What comes up when you search “Lambert Chapman”

In the early days of the internet a search for Lambert Chapman often produced Monty Python’s Buying a Bed due to the fact the Graham Chapman played Mr Lambert in that sketch. As our internet presence has increased such memories have diminished, or at least slipped from page 1 of the search engine, but with our entry into film not only has the reference returned but with links to the sketch on YouTube.

The sketch itself shows how life has changed since Messrs Chapman, Cleese, Palin, Jones, Idle and Gilliam sat down to write their material. These days buying a bed would probably involve much internet surfing – and possibly purchasing – before visiting a shop. Staff would be thinner on the ground and the store would probably sell just beds rather than be the type of department store that the newly weds run into.

Attitudes have also changed. Many in the retail trade will no doubt take offence at the sales assistants portrayed in the sketch rather than just enjoy the humour of the moment. When we watch once we have worked out what is going on we compute the numbers as we go along without thinking.  

Interestingly Harry Hill focused on the poor maths of the Young Apprentice contestants in his Saturday show by reciting the four times table with the answers to the five times (and its quite hard to do). No doubt they would find it hard to keep up speed with the dimensions and prices.

So let’s wait no longer. Buying a Bed by Monty Python starring Terry Jones as the Bridegroom, Graham Chapman as Mr Lambert, Eric Idle as Mr Verity, John Cleese and Michael Palin as the singing sales assistants and Carol Cleveland as the Bride.  

A Farmer’s Life for Me both enjoyable and relevant to small business

Jimmy Doherty’s final BBC programme “A Farmer’s Life For Me” concluded last week with Ray and Jane, one of the nine original couples taking the 25 acre farm for a year. The program covered a variety of farming aspects looking predominantly at animals and poultry but also covering important husbandry aspects of the land. 

In many ways it was a land based version of The Apprentice with Jimmy acting more as a tutor than Sir Alan Sugar and Paul Kelly playing the part of Margaret, sorry Karen, no Nick Hewer! As a first series I thought it did a good job in showing the contestants how hard they were going to have to work and making them work together to win the tasks. 

In many ways this is where The Apprentice falls down due to the contestants backing away from the teamwork ethos in an attempt to score points over others in their team yet here each couple needed to think through strategies together before implementing them. 

The winners were also a bit of a surprise as they had started badly and not been widely seen as winning material. They were also not the best team at coming up with ideas for the required products yet had spade loads of some extremely important attributes; hard work and application. In the final this paid off well for them in the penning and splitting of the sheep. 

Whilst both teams made some mistakes in this part of the task a more methodical approach paid off while Ian and Sue tried to be too careful and took far too long to get the job done. Each week Ian and Sue did extremely well in coming up with ideas for products and the required marketing of them but in the final they relied too heavily on one product to carry them through.

This was where Ray and Jane struggled a little. To be fair there was always pressure on them to achieve and many of the couples had difficulty in coming up with new ideas. It’s easy for us at home to criticise but I know how difficult I would find it to put ideas on a clean sheet of paper in so little time with so much riding upon it. 

Having won the competition that pressure releases somewhat and allows time for them to complete things and top and tail ideas properly. What the show did do was set out a number of things that can be extremely valuable for small businesses.

1 Planning is vital.

When we undertake audits nearly a third of the time is spent in planning the job properly. Whilst this is probably more time than in other fields planning can often be overlooked with people piling in to the task without any idea how it is all going to come together.

The three semi finalists suffered this on the strawberry picking challenge when they all got excited at early sales and took their eye off the picking part of the task. Furthermore why did all the men get put in charge of the van and delivering the product?

At the end of the day delivery, whilst important, is a straight forward process and had the men stayed behind they might have driven on their pickers harder by leading from the front in short bursts. That’s not to say that the ladies could not do that but they didn’t until Jimmy gave them an appropriate ticking off.

