Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor® blog at Retaildoc.com

My mom is from Virginia.  She tells stories of growing up with her seven brothers and sisters baking two or three loaves of bread, two or three pies, rolls and cakes for Sunday dinner. Even as a single mom, she often made bread or rolls for us on weekends.  I’d watch her as I got older; she never used a recipe.  ”Why not?”I once asked.

“Don’t need it, its basic science what has to go in and what proportions.”  She was after all a science teacher.

I thought about her baking recently as I heard more predictions of businesses needing to do “more with less” in 2010.  In fact a Google search resulted in over six million results. More with less.

If you add more flour to bread dough, it won’t rise. Why? Because the yeast can’t lift the added weight.  If you cut the yeast in half and use the same amount of flour, the dough won’t work either. In either case, less is still less – something suffers.

So how can you get more with less?  Entrepreneurs are still wearing too many hats; are they supposed to put on another one?  Instead of adding staff, are retailers supposed to give existing staff even more responsibilities?  Is a store department manager supposed to manage an additional department’s employees?

In all of these cases, something has to give because the reality is, less is still less.

This reminds me of another old saying I heard a lot at NRF recently, “perception is reality.” No, only reality is reality. If I perceive I’m Tom Cruise – sorry – it doesn’t make me Tom Cruise. I think that makes me delusional.  Only reality is reality.

Doing less with more, cutting past the fluff and the fat into the marrow, has led to:

• Deterioration of basic merchandising and display techniques
• Deterioration of hiring standards
• Less people on the sales floor
• Less training by the few who run the sales floor
• An emphasis on looking backwards at data rather than selling in the moment

So what should you do? Make a list every morning of what you want to accomplish.  Next prioritize it.  Work through your list.  What is left each day may be insignificant or major.  After awhile, you’ll probably see that many major things were left undone.

I think we’ve seen plenty of “profitable” companies crowing how they are doing more with less.  Really or are they just doing less?

For many retail businesses, the bread’s in the pain – waiting to rise to the occasion or sit. What’s your choice going to be?

Tweet This Post