an example and targeting then our efforts towards achieving that. So yes, there was about agreeing a category target.

Andy Palmer:

Once we've got our category target, we can then start to move down and we'll continue to move down our funnel over the next few days. Kicking back off again on Monday. Today's about understanding the shopper. When we get into Monday, we're gonna be talking about understanding the supermarket or the channel that you are selling into. From there, it's about identifying opportunities, then about selling those opportunities, adding those opportunities down at stage six, and then coming all the way back round with evaluating and improving to keep this continuous cycles mythology absolutely alive.

Andy Palmer:

As I mentioned yesterday, these stages work together. But yeah, at the same time, they're not so much of a start, stop, start, stop. It's very much an overlap with that recycling that's gonna be going on. So we've got a category target. Today we're gonna be talking about understanding the shopper.

Andy Palmer:

I'm sure I'm preaching to the converter on this. Keeping the shopper at the heart of our decision is absolutely paramount to everything we do within category management. There is no good us making decisions on our range, our promotional plan, the products we've got out there in the myriad of other levers and buttons that we can push and pull if we're not considering who the end user is.

Andy Palmer:

And effectively that's us. We are the people that push trolleys, carry baskets, pick things up off the shelves, and yet too often we kind of put them over here and, and leave them out of our decision making process. So it's absolutely key that we keep ourselves and the rest of those people that are out there purchasing at the core of what we're talking about. So a few things to share with you today.

Andy Palmer:

Let me lemme sign and place where we're at today. So with three category targets, we're now in stage two understanding our shopper. A couple of things to share with you on this. First one, we have been doing category management for a very long time and time to time again, we see that often only a third of this particular area is focused on. And third that we see most clients work on is the shopper, the person who's actually buying the product. I wanna offer you an alternative that allows you then to consider some other areas.

Andy Palmer:

So I'm gonna introduce the concept of the shopper, the preparer and the eater. There's three different groups. Again, there can sometimes be one and the same thing. If we consider the shopper preparing eater, those who are buying it, those who are preparing it, and those who are eating it, we can then start to make some seriously powerful informed decisions on the stuff that we try to do.

Andy Palmer:

So let's not just think about the shopper, let's also consider those other groups, bringing that to life for a moment. Then what do we mean by the shopper pernita? Pretty sticking over there. Shop perta. What do we mean by that? So shopper, it's us. We're out in the supermarket. My wife will send me to the shops and she'll say, can you go and pick up some pack of fish fingers? I'm the shop, I'm buying those fish fingers. I'm looking for all the right cues in the store to entice me to pick up a certain pack.

Andy Palmer:

It's gonna be around price, packaging, what's in it? If it's added Omega-3 or something like that, they're the things that are going to entice me to make that perk decision. And then coming back fish, maybe hand 'em off to my wife. Maybe I'm gonna be the cooker, but I'm gonna be preparer for that particular meal.

Andy Palmer:

So I'm taking my fish fingers, of course I'm adding some additional elements to it. Am I then I may be not against eating fish fingers, but it could be for my daughter. She's eight years old. She loves fish fingers, so we're gonna cook her fish fingers, some, maybe some mashed potatoes, some other stuff that goes with it. She's the eater. We are then three potentially very distinct groups. And on this occasion, maybe they don't overlap one person's shopping, one person's cooking or preparing another person's eating.

Andy Palmer:

And yet other times the shopper pairer and eater could be the same person. The important thing to take from that is how can we consider the decisions that we're making to more better influence mode? More importantly, understand those three different areas. So shop, consider those and then consider what you can do differently as a result of really fully understand them. Is that making sense so far, Nathan? Let me, lemme bring you in for a second. Is that making sense to you?

Nathan Simmonds:

It makes absolute sense to me. And the, the way that it gets me thinking is often when you start a business or you're selling a service, the idea is that you fall in love with the problem. So a lot of businesses and a lot of I guess kind of category management, people doing the same sort of thing will fail, is because they fall in love with a solution. This is a great idea, this is a great product. It looks like this, this is gonna sell millions.

Nathan Simmonds:

And then they put it out there and they're like, no, it doesn't because no one likes what we're talking about. 'cause It doesn't solve the problem for them. And the, the story that comes to mind is when they were talking about washing powders previously, and they were, they were talking, oh, well we need, we need to make these sheets whiter than white.

Nathan Simmonds:

You know, the whole ba ultra thing, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, all these sorts of things. Wenatchee, I think in the fifties or sixties, when they did that research, it had nothing to do with whether the sheets were white. It was to do with whether or not it actually smelled good. So they were selling all this, you know, spending all this money on advertising campaigns to make these pictures of these beautiful, and actually all we needed to do was sniff it, did it smell good?

Nathan Simmonds:

So he was understanding the problem of the shopper or the needs and the problems of the shopper, the preparer and the eater. And having an idea of how to bridge all those gaps to make sure that every one of those individual groups is happy. So you sell more of that product.

Andy Palmer:

Absolutely. I talk about this in kind of the realms of what are their barriers and what are their motivations to purchase, what, what's going to entice 'em to, to pick it up, entice 'em to use it, entice 'em to eat it, and what are the barriers preventing those things. Once we understand that, we can then make, as you said, more informed decisions....

Sticky Learning Lunch 44: Increase Your Category Opportunities

Today's topic, Increase the Number of Category Opportunities Landed Part 1.

73% of your Category Opportunities Never Make it to Store.

You will learn: - Each of the 7 parts of the MBM Category Management Funnel. - How each part is essential to creating an effective Category Management approach. - Various tools and techniques to support each stage of the process.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to today's learning. This is going to be slightly different. As I said before. This is gonna be a super niche presentation series, talking about category management. We're just gonna give it a few more seconds while we're waiting for the last attendees to arrive in the room. It's gonna give that a moment. Welcome, Colin. Good to see you. Thanks for being here. Darren, thank you for being here. It's appreciated, FAAB, and good to see you again. Jim, I think this is your first time attendee to these sessions.

Nathan Simmonds:

Thanks very much for being here. Really appreciated, Tim, always a pleasure to see you. Thank you very much. Let's get you guys set up for success initially. So as always, what I wanna make sure we're covering is getting our mobile phones. Let's get the mobile phones, get the little airplane lit up. Let's zero out the distraction, a hundred percent attention on what we are doing here today.

Nathan Simmonds:

Also, making sure you're hydrated, so making sure you've got a drink available. Herbal teas for me today. Let's keep ourselves, you know, keep ourselves hydrated so we can keep our brains lubricated. And also making sure that we've got a fresh page for fresh thinking. So we want a nice blank page. And at the top of that, we wanna write keepers. We also wanna write in there the 73% funnel, which is what we're gonna be covering today as we talk about category management.