2. Get the balance right by decision making

People are always frightened about making a bad decision yet a bad decision is one that has been taken and can often be changed. Fear is a terrible thing and fear of failure can freeze a decision making process.  

Yet we don’t seem to get trained to make decisions at all and consequently often we take too long to arrive at one if we do at all. In one episode fireman Dean spent forever looking at his computer in search of a font leading to a niggly argument with his partner. 

Yet Dean was brilliant in an early show when he came across a fire at a farm and assisted in putting it right. He took loads of decisions then but probably didn’t think he made any as he just went into overdrive and took control of the situation.

3. Agree Jobs

It sounds too easy to say but planning should provide this so that everyone knows what they are doing. All too often a person can lead and have everyone else watching them work. If it ends up like this then there is no teamwork and consequently the time – in this case was halved – or can be extended dreadfully if it is a task that needs to be completed. In these reality shows the task is incomplete and risks your future in the program but in real terms work will get put back and risks overtime costs. 

4. Break down your time

We all underestimate our time when we plan a job because we cannot appreciate just how long things will take. Blank canvas jobs are a real time sapper so you need, if you can, to look at other aspects which can be planned to work back to what you might have available for them. 

5. Work hard on your costs

The secret to most business success is buying well. If you can do this then you give yourself more chance of a better margin. In these programs it is surprising how bullish people are in what they can sell only to immediately cave in when the selling process begins. Taking a more cautious approach is often the best way.

6. Bear in mind what you are working with

In this case it was animals and we all know how challenging they can be. In the final both couples forgot the effect we humans have on them and the sheep became terrified and at risk to injury. Unfortunately easy mistakes to make by the inexperienced. 

7. Some business experience is essential

Yet how do we get this? It is difficult talking to experienced traders like Jimmy and Paul about unit sales and margins when you have never done it before. Ian and Sue were in a better position to do this than Ray and Jane from their previous jobs and after poor sales on the tasks they were concerned to overestimate and end up with waste.   

Interestingly in both couples the women were the driving force. Certainly Sue was the brains of the unit and often allowed Ian to do other things while she got on with it and at their final interview he pushed the figures over to her. For the winners Jane was the more vocal but got involved in all of the tasks supporting Ray really well on the physical aspects. They appeared to have no business experience at all from their previous lives and have a lot to learn but have proved throughout the series that they are willing to listen and learn.  

The program has a winning formula and like Adam’s Farm on Countryfile showed us the general public a lot of information about how the industry works. As we know at Lambert Chapman LLP showing how things work in agriculture is no bad thing for us the public to see so that we can feel comfortable with the processes adopted and look out for products that might have passed us by had we not been shown them. 

Jimmy has certainly grown into a mature presenter and in this series he sometimes struggled to deal with the sending home as he had got to know the contestants and knew how keen all were to live the dream. He also had a good rapport with Paul Kelly throughout and got all of the experts talking to the camera so that the information came across.  

I would hope that Jimmy visits Ray and Jane throughout their year to see how they are getting on though with the move to Channel 4 this might not be possible. We all appreciate a unit of this size will be difficult to make money from but we also know Ray and Jane will put in all the effort needed to try and make it happen.              

Mary Portas Secret Shopper sends out important message

The latest Mary Portas series “Secret Shopper” carries on from past series looking at how the retail industry can improve itself by acting upon Mary, the Sir John Harvey-Jones of shopping, recommendations. The only difference is that Sir John tried to win over his subjects through discussion and reasoned argument whereas Mary normally relies upon two falls and a submission!

The Secret Shopper formula began with a look at a chain called “Pilot” and arrived very close to home at Braintree Freeport where disillusioned staff were secretly filmed discussing throwing a sickie and walking around the store in an effort to avoid customers. 

Having shown the footage to the Managing Director Mary was despatched back to Braintree to tidy up their act and did so reasonably easily proving that motivation and staff training always pays off. From there Mary offered a makeover of the chain in an effort to bring in extra sales and provide a reason for the chain to want Mary to rip them open in front of the Nation.

