The Clienteling Podcast
The Clienteling Podcast
Talking Clienteling with John Liebler - Part 1 of 2
John Liebler Interview Pt. 1 of 2
In this episode, John Liebler joins the show and is interviewed by Bryan Amaral. John is a senior executive offering 30+ years of visionary leadership in-store operations, multi-unit management, and operations logistics with brands such as Kay Jewelers, Jared, Peoples Jewelers and Shinola. He is a passionate, motivational leader who builds successful, inspired, and customer-focused sales teams that drive results.
First, John speaks about his definition of clienteling - a technique used by retail sales associates to establish long-term relationships with key customers based on data about their preferences, behaviors, and purchases. It requires salespeople to build a human connection. John says that creating connection it is a lost art form because of all the technology we consume daily. When you create a relationship with the customer, the sale will come as a result of that relationship. John learned relationship building early in his career and has taken these skills and passed them onto his teams in his various leadership roles.
As the technology became available, John built a system to keep track of customer relationships on a whole new level. Working with Clientricity, he developed an internal clienteling system for their business. John discusses how he was able to get organizational buy-in, and a team that was ready for transformation.
John looked at his one-time purchasers. He wanted to build a relationship with them so they would come back and buy one more thing. It was amazing what this alone could do for them. Then, John talks about how online shopping is changing clienteling and shares a story to illustrate diminished store value if you know what you want. People will shop in-person if they are looking for an experience or if they are looking for a 1:1 connection with an associate. Customers will come back in just see the associate that they trust.
Stay tuned to hear John speak about when a clienteling system can go wrong and the difference between clienteling in larger vs. smaller organizations.
Enjoy the show!
Timestamps:
• [01:00] About John Liebler
• [04:00] Why clienteling is so important to John
• [08:40] Building a clienteling system
• [14:05] How online shopping is changing clienteling
• [15:45] Translating the manual process into a clienteling systems approach
• [19:40] Retail is the most rewarding yet challenging job you can have
• [21:00] How a clienteling system can go wrong
• [23:15] The difference clienteling has in larger vs. smaller organizations
Resources:
John’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnliebler1/
John’s Website: https://retailsuccessconsulting.com/
Call John: 330-283-6449
Bryan’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanamaral/
Bryan’s Website: https://www.clientricity.net
Bryan’s Email: bryan@clientelingpodcast.com or bryan@retailtechexec.com
Call Bryan: 404-348-4849
Quotes:
¨ “Clienteling is becoming more important as technology becomes more robust.” -John
¨ “Technology cannot become a distraction.” –John
Hello, everyone. I'm Brian Amaral, and welcome to the Clienteling Podcast. In each episode, we'll be talking to the retail industry's most knowledgeable and successful executives, those luminaries that are creating value at the intersection of retail and technology. In every episode, you'll hear about new, innovative and transformational customer centric ideas that are redefining shopping and creating high value customer experiences. If you haven't already done so, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and let your friends know by liking us on social media. So let's get on with the show. Well, hello, and welcome to the Clienteling Podcast. We have a very special show for you today with an industry leader that's going to be sharing some very valuable insights into what it really takes to implement initiatives that are going to empower your sales team and help you create extraordinary customer experiences. So today we have the honor of having John Liebler on the Clienteling Podcast. Let me tell you a little bit about John. He has over 30 years of retail experience with broad-based store operations, strategy, logistics, customer experience, and store technology. I've seen John in action, and he is one strategic and collaborative business partner, and he really operates at that nexus between retail operations and IT execution. John has a very long storied career in retail. He started out as a full-time salesperson, held nearly every position in the field operations. I think he was divisional vice president of store ops, where he was responsible for over 700K jeweler's field locations. He eventually transitioned over into operations administration role. We oversaw strategy and logistics for a$6 billion specialty retailer with over 3,500 locations throughout North America. And that includes Zale and Jarrett, the Gallery of Jewelers and People's Jewelers. And in this role, John managed retail at scale. I mean, he really was building a big business and was responsible for field communications, field training, field repair, new store openings, corporate policy and procedures, and even the store technology. So John has served in executive level positions for multiple companies in specialty retail, including working with a very hip new brand that some of you may know called Shinola. He's worked in and around luxury retail and, of course, technology consulting. I've always been very impressed with John. He's one heck of a motivational leader, and he really builds highly engaged, customer-focused teams who believe in the power of optimism and the importance of that amazing customer experience. He is passionate, he's dedicated, and he's a real believer in creating a world-class customer experience by embracing a customer-centric, customer-first mindset. This is a man that knows an awful lot about what we're going to be talking about on this programming future programs. So help me welcome John Lieber. Welcome to the show, John.