Nathan Simmonds:

And Andy's gonna be covering more of that in just a second. Top of that page, keep us, these are the things you wanna remember. These are the things that you want to be reminded of. And these are the things when you reread it, it reignites that think, and it makes the learning stick, which is what we are here to do now. That's what MBM is all about. So let's see who's got coming in, right?

Nathan Simmonds:

Let's get into this. I've got my notepad and my pen ready. I've got a series of questions to be firing into Andy as we go through this. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning Lunch with myself, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM. I'm joined today by Andy Palmer, resident expert on category management. And the idea of these training sessions is to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do.

Nathan Simmonds:

And whether that's whether you are when you are at home or returning to work, or preparing to return to work, it's about pushing this thinking. It's about helping you take your business to the next level. And as we are the leadership development and soft skills provider to the UK grocery and manufacturing industry, it's right that we talk about category management. Andy, this next seven sessions, they're all yours and you're gonna take us through this, please, you know, take over and let's see what category management is all about and how it can help these people.

7 Simple Ways To Understand The Category Management Process

 

Andy Palmer:

Lovely, thank you Nathan. Welcome everybody. I'm super excited to be sharing this content with you. Over the coming days, we're gonna take you through our seven step category management process session each day, looking at each different stage of the funnel, bringing it to life now to manage expectations. I guess we're only gonna be scratching the surface but hopefully leaving you hungry to want to reach out to us afterwards and learn more. Learn how we can support you with category management.

Nathan Simmonds:

So starting with that, what is category management? It's one of these topics that's been wrapped up quite heavily and shrouded in a dark mist of jargon and complicated terminology. In essence, it's about helping you as a business to be able to identify more opportunities, sell opportunities, and land those opportunities in store. The crux of category management is really about suppliers working in partnership with retailers and making sure the consumers, the shoppers needs are at the heart of any decisions that are made.

Andy Palmer:

So whereas we see our account managers taking care of certain slice of the pie, we have our category managers that are there to take care of the whole pie. So as category management has, has developed over the years where it's first started in its inception back in the 1990s for me this is really now about a business as usual principle. Not something that's dipped into once every six months where people lock themself in dark war rooms and generate 1,000,001 different spreadsheets.

Andy Palmer:

It's actually about a very simple structured approach that we're gonna come to but helping you be able to identify more opportunities. So we're gonna talk you through our funnel. We're largely gonna do a brief introduction to the funnel in a moment and then help you understand what each of those different areas look like. So it's about agreeing catch free targets at the top.

Andy Palmer:

We're gonna talk about that a little bit more today about keeping the shopper at the heart of our decisions. We're getting to that a little bit more tomorrow then around understanding and knowing the channels that you're in. So what supermarket or particular retailer that you're focusing your efforts. Then getting into the good stuff, getting into identifying opportunities. They're gonna come from lots of different areas with capture management.

Andy Palmer:

It's very, very data-driven. So often we can get lost in that and we're gonna help you to not get lost in that. But around identifying the opportunities, then it's about selling those opportunities effectively, landing those opportunities in store and then coming back around our funnel evaluating, improving, ensure that you've got this consistency and we've got the cycle going on now to manage expectations. And just like caveat why these funnel stages literally build on each other, it's a bit more like think about it as a Venn diagram.

Andy Palmer:

They've got to overlap. You are gonna do some level of recycling back through different areas. It's not that chunk start, stop, start, stop all the way through. So we've got this process, we're gonna bring it to life a little bit more today. Hopefully that then generates some questions for, for you. Once we've got those questions, we'll be able to bring it to life. So we'll spend about the next 10, 15 minutes some questions to Nathan, to me some questions from you guys as well. And we'll see if we can bring this topic a little bit more to life and hopefully help you realize how you can identify, sell, and land some more opportunities.

Nathan Simmonds:

And for me, Andy was talking about the questions. If you do have questions, you've got the question box, please get them in there. I'm watching this to, for Andy to support in this conversation. If anything comes up and you want to go deeper into that, let's bring that up. And if it's appropriate to answer it here and now, we will do. If not, we can take that offline and we'll get in contact with you separately to help support that.

Nathan Simmonds:

The other thing that Sarah so lovingly reminded me of is if you are looking at the screen with the cameras on at the moment, I'm gonna drop off that screen and sit in the background and watch what's going on. But there's a gray bar in the middle there. If you wanna make the webcams bigger, click and hold on that gray bar, pull it down and you can make the presentation just that little bit smaller so you can see more of what's going on in the whiteboard. Okay, as I say, any questions, get 'em in the question box and I'll be paying attention in the background. Thanks very much.

Andy Palmer:

Great stuff. Thank you Nathan. Okay, so we're talking about our funnel here and we've got these seven steps that I've briefly covered. As I said, we're gonna work through each of those different areas over the next seven days. We're gonna start today with agreeing category opportunities. So more often than not we work with clients and they're busy doing category management in a way that they've already done it.

Nathan Simmonds:

Recently we started working with a client and they said, yeah, we've got all this data, we've got all this information, we're at the beck and call of the buyer. And I said to them, okay, great. So what are you looking to achieve with your category? And they said well, whatever the buyer tells us to do, we will do it. Whatever opportunities pop up, we will make them happen.

Andy Palmer:

And if we spot some along the way ourselves, we'll get those landed as well. And that's fine. That's not necessary the wrong way. Where we try to steer them to was actually, if they have a single absolute clarified target, all of the efforts are then focused on achieving that. And it's not the scatter on approach to, they seem to be working towards its far more sniper rifle. It, it's there, we've got our category target or we're gonna go after that.

Andy Palmer:

That then means all the time and the resources and the efforts they put in are focused on achieving one thing. And that doesn't mean to say that category target can't change. And it will of course adapt and develop. But actually once you've got that category target, it then allows a far more joined up approach to, to take place and not just becoming kind of quite reactive.

Andy Palmer:

As I mentioned earlier, category management, very, very data driven. It's often the case that we can get sucked into this black hole of data stuck on what we call

Sticky Learning Lunches #43: Think You Don't Need to Attend This Webinar?

This 7-part model will help you to find out what is wrong with your time management.

You will learn:

- Each of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- How each part is essential to creating an effective time management system.

- The holes that are exposed in your time management system by not having any one of the 7 pieces.

