Dreams.
Mike Clare founded Dreams with £20,000, and twenty years later sold it for £222million.
He will share how he built his business to be the biggest in its sector at EA Masters* on 7th November, and his fascinating lessons are applicable to all businesses.
Take this very simple one for example.
“For every ten stores we opened, we’d have eight that performed to expectations, one that was a star and one that was a dog. The trick was to learn from the stars as well as the dogs.”
Mike and his team used to analyse why the “dogs” were underperforming. It might be that a competitor was in close proximity, or there was insufficient parking, or the advertising wasn’t working.
Whatever the reason, solutions would be sought, found and implemented.
But what really made the biggest difference, was analysing why the star stores were stars. More often than not, it was down to the manager of the store.
Time and again we see this, where in near identical situations: same brand, same size team, same product/service, same price, same market demographics, near enough same everything; the difference comes down to the frontline leader.
Applying this formula over and again, only three out of 200 Dreams stores lost money.
If you have an underperforming part of your business, then yes, start with looking at competition, market positioning, marketing communications, operations, and fix anything that needs to be, but almost always the biggest improvement will come when you change the manager/leader.
*Meet Mike Clare and many other highly successful business leaders from both the property and other sectors at EA Masters in London on 7th November – get your tickets here.
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