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, Brian. That was a wonderful introduction. And the honor is really mine. You are one of the most passionate people that I've met as it relates to retail and obviously clienteling. And so it's always my pleasure to
SPEAKER_00:discuss it with you. Oh, well, thank you, John. It's been a pleasure. We've known each other for a while here in full disclosure. We've had the opportunity to do some work together over the years, and I've just enjoyed every moment of it. So, you know, John, you've had, I mean, quite a career, right? I mean, your background is pretty extraordinary. You've run stores in North America's largest jewelry group. You've done some work with a trendy small luxe brand that sells across a lot of different diverse categories. I have so many questions for you that I think would be interesting to our audience, but maybe you can share a little bit about your experiences in leading customer-centric transformation and more specifically around the clienteling initiatives that you've seen at these companies. And if you could add a little bit in there about what it was like to drive that business case to get a company to consider making the investments What were the key things they were thinking about? And perhaps you could tell us a little bit about the process of how you went about building a case in those businesses in order to get these initiatives to happen. But I'll kind of leave it to you. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your experience in doing this? Sure.
SPEAKER_01:I think the first thing I'd like to do, Brian, is sort of talk about why clienteling is so important to me, a little bit about what it is. And I want to go back a little bit and tell a couple of stories. First and foremost, what is clienteling? There's many definitions, but simply put, it's just a technique. that retail sales associates can use to establish one-on-one long-term relationships. And these relationships based on knowing the client, knowing what their likes and dislikes are, and then helping them make the right decisions for themselves and for their loved ones. It requires salespeople to really build a human connection. And this is something that is a bit of a lost art form as technology has sort of taken over retail. I think there's people have lost sight to a certain degree of how important it is to still have that individualized connection with the guest. And because it is a lost art, it's amazing how surprised a customer is when you really take an interest in who they are. Now, I learned this a long time ago. So I was, I have a story here. I was fresh out of the army looking for a job and I got a job at a store, Belden Jewelers in Maine, Portland, Maine, while I walked in looking for a job. And they were kind enough to offer me one as a full-time salesperson. I had never really sold before. And on day one, my manager hands me this plastic PT notebook, personal trade notebook filled with blank pages. And she said, look, if you want to be a great salesperson, your job is to get to know the customer, make a friend, build a relationship, the sales will come, capture that information. And that way, when they come in again and again and again, you can continue to service them, be their trusted advisor. And that really stuck with me. And I was never a great salesperson. But what I was really great is building these relationships. And I just worked hard to make sure the customers got what they wanted. That stuck with me for the longest time. And as I moved forward in my career and became a store manager and a district manager and a regional vice president, I took those skills that I had been taught and passed them on to my teams and saw great successes. This was clarified for me years later. And I'm sitting at my desk in the corporate office and I get a phone call and I pick it up and I go, hi, this is John. I hear this voice at the Ann Taylor, your wife told me to call you. So immediately I listened. Yeah, exactly. And I listened and I said, yeah, what's the matter? Is everything okay? And she goes, oh, no, no, everything's fine. I just, my understanding is that it's her birthday next week. And she kind of chuckled and said, and you might need a little help finding the right gift. I said, yeah, could use some help. She goes, well, she's been in here. We've picked out some outfits. Why don't you come on in with Thursday or Friday night be best for you and we'll take good care of you. So I said, sure, Thursday night. Great. See you at six o'clock, she says. Hung up the phone, rolled in the following Thursday. And there she had three outfits set up for me, accessorized, helped me pick them out, helped me wrap them. Didn't help me wrap them, she wrapped them. And I went home a hero. She called me all the time, Brian, and actually became this really great advisor of mine, right?