- Practical tips to incorporate any one of the 7 parts of the time management system.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Improve your time management the these 7 hurdles

 

Nathan Simmonds:

Here we go. We're in. It's one o'clock. Bam. Right on the notes. Sticky learning lunches with me, Nathan Simmons. Hello everyone. Thanks very much for being here and it's amazing to see so many enthusiastic people already here. Vij, good to see you again. Victoria, thank you very much for being here. Tim, always a pleasure, Howard, really appreciate you being here. Colin, as always here, every time if I had a Blue Peter badge, especially for you, Colin, you, I will be sending it to. Amen. Thank you very much. And Andy, really appreciate you being here so early, ready for this session. Massive gratitude to all of you.

Nathan Simmonds:

We're just gonna give it 30 seconds while we wait for other people to arrive and as they do we'll, and I'm gonna give it a few more seconds. Fiona, hello. I'll just get everyone in here and then we'll kick off today's session for the final hurdle in the time management system, which is all about taking action. Sticky learning badges sound like a great idea. Do you know what, actually, as you were saying that there's some parallels here between the content that we're delivering online for the sticky learning lunches, uh, and the way that we approach online training. And I was talking to a peer in another organization about this.

Nathan Simmonds:

There's some parallels between social media and what we're doing here. And if you look at things like Facebook, you know, when you are in a group, they do badges. They give you little award stickers so that you can say when you are in a group, whether you are a, a visual storyteller or rising star or whatever it is. And actually sticky learning lunge badge. Yeah, that'd be a great idea. Now I've done it. I think I've just made another piece of work for myself. I might have to get one of the graphic designers on this.

Nathan Simmonds:

We'll get some pictures up with some badges of the people that attend the most. Got our pens ready. I think we're good to go. How are we doing the today before we dive in? How are we today? One being terrible, 10 being phenomenal. Where are we rating ourselves in our week already on a Tuesday. Where are we got some eights? We've got a six. Okay. Six. There's a couple of sixes. This doesn't fill me with joy.

Nathan Simmonds:

Got you. No, back to backs today. Good. Nice. That was a 10. Thank you Victoria, for, for paying attention and making use of this wherever we are. Whatever number you've rated yourself at in relation to the week you're in right now, whether that be because of lockdown and you're still in isolation, you've got cabin fever, whether that be frustrations of your time management system not working, whether that be, you know, other frustrations or other problems coming up. Let's ask one straightforward question that's gonna make help to make a shift.

Nathan Simmonds:

What's one thing that you can do right now that's gonna help you to shift from wherever you are in that rating, on that sliding scale to the next step? What's the one thing that's gonna help improve the situation right now? Let me know in the questions box. You can write it down for yourself as an action that you need to be taken that's gonna help you shift. You are in direct control of the environment around you. Let me rephrase that. You're in direct control of how you choose to respond to the environment around you.

Nathan Simmonds:

One of those six is going Stop procrastinating me, not you, Nathan. I was gonna say, crikey, you don't know me well enough, Abby to tell me to stop procrastinating, but you are right. I was this morning, but we'll talk about that later. And anyway, you were part of the procrastination workshop. You know the three sessions we did around that. So you have some of those tools to make you or help you do that.

Nathan Simmonds:

If you need to revisit the session, by the way, we'll put the link in there, therefore, uh, the previous workshops. So you can go and have a look at those ones as well. Let's dive into this. Pay attention. This is about action. So it's time to act one 30. Ba we're going, I didn't attend that, but need to. Okay. In the in, in the chat box, if you have not register already registered for the future sticky learning lunches or shared that link with people that it's relevant to, we are gonna share the link for the future sessions.

Nathan Simmonds:

On that link is also all the, all the previous sessions that we've delivered up until now. So you've got over 40 sticky learning lunches in there, covering everything from the grow coaching model to procrastination and getting things done and all the way through to time management and everything in between. If you haven't already already registered, the first call to action today is click that link and get registered for the future sessions tomorrow we're gonna start by covering something super niche, which is category management.

Nathan Simmonds:

If there are people in your business that would benefit from understanding category management at a much deeper level, we are gonna be doing seven sessions with our in-house resident expert, Andy Palmer, taking you through the 73% category management funnel. I'm gonna be facilitating that conversation and it's gonna be delivering some exceptional level of expertise to make sure that we wait.

Nathan Simmonds:

That, that you have absolute clarity in that space. So the link's in there below. Let's get on with today. Come on, I'm, I'm jabbering 'cause I'm excited as always. Number one, mobile phones. Let's do this. Zero out the distraction, light up the little airplane, a hundred percent attention on you, making sure you've got a drink, fresh tea, whatever it is, staying hydrated. Good weather, keeping the brain lubricated and your notepads fresh page, fresh thinking at the top of that page you're gonna write keepers and these are the things that you want to keep hold of, that you wanna remember, okay.

Nathan Simmonds:

That you want to remind yourself about when you reread them so you can reignite that thinking and make the learning stick. 'cause that's what we're here to do to help you make that stuff stick. Let's get into this day seven of the seven hurdles of time management.

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to today's Sticky Learning lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM making Business Matter. The home of sticky learning idea of these sessions to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do right now, from wherever you are at home or at work or if you're returning back to work. Help you to raise that thinking up, uh, and give you some, uh, skills and, and uncommon ideas that are gonna get you to uncommon results, right?

Nathan Simmonds:

And really push that level of experience for you. Today's session number seven, hurdle action. Let's dive straight into this. I'm not gonna put the flow up there. Hopefully enough of you have seen that flow chart. So we know that there's capturing and there's um, uh, emptying and deleting and listing and scheduling and storing and, and all that sort. But the last part we're getting to is all about action.

Nathan Simmonds:

Hurdle number seven is all about action. And you've heard me say it before and I'm gonna say it again because it's, you know, it's something valuable and worth keeping hold of action creates traction, okay? The universe responds to you doing things not to you thinking about maybe you should be doing them. Does that make sense? I'm hope everyone's with me on this. In the nicest possible way, you cannot meditate your way out of a tiger attack.

Nathan Simmonds:

Uh, you cannot meditate your way to a million dollar check coming through the post. It requires a certain amount of you putting some energy in that moves you towards where you want to get to at the other end. Now, if you've got items that are dropping into your email, into your capturing points and you're not emptying, that's the first action you need to enter your capture points in order to get 'em to un get to understand where they need to go. Where do they need to be? Do they need to be delegated? Do they need to be put into the right list? Do I need to schedule them? This is the first action. 'cause if we're not doing these things and causing ourselves triggers

Nathan Simmonds:

Those sparks and those moments, at whatever point we are in the time management system, nothing's going to happen. Does this make sense with everyone? Yes or no? It's a double cuff. It's always a double cuff day, always a double cuff day. So as I said on day one, as I said on day two and three, the time management system hinges on whether or not you trust that system. And in truth, you are the linchpin that holds the whole system together.

