Here's What Saks Needs To Do To Fix Their Business

That's the way these LinkedIn posts start ... a "transformational retail expert" will talk about "products customers actually want to buy" ... Good Lord, do we think the folks at Saks read that and say "Yeah, let's try that, let's try to sell something customers actually want to buy, let's get in the war room on Monday and workshop it a bit, all hands on deck for this one!" "Treat the customers better." Great advice. When I worked at Nordstrom we paid sales floor staff 7% of the order ... not surprisingly, customers were treated well, and customers actually wanted to buy what we sold. Are you willing to give non-salaried employees 7% of everything? No, of course not. And that's part of your problem.

Here's something you don't ever read about ... how do you get 16,000 Saks employees to all move in lock-step in a new direction at the same time, harmoniously?

That one is tougher, isn't it?

A half decade ago I received an email from a client that they client mistakenly/accidentally sent to me (this happens all the time, and woo-boy, the stuff I get to read ... Midland Paper comes to mind). The Marketing Executive was lambasting the Management Team because I (Kevin) authored recommendations that the Marketing Executive absolutely did not want to implement. "We're not actually listening to this idiot, are we?" she bellowed to her Management Team. She was right ... they chose to not listen to the idiot. Ideas? Dead. Ideas killed off by one (1) employee. I mean, you can't get your family to agree upon Panda Express or Sonic for a quick, salty, calorie-laden dinner ... so explain to me, LinkedIn gurus, how exactly you will get 16,000 employees to embrace your ideas? Be specific. Show your work.

Early in my time at Eddie Bauer, the CEO passed a note from the company that owned us to my Sr. Vice President. He opened the note, read it, waited for the CEO to leave, looked at me, and said "Yeah, we're never going to do that", crumpled up the note, threw it in the garbage can, then continued his discussion with me. That happens a thousand times a day at big companies. It's happening "at scale" as the pundits say.

There are a small number of dynamic leaders who pull this stuff off. But my goodness, it takes interpersonal gifts of an order of magnitude to get 16,000 people to execute the way you want your company to execute.

P.S.: Do you want your salaried employees to do what you want? Try creating a reasonable bonus structure ... salaried staff get a 20% annual bonus, managers 30%, directors 40%, vice presidents 60%, Sr. Management get more (they always get more). Divide the bonus into three pieces ... a third based on sales gains, a third based on profit improvement, a third based on department goals (like personalizing all email campaigns, for instance). When a manager is earning $100,000 a year and another $30,000 is at risk and $10,000 of the $30,000 is dependent upon personalizing all email campaigns, I promise you from personal experience, things get done.