SPEAKER_00:That's great. A partner in the shopping process, in the process of raising your wife, right? That's what everybody needs.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Well, and what was interesting about it is A couple of weeks later, I was sitting at a dinner party with a bunch of friends. And I said to the guys at the table, I said, look, I'm thinking of starting a business. And I wasn't. But I said, I'm thinking of starting a business to where we're going to create personal shoppers. We'll charge you a monthly fee. We'll reach out to you. Find out what your needs are for anyone you want to give a gift to in your life. And we'll deliver it. Or you can deliver it. Whatever works. Who here would pay me for that? And every single man at the table said, I would absolutely pay for it. I went back to my teams and said, guys, we can do this for free. And it really was an unlocker and it helped drive significant revenue before we actually had the technology. The technology, once it became available, right? Because we started off with PT Notebooks, that went to Excel, but now we obviously have this ability to really systematize this and make it easy for every sales associate. That's really what took the process to the whole next level and really made some major inroads. Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it does. And it's a great story and a great example of how that one-to-one connect and a sales associate that really is using information about one customer's preferences can kind of create, wow, create value all the way through. That's a great story. So tell us a little bit more about kind of the initiatives and how you were able to kind of pursue some of these initiatives inside of the retail brands that you've done work with.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. So as I said, I was always extraordinarily passionate about it and I was given an opportunity later in my career when I took over some of the more strategy technology piece of the business where I was able to work with the team to build a clienteling system. Now, there are many solutions available on the market now, but back when we did it, which was probably eight years ago, it was a fairly new emerging thought process and technology. And we decided that even though there were systems available, that we wanted to build something internally because it was critical for us that we created something that the teams would use. would enjoy and would look at as an opportunity, not as just one more thing they had to do. So this is obviously full disclosure where Brian, I got to meet you because you still are. But at the time, we're really one of the few people that were an expert in building out clienteling systems and did a phenomenal job. Thank you for helping keep. Well, you know, I mean, it's we had all our team had all these thoughts in our heads, what we wanted, and we needed someone to help us guardrails and say, okay, what exactly do you want and where are you going to go from it? So I don't want to get too much into the details, but this was a big build, right? And I think number one, you asked the question about how we built the value.
SPEAKER_00:I just wanted to make a comment that one of the things that you did so effectively was getting organizational buy-in, getting a lot of people to feel ownership in that overall process. And that is, in my opinion, one of the most important things that an organization needs to do whenever they look at new transformational sorts of initiatives like clienteling. You really have to get get people to own it. And you did a great, those rooms were filled with a lot of people, but they all owned it. One of them that was passionate about the outcome that we were all heading towards.
SPEAKER_01:So I'll tell you, it's interesting, you know, and we can get someday, maybe, you know, the details behind of what it took to get the funding and get the buy-in, because for us, it wasn't just building clienteling, it was really building a CRM, right? Clientelling requires accurate data. And if your company doesn't have a robust CRM, then the data coming in, you know, You know, dirty data just creates dirty results, right? So it was a fairly expensive system. At the time, we as an organization had everything was on-prem. So the whole concept of SaaS was not something we were used to. So there was that piece of change management. But I'll tell you, I remember one slide that pushed it over the top when we were presenting to the executive committee. And it was a picture of, I had taken, I was visiting a store and I walked in one of the Barb had eight PT notebooks spread out across the counter and was sorting through pages because we had a big upcoming event and she was trying to alphabetize and categorize and who she should reach out to, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I just took a picture of it. And Barb was a seven-figure writer. And when we presented this to the executive committee, there was two thought processes. One, how do we make Barb's job easier? She writes a million. Could she write two million? If we could just get her a way to be able to really focus on all those– those guests within those PT notebooks and do really effective outreach without having to spend so much time just getting yourself organized. But then number two, more importantly, how do we get the 90% of our salespeople that aren't that strong at it and make it easy for them to use the system? And we kind of laid it out that in this one picture, it really resonated with the team and they understood it. So that was number one. The other thing that we did to build value is we really looked at what type of customers we had, right? And if I broke it down right into sort of three very simple buckets, you have customers who just come and go. They're just lookers of the world. You had one-time purchasers that came in. I made an initial purchase. I left and I've never bought again. And then you've got those two-plus customers, right? We looked at those one-time purchasers. We could have looked at all of them. But to build a value case, we looked at our one-time purchasers and we said, if we could get a very small percentage, 2%, 3% of that person who came in, we built a relay We sold them something and we never saw them again. If we could get that group of people to come back and buy one more thing, what would that be worth? And that alone, and I think at the time it was less than 2% of those customers, tripled the ROI on the cost to build the system. And that was not talking about second purchasers making third and fourth and just lookers. It was just amazing what that alone could do for us. And that's how we built the value case.