Nathan Simmonds:

Because if you're not not acting, if you're not concentrating, you're not pulling those, you know, the relevant levers at the right time, it's not going to work. And then at the end of the day, and as I said before and question before, when something doesn't happen, when something falls off the radar, when you miss something and all those frustrations come up and you get angry at other people, all you're doing is getting angry at yourself because you are the one that dropped the ball.

Nathan Simmonds:

Who here's felt like this? Yes or no? Everyone say I if they,...

Think You Don't Need to Attend This Webinar?

This 7-part model will help you to find out what is wrong with your time management.

You will learn:

- Each of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- How each part is essential to creating an effective time management system.

- The holes that are exposed in your time management system by not having any one of the 7 pieces.

- Practical tips to incorporate any one of the 7 parts of the time management system.

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M: Struggling to be Productive Because You're Working from Home?

I: Help! Cabin Fever is Starting to Take Hold

N: Confused about What to Wear When You are Working from Home?

D: Working from Home – Lots of Time – Not Sure Where to Start?

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E: It is Hard to Know How People Feel when they Work from Home

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G: Frustrated Because You Know You Need to Coach Your People – Goal 

R: Frustrated Because You Know You Need to Coach Your People – Reality

O: Frustrated Because You Know You Need to Coach Your People – Options

W: Frustrated Because You Know You Need to Coach Your People – Way Forward

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2: Personal Development Plan – Not Sure What to Start? Part #2

3: Personal Development Plan – Not Sure What to Start? Part #3

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2: The Cunning 4 Stage Sales Plan by Geoff Burch – Part #2 

3: The Cunning 4 Stage Sales Plan by Geoff Burch – Part #3 

4: The Cunning 4 Stage Sales Plan by Geoff Burch – Part #4 

M: Having a Mental Health Conversation Bothers Me – Part #1: Mindset 

I: Having a Mental Health Conversation Bothers Me – Part #2: Importance

N: Having a Mental Health Conversation Bothers Me – Part #3: Network

Sticky Learning Lunches #42: Think You Don't Need to Attend This Webinar?

This 7-part model will help you to find out what is wrong with your time management.

You will learn:

- Each of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- How each part is essential to creating an effective time management system.

- The holes that are exposed in your time management system by not having any one of the 7 pieces.

- Practical tips to incorporate any one of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- The strengths and weaknesses of your time management system.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Oh God, there we are. Congratulations we made it. Welcome to Monday. Excited to be here. Excited to be sharing. Excited to see so many wonderful, beautiful people already. We're just as always gonna wait for the last few people just to arrive in the room, get themselves ready. Abby, thank you for being here. Colin, as always appreciated. Fabian, wonderful to see you again. Tim, Victoria, thank you so very much. I'm just looking down at the list of people coming into the room.

Nathan Simmonds:

It's Monday, it's beautiful weather outside. I hope you have sunshine where you are, so you give it 30 seconds. Good afternoon, Darren. On a scale of one to 10, for all your wonderful people that are here, how are we feeling about this week? One terrible, 10, fully, you know, primed. Ready to go? How are we feeling about this week? Got some tens. Got some eight. Strong nine. Nice, strong nine. What, what's stopping it from being a 10? Victoria? If it's a strong nine, what would make it a 10?

Improve your time management skills

 

Darren Smith:

Good.

Nathan Simmonds:

To see you, Rihanna. Thank you for joining. I hope I pronounced that right, not having so many back to backs. Agreed. We've talked a little bit about that inside the time management side of things. Let's just make, you know, one thing we can be making sure is know, giving ourselves a little bit of breather to decompress from one meeting and declutter. And then get those things off, you know, captured on the right lists, uh, and and stored in the right way. And then give us those a few minutes to get to the next session. So actually we've got a clear mind.

Nathan Simmonds:

Next week is better. Nice. Good. Let's dive in. Gotta make sure I've got all the right pens in the right places. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning Lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM Making Business Matter, the home of sticky learning and the provider of leadership development and soft skills to the grocery and manufacturing industry. Idea of these lunches is to give you 20 to 30 minutes of micro learning is gonna help you be the best version of you in the work that you do from wherever you are right now, whether that's at home or whether that is that you've returned to the office or that you are, you know, in the middle of those two spaces.

Nathan Simmonds:

Just some core content that's is gonna help you raise your awareness, raise your thinking, and raise your impact. So first things first, let's get you set up for success. As always, mobile phones, let's make sure they are on flight mode. Little airplane is lit. Zero out the distraction, a hundred percent attention. Also, as always, fresh page, fresh thinking. Let's make sure you've got a nice clean sheet there so that you can document your thinking. Top of that page, you're gonna write keepers and these are the things that you wanna remember, that you want to be reminded of so you can reignite that new thinking when you go back and reread it.

Nathan Simmonds:

Drinks, I've got my herbal tea here. Make sure you're hydrated and you're keeping the brain lubricated. Before we even dive into this, I'm gonna make sure that I do this now with you right now. If you have not signed up for tomorrow's session, the link for tomorrow's sticky learning lunch is gonna be in the chat box. Now, if you haven't registered, now is the time to go and make sure you are registered for tomorrow to make sure you are in the room live for hurdle number seven, as we bring time management to a close tomorrow.

Nathan Simmonds:

So that link's gonna be available in the box for you. I just wanna make sure you've got that link. You're primed ready for tomorrow, so you're gonna be receiving that information. Where are we going? I think that's everything. I think that's everything. I think we're prepped for today's session.

Nathan Simmonds:

What are we covering today? This is hurdle number six of the time management training session, which is all about scheduling and it's all about making sure that you are getting the right things in the right places so that you can take the action at the right time. Or we'd be reminded to take the action at the right time. Quick flow through what we've already covered. I'm gonna do this quite small because I've got quite a bit to cover up here. We've got capturing, these are the points where the information comes in, whether that's our email or text message, whatever that's coming in.

