How ClarusBlue supported Countryside Garden Centre to optimise its business operations and get back to profitability
What makes the difference between success and failure for small businesses?
The majority of the drivers for failures in small businesses are avoidable by knowing the key aspects to focus on, such as knowing what really makes a difference to the top and bottom line, how you can be efficienct without sacrificing quality, and what really makes a great customer experience.
It’s a sad fact that over 50% of small businesses fail within the first 5 years and even worse, about 1 in 5 small businesses don’t survive their first year. But what if you’ve been in business for years, and you need face major challenges as your business evolves? What about if your business is growing at a rate that is hard to control and you need to scale effectively to not diminish that company culture or customer experience that has made you successful. Whatever the situation you’re facing, whether it is a positive challenge or a negative one, knowing who to turn to for support in a small business can be extremely difficult.
For most small business owners, their business is their world and they dedicate their lives to making their business successful. However, many have had minimal exposure, training or experience in what it takes to sustain and grow a business and create the resilience and focus to succeed. As our business world changes faster than ever before, staying ahead of the competition is becoming more and more difficult and dealing with problems is an ever-increasing part of day to day business life.
The majority of the drivers for failures in small businesses are avoidable by knowing the key aspects to focus on, such as knowing what really makes a difference to the top and bottom line, how you can be efficienct without sacrificing quality, and what really makes a great customer experience. Understanding some of the fundamental principles of running an effective business and how to apply these to the challenges you face can make the difference between success and failure.
Steve’s story
“We had some pretty frank and honest discussions about situations in the business, some of which were not easy for me to accept. But the straight talking, yet compassionate approach, combined with a fresh perspective and years of relatable experience, helped me to trust that their interest was in seeing me succeed.”
“I’ve been running Countryside Garden Centre for over 30 years, I have a huge amount of experience and know my industry well. I know gardens and plants inside out and my customers rely on me for advice and ideas to inspire them to create wonderful outdoor spaces. I know every inch of my garden centre as I’ve dedicated mine and my families lives to building our business. However, as I turn 70, I just can’t see how I can retire and how my staff – as good as they are – just don’t seem to have anywhere near my level of experience or expertise.
A few years I was referred to ClarusBlue ago by a friend, as things weren’t going great. The previous year, I’d had to sell my holiday home to pay the staff wages and I felt under huge amounts of pressure to turn things around. I was working ridiculous hours just to keep afloat. I needed to make so many improvements but felt really overwhelmed by it all and just didn’t know where to start.
After listening to my situation and I talked through the challenges I was facing, it was good to be able to share with people who really understood the challenges and to reassure me that what I was facing wasn’t something out of the ordinary. We had some pretty frank and honest discussions about situations in the business, some of which were not easy for me to accept. But the straight talking, yet compassionate approach, combined with a fresh perspective and years of relatable experience, helped me to trust that their interest was in seeing me succeed.
What dawned on me is that I hadn’t been able to see the wood from the trees and half of the battle was just getting the situation out in the open.”
What we did to support Steve
By helping everyone in the business from the customer service staff to the warehouse team, to understand these customer personas and journeys, we were able to help them think independently about what they could do in their role to deliver an amazing customer experience.
The first thing that stood out when we spoke with Steve was the passion he had for his business and what it represented and offered to his customers. The way he described wanting to ‘support and inspire people to create amazing outdoor spaces’ was such a wonderfully compelling and inspring message and purpose for the business. The second thing that stood out to us was how lost this purpose had become in light of the challenges the business had faced over the past years. There was a real disconnect between the way Steve spoke and the way the garden centre operated. To help steve we focused on a number of key areas to help him restore that purpose to the heart of Countryside.
Defining and measuring your purpose: A key reason businesses underperform and fail is a lack of connection between their ‘Why’ and how they measure whether they are achieving that purpose. We started by helping Steve look beyond some of the more obvious metrics of revenue and profit to understand how to measure that they were doing more than just selling things, but also creating a deeper sense of connection, inspiration and loyalty with their customers.
Understanding the customer: While Steve was fantastic with engaging with his customers and insipring them, his concern over the lack of anyone else to take the reins from him was true, largely because there was no mechanism to help everyone in else in the business understand the customer like he did. Through engagement with customers, who were more than happy to share feedback and ideas, we were able to build ‘personas’ of customer groups and what a great customer journey looked like. By helping everyone in the business from the customer service staff to the warehouse team, to understand these customer personas and journeys, we were able to help them think independently about what they could do in their role to deliver an amazing customer experience. Steve even learned a thing or two as well!
Business strategy: Steve had been doing everything he could think of to fix problems in the business. The challenge this created was little sense in what to focus on and where they could succeed. By helping Steve to analyse the market situation and identify gaps in the market that he could exploit to create his own niche aligned, we were able to focus efforts on creating a fresh business strategy that enabled Steve position his outdoor products at the higher end of the market, but also draw in customers that he could cross-sell other products such as locally sourced produce and food products, gifts and indoor plants and decoration for the home.
Operational effectiveness: Steve had a number of areas of his business that just weren’t working and many of his 100+ team were frustrated and demoralized. We conducted ‘pain point’ sessions and identified a number of areas of improvement to optimise processes and team ways of working, and quick wins such as improving re-stocking processes and finding over £16,000 of supplier returns that were just sat gathering dust, enabled us to create the capacity and available funds to address some of the more complex improvement areas.
Staff engagement: The final area we really focused on was re-engagement of Steve’s team. By conducting multiple interviews and surveys, as well as spending time with the team went about their roles, it was clear that they were very loyal to Steve, but felt underinvested in the business. Many saw the job as an acceptable 9-5 for a nice guy, without any real prospects of growth or opportunity. We got Steve to share with the staff the situation that Countryside was in and the vision and the plan he had to turn the business around. Many staff had no idea of the problems, but by sharing and engaging the staff, committing to investing in their development and making them part of the solution, within a matter of days Countryside had a new sense of energy about the place.
What was the impact for Steve and Countryside?
“We made 5x the previous year’s profit in the first 6 months! What was even more satisfying was how my team took responsibility for their areas and showed real leadership in a way I’d never seen before.”
“First of all, having someone to share my ideas with was a revelation. I’d never even shared my thoughts about the business and particularly my struggles with anyone – even my family as I didn’t want to worry them.
Because I’m looking to retire, the ClarusBlue team helped me realise that I needed the senior staff to take charge of their areas – but that meant me letting go and allowing them to make decisions. Even though they often weren’t the decisions I would have made, I came to realise that the decisions weren’t necessarily wrong, just different to mine. I was quite amazed how some of their ideas worked so well and this was absolutely critical to our business success. This sense of responsibility also helped people to step up even more and allow me to steadily step back from the day to day running of the business.
Our in-depth look at the business across so many areas meant that lots of small incremental changes all happened quite quickly and easily. The net effect was staggering and we made 5 times my previous years profit in the first six months – amazing! What was even more inspiring was how my team took responsibility for their areas and showed real leadership in a way I’d never seen before.
Since then, I’ve bought a new holiday home and last year spent at least 6 months of the year there. Finally I get to slow down a little, but can re-immerse myself whenever I feel to do what I really love - helping my customers create wonderful outdoor spaces.”
Would you like to find out more about how you can face challenges in your business?
Whether you’re trying to grow a business and are struggling to scale, or have a business that is struggling to stay afloat, book a free intro call with us to find out how we might be able to help.