SPEAKER_00:You know, it's funny. Years ago, I had somebody sit me down that was a former... the VP of store ops for one of the limited brands. And he said, if we can get one more pair of socks in the basket on every fifth customer, it fundamentally changes the economics. And when you really look at the way that an income statement works in retail, you realize that just a slight movement in that top line revenue, which is driven generally by traffic conversion and average transaction size. So you've got to move one of those levers. But it makes such an impact. And the beauty of the kinds of clienteling and the kinds of proactive selling activities that you've been so passionate about that I've spent my life in and around is that we can drive that, that incremental. We can drive traffic. We can drive people, you know, to come into the store to consider other purchases they hadn't before to build that basket and to get them back again, which is the frequency side of that. So it makes a movement and that's why it has such a big impact.
SPEAKER_01:And what's interesting, Brian, is this was, you know, maybe seven, eight years ago, but as the ability for people to buy online has become easier and easier. You know, the other day I bought a TV while doing the rolling machine. I literally was on a rolling machine a TV came up and I said, hey, Alexa, order me the TV. And it was here in three days. There was no reason for me to go to a store. The only reason I would go to a store is because it was a product that was so unfamiliar with, I wanted to touch it and feel it. Or because the store was going to offer me some sort of experience. Well, experiences come in many different forms, like you put in a rock climbing wall or a fishing pit or a makeup counter. But for me, the one-to-one experience with an associate Someone I like that I want to talk to, that emotional connection. That is the core of who we are, right? And so when you talk about increasing basket size, well, okay, that's making a purchase and adding onto it while you're there. But to give a compelling reason to bring a customer back in just to see me, right? That becomes magical. And then by the way, they spend more and they spend easier because they trust you. And so that was the power of clienteling. And it's becoming, as technology is taking over the buying process, process, it's becoming now actually more important. And I'm seeing greater lifts when companies roll out a really robust clienteling process.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that's great. And great insights there. So let's talk a little bit about something else. You know, when we originally worked together, I was, and I think I probably said it to you more than once, I was really impressed with what I was calling a programmatic selling approach that you'd already developed for the business, even though it was mostly on a manual system. You know, I kind of wanted you to talk a into a clienteling systems approach as we were designing a new solution. And what was that process like? And how did you think about feature and functionality and how you were going to approach a project like this, moving people from the legacy approach of being paper-based to a new system?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's actually a great question and probably a core piece of this entire discussion. So number one, to give full credit where credit is due. The team that I was able to work with was, the best I've ever seen, right? From the training department, from the operations team that put this all together, where they were open, they were collaborative, and really made this work. We had a very robust change management system already in place, so it made it easier. And that was number one. Number two, obviously, you coming in was really helpful to help keep us on track. And then the third thing that we did, and I don't think this was strategic. Part of the company that I worked with, we had this sort of core philosophy of this promote from within. And then on the operations team, about a half of our team came from the stores. And so it was just natural. It was just in our DNA that whenever we built any system, we would involve the end user. Now, in retrospect, to me, that's critical in any system implementation that's going to affect a store that the end user be involved. And so when we started from scoping all we do to actual implementation, we had the business partner in the room all the time with IT. You were there asking them questions and whatnot. So I think that was number one. Number two, clienteling was, to be truth, somewhat intrinsic to our process. Even though it wasn't systematized, it wasn't like we had to teach how to build relationships. You're right. First of all, in jewelry, you over-index on building relationships because you're spending a lot of money. It's a very emotional purchase. You're speaking to someone about how you feel about them when you present this piece of jewelry. So it is as emotional and involved purchase as I've ever seen in any other retailer. So that made it easy. And then the build process was a learning experience, but it was amazing, right? So we sat down as a team, maybe 20 people in Rome, as you spoke, we painted out the vision of what we wanted. And we really saw sort of the end game, what is perfection. And then we laid out, we scoped it to that, and then sort of prioritize what were the most important important features that we wanted. The other piece that we did is as we were building the system, all of our UAT was, again, the end user. And we would go in and we would interview them and we would make sure that it looked good, it felt good, that it was gamified. I remember we put pictures of Angry Birds all up in the development room. Do you remember that? When the team first walked in and they're like, what are these Angry Birds up there? And I asked the team, I said, how many of you played Angry Birds? And at the time, It was hot and like every hand went up. I said, did you get a user manual? No. Did anyone pay you to use it? No. Why did you use it? Because it was fun, because it rewarded me and I didn't have to like read a book on how to do it. I said, that's what we need to build here. And that was, I think, critical to the success of the system.