Nathan Simmonds:

The next thing here he says is emptying. Making sure we're clearing our capture points. We have deleting is making sure that we're stopping things from coming into that flow if we don't need it, 'cause it's wasting our time or making sure we're removing things that don't need to be there. Emptying then comes down to listing, making sure that we're taking things off of here and putting them into the relevant lists so we know where they are to take the action in here. We then have storing and then we also have over here. What we're gonna be covering today is our scheduling,

Nathan Simmonds:

And then we also have our action. So as the saying goes, all, all roads lead to Rome, but when it comes to time management, all roads lead to action. Okay, so these are the flow of the, of the seven hurdles we often experience and where they come in. And we've already covered a lot of of these and we're now getting into the scheduling side of things. The key part, and this is a lesson, a vital lesson that I've learned, uh, repeatedly in previous jobs and previous experience, is the first thing that we need to be looking at is making sure that we've got a centralized point.

Nathan Simmonds:

How many people here are managing more than one diary? Yes or no? If you're managing more than one diary, yes. Home and work good. Yes, yes. Good. Lots of yeses. Who here is manage them? Managing them on separate systems? So both of those diaries, those calendars are completely separate of each other, yes or no? Yes. Yes. Who here then has experienced a challenge in those where you've forgotten to put one thing on the other and you've caused yourself a double booking? Yes or no? Yes. Yes. .

Nathan Simmonds:

And it is frustrating. Um, a because you know, it's your own actions that of caused this to happen. It was an oversight, um, caused by yourself in this. There is no one else to blame there, you know, it is because you then feel you maybe let the other person down because of that, that, that lack of foresight or you know, the ability to, to sync those two elements, who hears experience, these emotions come that are coming up when they've been in this experience. Yes or no, it's painful and it's a painful lesson to keep learning.

Nathan Simmonds:

So what we talk about is, or the ideal is that we have our capture points, we empty them, and when we want to get 'em into a schedule that we have a centralized point where we can see everything that's going on. We want to give ourselves as much support as possible in making sure that we can take the, all the actions we need to get done. The moment that we start to separate things and we start to pull them apart, it becomes just that little bit more difficult because we're having to constantly look at two things and try and calibrate what's going on to make sure we take the right action.

Nathan Simmonds:

This make sense so far? And I'm just gonna just check on my slides in a minute because I'm gonna share my screen in a second. I'll give you a prime example. Previous job that I was working in, um, and I've been working in, in multiple, um, there's multiple elements of the work that I do. I was working full-time, pretty much over here. Um, I'm also working as a trainer. This was some time ago. Um, with MBM, I'm also running my own business over here, but I'm trying to manage two different diaries because I've got the work diary over here for the day job.

Nathan Simmonds:

And then I've also got my extra, um, responsibilities over here as I've started to transition. And I'm trying to keep certain things separate because this is my diary, this is my work, this is what, you know, and this is the, this is the day job. And then what would happen is I would have something coming over here, but because it wasn't in front of me on my, um, where I was on my nine to five, reminded me at lunchtime that I would be doing this.

Nathan Simmonds:

I would then fall down over here and a prospective client. I be then late for that conversation or the conversation wouldn't happen. And then I'd be frustrated at myself because I actually haven't, you know, delivered on the promise that I said to them, you know, I haven't set an expectation clearly with them or I've got something over here, you know, in my personal diary that's outside of, you know, the nine to five. It might be a webinar or some training that I'm doing within that clashes with something that's going on over here on the home diary.

Nathan Simmonds:

We know with what's going on with my daughter. So maybe I was meant to be taking my daughter to dance class, but actually there's a live training that I need to be in. Okay, there's a problem here. So we start to see by having these three structures in place, or these three points that I had, where we start to get conflict in those elements and then we

Sticky Learning Lunches #41: Think You Don't Need to Attend This Webinar?

This 7-part model will help you to find out what is wrong with your time management.

You will learn:

- Each of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- How each part is essential to creating an effective time management system.

- The holes that are exposed in your time management system by not having any one of the 7 pieces.

- Practical tips to incorporate any one of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- The strengths and weaknesses of your time management system.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to today's Sticky Learning Lunch. Good afternoon, Colin. Good to see you, Fabian. Thank you, Howard. Tim, vj, good to see you again. Thanks for being here. Bas around. Thank you for being here. We're just gonna give you a couple of minutes while more people are arriving. Just conscious of time. So I know a couple of people are still coming into the room. Let's just give that a moment just to settle.

Nathan Simmonds:

Looking forward to today's session. Excited to be here. Let's get everyone set up for success as always. Let's make sure I can see what's going on. Good afternoon, Anne. Good to see you. Let's dive in and as the other people start as, as they are still arriving, let's let them get into the room. But let's make sure we are setting ourselves up for success in this space right now. As always, there's a phone call, not always, but there was a phone call from my mum. I'll have to speak to her later. Um, let's make sure. Mobile phone.

Nathan Simmonds:

So let's get this on flight mode. Zero out the distraction, a hundred percent attention. I'll speak to my mum later. Also, making sure you've got a drink available. Staying hydrated, keeping the brain fluid and moving so that we can ma maximize the, uh, the development and the learning that's happening here. Hello Gina. Hello, Gareth. Good to see you both again. Thank you very much for being here. Fresh page, fresh thinking. Let's make sure we're setting up that notepad in the right way so you get the right information.

Improve your time management skills with these 7 hurdles

 

Nathan Simmonds:

At the top of the page, you're gonna write keepers and these are the things you wanna remember. Remind yourself and reignite as you go back and reread those notes to, to, to create new ideas, new thoughts from the learnings that you get from today. And it helps to embed that learning and make it really stick and, and support that behavioral change that helps you to deliver a better result next time.

Nathan Simmonds:

All set, he says, got the right color. Pens in hand, I think. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM making Business Matter, the home of Sticky Learning. And we are the leadership skills and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industry. I do with these lunchtime sessions is to give you 20 to 30 minutes of core content that's gonna help you be the best version of you in the work that you do, whether that's at home or if it's you returning back to the office after this current situation.

Nathan Simmonds:

It. Let's get into this part. Where are we now? Uh, 1, 2, 3, 4, part five. Part five is hurdle number five of time management. So let's give you a super fast rundown of what's going on. I can see some regular faces here. So we are at hurdle number five. Question for you all for to to, to light up the questions box with what have you got so far that's at the top of your list that you want to prioritize or action or make sure you embed that's gonna help you improve your time management?

Nathan Simmonds:

What's one thing that you've taken away from these recent sessions that's helping to improve your time management right now? Let's see those in the questions box and see what's changing in the world for you all as a result of these sticky learning lunches. Good afternoon, Abby. Clearer capturing and emptying time. Absolutely clearer capture and empty, nice collating less and emptying. Good.

