Andy Raynor - Beyond the Brief
Andy Raynor's blog
Numbers vs. people
A retail book? Why is that relevant to us? Read to the end*....
There’s a business I’ve heard of that has a perfect costing system. It knows the price of everything it buys, and it relates it all to the work it does for its clients. How wonderful is that?
It questions every last cent that people try to spend and, if it can’t stop them, it takes that every last cent and puts it in a big computer to say where it should go. And if it can’t find a product to send it to, it adds the little cost up with all the other orphan overheads and looks at the number of customers and allocates it fairly. It does it all properly, and it is proud of what it does.
But it might not matter a damn.
Because costing isn’t pricing and numbers aren’t people. Your costs have to fit into the price* you can sell at, not the other way round.
And – here’s the circle – the price you can sell depends on the quality of the customer experience and that rests on the human skills of your people in making and keeping relationships.
By all means number the squares of paper in the washroom if you can motivate and lift your people at the same time. Just don’t fall into the trap of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.
*This has some real resonance today, as the removal of legal aid means lawyers are more than ever having to price in a competitive high street market. I've followed these developments over the last few years and we should have made progress. I listened to a debate between a traditional legal firm and new ABS entrant this morning......and we haven't.
The penny has failed to drop. Parts of the law are now retail, pure and simple. This is no different to the issues that are facing the whole of the retail market. Whilst it's painful to compare your tweedy practice to TK Maxx, that's where your clients shop now. What makes them successful? Where are the proper retail advisers that should be brought in to redefine the market?
Professionals are hard to convert to retailers. This is a big opportunity for someone.
Tell me what you think at andy@andypraynor.com
And take a look at what's been said before by looking in the archive:
© Andy Raynor 2013