Week two saw a visit to CSL a sofa chain currently based in Lancashire and Yorkshire where Mary redesigned the store to give it an “Apple feel” and tried hard to make the sales staff understand that probing questions would be better than overpowering each customer.

These episodes contrasted the difference between the two workforces. The CSL team were relatively successful in making sales and therefore earning commission and motivated to do what they could to sell whereas the Braintree staff were lacking of love and just needed some attention and direction from the management.

In an effort to make the CSL team understand her point Mary took them out to the homes of people they had sold to and asked for feedback. In both cases we saw the customer was not entirely satisfied mainly because the sofa overpowered the space and the visual example started to make sense to many of the team telling them that they needed to think about their tactics. 

That point was a little lost on top salesperson Habib. Here was a confident individual who was earning large commissions doing it the way he had either developed or been trained to use. As the programme developed you could see the confidence flood from him as he either pondered how he could continue to earn a similar amount or just understand the enormity of the change.

Mary did him a grave disservice. She asked him how much he earned and to keep it confidential he whispered it in her ear. Unfortunately the programme makers displayed the sum on the screen and it has been printed in a National newspaper. This is the bad side of Mary’s show. You can’t do that to a participant and though Mary’s team will argue he should have kept his mouth shut if he did not want it revealed you have to think he was mistreated. 

By the end of the show Habib appeared to have become one of the group rather than its leader and this might point to others growing in a less hard sell environment rather than the champion slipping away. Amazingly takings were up 30% on the same day 12 months before. 

The third show looked at “fonehouse” the Mobile Phone chain of Clive Bayker, described as a former member of the rock band Yes. Mary, Clive was a member of Mabel Greer’s Toyshop, of which other Yes men were members, and co wrote some of the tracks on the first two albums but a member of Yes? No!     

Clive owned some of the shops and had also franchised a number. Mary visited both type of store and found some staff members undertrained, lacking in confidence and motivation plus franchisees who had performed really well and made some decent money. 

Like Habib at CSL the franchisees did not fancy any change in tactics as they were successful and knew what they were doing. In fact they presented the store make over as unnecessary and costly for them to the point where it was rejected. Clive went ahead for one of his stores and invited them to visit after which they agreed that maybe it was better and they would go ahead. 

The outcome was that customers preferred sitting down and talking over a table whilst looking at real phones and not the dummy models the high street currently offers. No real surprise there, but it also showed that by changing things around and offering some guidance to the staff that those previously lacking in ability and motivation grasped the opportunity and blossomed. 

After three shows the following is clear:

• Staff need to understand the new concept and be able to buy into it and that those who might have most difficulty will be the high earners who might see their earnings disappearing in the short term and panic,
• All staff need to feel wanted and part of the organisation to prosper. That was shown by the Braintree girls when put into a different environment serving in a busy breakfast restaurant,
• Mary whilst extremely enthusiastic about her topic finds it difficult to stand back at times and let the situation play out. She is always right but can try to beat people into submission rather than win them over.

A one hour programme might need more “beating” than “winning over” to get a result and for this Mary is the person. As a top retail consultant the makeover she provides is worth a lot of money to the business owner receiving it and most agree with the findings and implement them. The costs of the changes can be considerable. Pilot, for example, will need to spend in excess of £1m to bring the new fitting room into all of their stores but if they are successful will hope to recover this in future profitability.

From a business perspective Mary Portas Secret Shopper is like the Charity Shop and Queen of Shops series before it good week night entertainment. But it also has a serious message for all business folk.

Take your staff seriously, provide them with good training and an understanding of what the business requires of them so that they can do their job. If the staff then deliver the customer should receive good service providing them with a delightful experience rather than just plain old satisfaction.  

Well done Mary for bringing business owners this message at an important economic time but please try and respect the confidence of the staff for the remainder of the series.