Nathan Simmonds:

We're gonna talk a little bit more about some of this collation piece today. Interesting because I started looking at some of my own behaviors a little bit deeper as I was preparing this content. What's one thing you are doing differently as a result of these recent sticky learnings as those are coming in, let's have a quick recap on what we've covered so far. Number one, capturing number two, emptying.

Nathan Simmonds:

So your capturing is making is, is the points in time where information comes in, whether it's in your car, at your email. And we're gonna talk about an analogy here of the, the waiter in the restaurant. What that capture point is at the table. Emptying is making sure that we are emptying these, these capture points regularly.

Nathan Simmonds:

And deleting is making sure that we're taking things out and crossing 'em off and removing them at the right time so they're not cluttering up, but also removing things before they come into us. Um, so do we need to be on that email chain because actually we're wasting huge amounts of time just deleting emails we didn't need to receive in the first place. Listing, making sure that we're taking things out of these spaces and putting them into the right lists.

Nathan Simmonds:

And do we have enough lists and do we trust the lists that we've got storing? So are we storing the right information and keeping hold of it? Scheduling? Are we putting it into the agenda to make sure it's happened or going to happen? And then how do we make sure we action it? So that's our flow chart for where we need to be. Again, super fast, we covered this in a couple of minutes every session, just so you can start to see it, feel it and remember it. What we've done, what we've covered off, we covered capturing, emptying, listing, deleting, and now we're now onto storing,

Nathan Simmonds:

As I have said. And I will say again, and this is where it's really important, there are no prizes for attempting to remember everything that is going on in your day. Okay? The only thing that we get in relation to trying to remember everything that's happening at every single point in time is a hard time when we forget the things. You know, no one's given us a packet of Harry Bow or packet of sweetss or a bottle of wine for remembering everything that we get given in the day or you know, for the actions or emails that we get.

Nathan Simmonds:

So we have to have that system in place and a system that we trust so that we can maximize our efforts and our outputs without fear of retribution or reprimand because of what we didn't get at the right place from the already from these first places, from these first points in this flow. So it's key that you are emptying your head. Uh, the most successful people are the ones with the emptiest heads. Why? Because they've got the space to think they've got the mental bandwidth.

Nathan Simmonds:

And you may have heard me use this phrase previously and it is about having that mental bandwidth, you know, and it's the same as your, as your broadband as it comes into the house. You know, you can see the little arrows on your phone going up and down or on your laptop now. How much are you downloading? How much are you uploading? And that speed is in the relation to how much bandwidth you have.

Nathan Simmonds:

And we as human beings believe that we have a very certain, we have a finite amount of bandwidth and we have to test it regularly and stretch our capabilities, which enables us to do more. But when we have too many things, because we don't trust, especially our own system and where certain elements are being held that bandwidth, now it starts to get really tested and we don't feel comfortable with what's coming in or what's going out and we start to feel like things are getting dropped.

Nathan Simmonds:

And that's when our, you know, our stress pot starts to fill up and then we start to have more challenges like mentally more than physically. It always starts with a thought though I can't do this or I forgot that I should have been doing this. And we get caught in this kind of, um, washing machine cycle of being, you know, going through kind of that, that that change curve of frustration, agitation, and and upset. But all the time we're sitting in that washing machine, we're not actually taking the next action that's moving us out of that.

Nathan Simmonds:

So when we understand, you know, that bandwidth, let's support how much we are capable of, let's make sure that we're getting things out of here, deleting that. So it's freeing up some extra space over here that enables us to think a little bit faster and a little bit more fluid, um, and a little bit more focused on what it is we can do and what it is we are doing. I hope this makes sense. Let's free up some of that mental bandwidth. He says. So number one, as always, well not always, but is empty your head

Nathan Simmonds:

And that's referring back to some of these previous elements. Before we even get into this storing phase, I make sure that's being clear. Emptying the capture points, deleting the stuff that you don't need to be working with and keep that thinking fluid. Okay? Um, there was a thought came in and it went really quickly or come back to it when it comes back to me.

Nathan Simmonds:

So the first thing is, empty your head. Keep your space as clear as possible. Declutter the thinking, reminding yesterday, what are you, you know, what are you saying yes to keeping some of that space here. Now what are you saying? How many times are you saying yes wisely to things so you can increase your capacity on your bandwidth to focus on certain things and give it your fuller attention.

Nathan Simmonds:

Number two, he says, where are you emptying to? What do we mean by this? All this stuff coming in....

Sticky Learning Lunches #40: Think You Don't Need to Attend This Webinar?

This 7-part model will help you to find out what is wrong with your time management.

You will learn:

- Each of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- How each part is essential to creating an effective time management system.

- The holes that are exposed in your time management system by not having any one of the 7 pieces.

- Practical tips to incorporate any one of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- The strengths and weaknesses of your time management system.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Where's that button? Let's go. Share screen. We are in sticky learning. Lunch people, good to be here. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning Lunch. We've got that midweek feeling, which I don't believe in. We've got a handful of people that have arrived. We're just waiting for the next few people to come in, as always. Abby, hello again, Abby. Good to see you. Colin. Thank you for being here, Fabian. Very welcome as always. Lynn. Good to see you again. Petra, thank you very much for being here Again, Tim, Tracy, Victoria. Beautiful. Thank you so much for your investment in yourself and engaging with the content today. Just a few more seconds while we get those people in the room.

Improve your time management skills with these 7 hurdles

 

Nathan Simmonds:

Another mouthful of tea. And then we're gonna dive into today's content. Let's get ourselves set up while we're just waiting for those to arrive. As always, never changes. It's the same distractions that we always put into our days. Mobile phones, flight mode. Zero outta distraction. A hundred percent attention. Ah, making sure you've got drinks, you are hydrated. Couple more people arriving. Jane's arrived. Good to see you. Thank you for being here, Jane.

Nathan Simmonds:

Fresh page, fresh thinking at the top of the page for today's learning is hurdle number four. It's all about the ing and we're gonna break that down in a minute just to help you with some ideas and habits that potentially have formed and calcified over time, which is actually wasting your time. So we're gonna look a little bit into this. We're gonna look, build some skills from yesterday a little bit further, and we're gonna look at some of those habits that are built over time or Colin's saying's. Got no audio, Colin's, that's all right.

Nathan Simmonds:

Colin's gone out and come back in. Can everyone else hear me? Yes or no? Yes, yes, yes. Good. Ready to highlight more areas that can improve on, that's what we are here for. That is what we are here for. Good. Let's dive in and do this. Let's get the intros flying as we always do. And for those that arrive in a minute, they can get caught off in just a second. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM, making Business Matter, home of Sticky Learning.

Nathan Simmonds:

And we are the leadership development and soft skills provider for the grocery and manufacturing industry. Idea of these sessions is to give you new ideas, new concepts and approaches that are gonna help you be the best version of you in the work that you do. Whether it's right now while you're at home and or while you are preparing to return back to work after whatever situation you are currently in. Wherever you are around the world. Fingers crossed, staying safe, staying well. This session is all about as part four of our time management and our, uh, our hurdles that we experience in time management.

Nathan Simmonds:

So we've already covered, I'm gonna go through the flow chart again just so we've got it and we're embedding this, um, for each of these sessions, top one as we've got it is capturing where are we actually capturing the information? Where is that information um, happening? Is it in the meeting? Is it in our email? Is it a voicemail? Is it, um, a, a voice recording process? Wherever that idea is, wherever that action is, the capture point is where it's dropping into our time management system that we're looking after.

Nathan Simmonds:

Step two, emptying. We talked a bit about this yesterday in part three, uh, and it's all about how you empty those capture points and are you doing it at regular points o of time? Do you trust that you are going to those capture points at the right time and making sure that you are getting that information out and you are turning it into the relevant actions or getting it into the right lists and listing sits over here. So making sure you are doing that. Today's session is gonna be about deleting,

Nathan Simmonds:

Which we're gonna talk about a little bit further. So these are the first four key obstacles or hurdles that we experience in our time management system and some of us I'm hoping. Let's, let's have a quick rundown. What things have you picked up from the first three sessions to notice where your time management is falling down? Let's see at least one thing from everybody in the room. That means everybody here. One thing that you know, um, or notice from the last couple of sessions where you've fallen or you are falling down in your time management system.

Nathan Simmonds:

Next area we've got here is storing of all those are coming in. I'll finish the flow chart off for you. Scheduling, we speak for themselves and then we've got action whistle. Stop tour of the time management flow chart. So what have we got? Being more aware of how and where to capture. Beautiful , too many lists. Victoria, amazing. Drill 'em down. Too many unconnected capture points that in itself is amazing.

Nathan Simmonds:

Reduce the ones that you can't trust. Connect the ones that you can trust. Ignoring distractions when other emails come in. Good, good, good, good, good. Learning how to do that arm my catch point's. Working. Good question. Not attending the others saying, no, I procrastinate about eating a frog when it's technology based. Good, good, good, good.

Nathan Simmonds:

There's been lots of learnings that have come out of these sticky lunches and that's why I've enjoyed doing them so much. But where are we going to next? What we're looking at today is we're looking at deleting and that's helping us to delete some of those distractions which have already come up in that, in that box there, helping us to delete things out that are actually causing us to, um, to stumble or causing us to look in the wrong direction. 'cause again, they're starting to build up different habits. They're starting to calcify because they became the norm.

Nathan Simmonds:

Um, and we're gonna break that down a little bit further. One thing that I wanted to share with you and dive back into briefly from yesterday's section, I'm just gonna share my screen with you. Can you let me know if you can see it or not? Yes or no? Wait for those to come in just to make sure you're all with me. Can you see my screen? Good. Okay. So the first thing I wanted to look at today, number one, it's looking at triggers for emptying. So overlapping where we were talking about yesterday triggers for emptying. So helping you to remember .

Nathan Simmonds:

Whenever you are doing something, whenever you get that information. We talked about this in brief yesterday, is making sure that you have the right amount of time in your diary or in your calendar to make sure that when those actions come in, when those items come into your capture point, that you take the appropriate time to get them and empty them. Okay? 'cause if we're not doing that, we end up with a a notebook with actions on different pages at different points, and we've got actions over here on our emails and they're getting piled in on top of.

Nathan Simmonds:

If we're not bringing those into the right place into the right list, we're gonna lose track of those things and it's gonna start becoming damaging and making sure that we have clarity on that. So what we've got here, and this again comes straight off the white paper, we'll drop the link in there for the time management white paper.

Nathan Simmonds:

You can get hold of that and you can get all of these tables and forms in there as well. It's in PDF forms. Do you just copy and paste it out or print it out and just work in the directly. So here, oh, he says, got the triggers in there, what the wrong sheet? Apologies. So making sure that you've got the right triggers in there. I'll talk about this in a second. Looking at the habits of when you are doing those things, is it gonna be when you are picking up that cup of coffee, is it gonna be when you are closing your laptop at the end of the day?

Nathan Simmonds:

Is it um, when you are sitting down with your cup of tea first thing in the morning, what are your trigger points to make sure you are capturing that detail? Okay? So that's the first thing we wanna look at. Where are your trigger points and where are your habits starting to form? And can you start to have it stack? So what this means is it may be that you, I have my 10 o'clock cup of coffee and at 10 o'clock with that cup of coffee, I'm just gonna make sure that I've taken the actions out of that meeting and put them into the right list.

Nathan Simmonds:

Does this make sense with everyone? Yes or no? And then I'm gonna talk about, about this table in just a second. So that's the important, that's the first part with the triggers. The second part is one of the things we ended on the conversation yesterday is the number of times you said yes wisely. So what this means is, and we talked about yesterday, no one ever wants to be told no. So when your boss turns up and says, right, I need you to do this, and the last thing you wanna do is say no, because then you'll be seen as the problem child.

Nathan Simmonds:

Makes sense? So then we have to understand that what we're saying yes to, what are we actually saying no to by saying yes to that thing....

Sticky Learning Lunch #39: Think You Don't Need to Attend This Webinar?

This 7-part model will help you to find out what is wrong with your time management in this episide called I Don't Need to Attend this Webinar Part 3.

You will learn:

- Each of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- How each part is essential to creating an effective time management system.

- The holes that are exposed in your time management system by not having any one of the 7 pieces.

- Practical tips to incorporate any one of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- The strengths and weaknesses of your time management system.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Good afternoon, sticky learning lunch, one o'clock. We are just gonna give it a couple more minutes while we're waiting for people to arrive, just watching and seeing who's entering the ring. So good to see so many friendly regular faces. Thank you very much for being here, Abby. Good to see you again. Alexandra, good to see you again. Thank you for being here, Colin, as always. Thank you Fabian. Gareth, it's amazing. Howard Jane, Samantha, thank you very much for coming back. Samantha, Tim, good to see you again, Vicki Victoria. Amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing right pen in pockets. Let's get ready for this.

Improve your time management with these 7 hurdles

 

Nathan Simmonds:

Might even have a blue pen that might work today. See where we get to. If anything this, no, this sticky learning lunches have done the world of favors for Q Connect on whiteboard markers because I've used a fair few of them for you in these sessions. Last few seconds while we're letting people come in. Everyone as always, mobile phones, you've got 20 minutes. This is a sticky learning lunch. This is all about you. It's not about your messages, it's not about your email, it's not about your pings, beeps, buzzes, whatever. A hundred percent attention on you. So let's zero out the distraction, get it on flight mode and let's make it all about you for 20 to 30 minutes, making sure you're hydrated. I've got drinks available today is brought to you by pucker herbs. Three ginger, very nice too.

Nathan Simmonds:

Helping keep the drone focused and making sure the final one as always. And then hopefully after doing this for six weeks, we've got some of this embedded in fresh sheet, fresh thinking, top of the page keepers, things you wanna remember to remind yourself and reignite that thinking. Let's make this learning stick. Okay? Let's really make some behavioral change here and embed some of this thinking at a deeper level. Ah, a few more people arriving. Good, glad you're all here. So where are we going today? First of all, welcome. Let's get the welcomes in properly. Welcome to this Sticky learning lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM Making Business Matter. Homer sticky learning idea with these lunchtime learnings is to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do.

Nathan Simmonds:

Why? Because we are the leadership development and soft skills provider to the retail and grocery industry. And we wanna share some of these ideas. And these are un uncommon ideas shared in uncommon ways that get uncommon results. Now, if you want average, do what everyone else does. If you want exceptional, do incredible things. And I wanna share some of these ideas that I've learned over 23 years of leadership development and experience and give them to you so that you can help make some of those moves yourself today.

Nathan Simmonds:

Part three of the seven Hurdles of Time Management. So where are we going today? Emptying is where we're going. So quick rundown, quick rundown of where we were before day one, capturing, then we go into emptying here, emptying, and then we go over here and we've got listing. So lifting was day two and we talked about that already.

Nathan Simmonds:

Emptying we're gonna talk about today, although there is an element of emptying in every part of the seven hurdles, whether you are capturing, it's about making sure you are emptying those pockets, which we're gonna talk about today, whether it's your lists and making sure you are emptying those lists, whether it's your schedule and making sure you're going in there and doing those things and making sure you're ticking 'em off and clearing them out.

Nathan Simmonds:

This is the emptying process, so it's important we understand this. Then we've got deleting. I'm gonna get into deleting later on. So from the emptying here, and I've got my little flow chart here down to listing. We've then got our storing and I'm gonna reiterate this several times to make sure that, you know, you see this and you can, you get this flow in your head. Then we've got our schedule and then as always, we've got action

Nathan Simmonds:

Down here. Any more arrows we need to draw in like this. So this is the flow of the seven hurdles and these are often, you know, the elements of our time management system that cause us to get tripped up. So we may be great at capturing, but we're terrible at deleting. We may be great at scheduling, but our lists are awful. So they never really get to that place where we need them. So it's understanding where in the time management system that you have in place that you are, you are hitting these hurdles and what's causing you to trip up.

Nathan Simmonds:

So when you can see these things as the saying goes, you know, one man stumbling block is another man's stepping stone. When you can see where the stumbling block is, then you can make it the stepping stone. Then you can understand what it is you need to shift about this thing to make the move that you need to, to get where you need to be.

Nathan Simmonds:

So let's get into this a bit deeper. What is emptying primarily when we're at the top of this flow emptying is about the regular connection into where you are capturing information. So wherever your capture points are, and we talked about them a little bit yesterday and in part one as well. So wherever your capture points are is making sure you are going in at the right time to empty those capture points.

Nathan Simmonds:

The analogy that I used on on Friday in part one, it's like a snooker table and each of the pockets is one of your capture points and they're relevant at the right time for the right color of balls on the table to go into. And depending where you are in the situation depends on which one of those capture points that you'll use. But when you look underneath the snooker table, what you'll notice is there's a little wire rack where the balls drop into and they're stored. Everyone with me on this analogy. Everyone knows how snooper table works or a home pool table works. Yes or no?

Nathan Simmonds:

See that? To make sure everyone's with me on this analogy? If not, I'll find a different one. Got some? Yes, it's good. Good, good, good. They all seem to come in at the same time. It must be my internet. So when you look under the table and you can see all the balls lined up, eventually what happens is though that pocket starts to back up and the balls that you are trying to, you know, earn points with will no longer go into that pocket. So you have to clear them down. So it's vital that when we understand that when we've been doing our capturing that we move to emptying and we clear those pockets to clear out any stuff that's sitting in there, then we can make a decision. Do we want to send it to listing? Do we wanna store it for later?

Nathan Simmonds:

Everyone with me on this? Yes or no? Good, good, good, good. This may seem fairly straightforward, this is the fundamentals. You know, if we can't see these things, we know we, we've got a, an issue where we are handling some of the stuff that's coming in. But what is healthy emptying? How many times are you a day? Let's say let's go through a day. How many times a day are you taking things out of your email or our notes from meetings? How many times are you how many, what's your frequency, shall we say, of points where you are emptying things out and trying to get them to list? How often are you doing this?

Nathan Simmonds:

Let's call some of the gray matter to have a bit of reflection about what we're doing on a daily basis. Email constantly. Good list, not frequently enough. No set time, good, end of the day, fantastic. Not enough generally when it's backed up on full. Okay, we are hitting some, no, some clear understandings here. We've got some challenges. Try to schedule, but often it's throughout the day. Okay, good. We've got a nice variation of stuff that's happening here. How many people? We've got a show of yes or nos.

Nathan Simmonds:

You are working on your computer, you are, you are processing something. Know you've got something on your to do list. Email comes in pinging you look at the email, there's something to do in there. It's like, oh, and that may be your boss or you know, it might seem like it's some sort of important, we'll put that in floating speech mark. Action or activity. And as a result of that distraction, you then start doing that. How many people do this on a daily basis? Yes or no?

Nathan Simmonds:

Yes. With explanation marks yes. After, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. So what happens is you'll be working on something here, maybe that's on your list, on your, to-do list, something else comes in, you start working on that, but you haven't finished this. What's the problem that's starting to happen here? This one then goes to one side, you start working on this. Totally distracted. Absolutely been trying to complete a task since 9:00 AM that should have been taken 30 minutes.

Nathan Simmonds:

Jane, I'm I'm no, thank you. I appreciate you being here. got snooker balls back up. Absolutely. So this thing over here is kind of just, you know, worrying around. Nothing's happening. We've done a bit of work and then we're doing this and