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I mean, there was definitely, you know, an ongoing kind of a reinforcement of the message that it had to be easy. It had to be fun to use. It had to be, it had to engage the associates as much as the associates had to engage the customers. That was, it was philosophically, it was really around that. And, and I think that that's why you get such great buy-ins because everybody knew that it was being built for their value, for their opportunity to do a better job. And of course, when they do a better job, it means that they're bringing home more and they're, they're, they're living a better life, you know? So you're, you're, you're impacting a lot of lives in, in, in these kinds of projects.
SPEAKER_01:You are. And what's interesting, if you've never worked for those listening, if you've never had the opportunity to actually work on a sales floor in a retail environment, It's the most fun job I ever had, right? Because you get to meet all those customers and you get to build up these rich relationships. It's also the most challenging job I ever had, right? Because you are moving a million different miles an hour. Everyone's asking you to do all these different things. I read an article recently that the average salesperson now has to access up to seven different applications on their device in order to complete a sale, right? We have Bopas and Boris and all these types of things. And so it's becoming highly complicated. When we built the initial clienteling system we housed everything. So it was one application that people could go into and then launch the other applications outside of that. And so when you're a salesperson and you want to talk to a customer, the technology is important, but it can't become a distraction. And so whatever system, whether it be clienteling with other, it just has to become a natural extension to something you use. And it can't be, I'm taking my eyes off the customer to look at a device. You've got to keep that connection going. And I think that's part of the reason why it was successful when they rolled it out.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. It became the dashboard of their day. Really, they kind of ran their life through it. That's great.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I want to just also contrast it. So I've been involved in a number of other clienteling rollouts, and I've seen it go well, and I've seen it not go well. And it's important that the system being launched and the technology isn't just teaching how to use the technology. I commented that clienteling was somewhat intrinsic already to our business. Well, I've seen other situations to where the core selling technique was not necessarily asking all the questions and building out relationships and capturing that information. If that doesn't exist within an environment, then the technology, no matter how good it is, will not be impactful. So it's important for organizations to assess what is it that their selling techniques are and the selling expectations. And then if you're going to launch a clienteling system that you actually get out in front of it before the system launch and change those core behaviors. So when the system gets launched, you don't get frustration because you're now teaching how to sell.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I think, you know, a lot of people, I've seen this happen a bunch of times and I'm sure you've seen it. They assume they go out and buy a clienteling solution. They pop it in the stores and all of a sudden people start to sell differently. And it really is that the problems that exist in gaining value from any kind of clienteling initiative really comes down to how effective you are at creating a programmatic approach to selling to a getting people to engage with customers before, during, after the sale in correct ways, but that requires training and change management. It is a holistic. We're going to be talking a lot on this program about the people part of the equation. And I think that that's really been neglected. And as much as I love technology and I've been built probably more clienteling systems out there from a technology perspective, what I've really gotten passionate about now is how do we make it really work? How do we get organizations to really focus on the teaching the right skills and getting people to engage in the right ways? And how do you create a culture of that kind of personal interaction, whether it's reaching even outside the store? So those are great insights there, John. Appreciate that. You've worked with these big companies and you've talked about the fact you've seen some others. I mean, so you've worked with the big and the small. What do you think it takes to really kind of create that customer-centric magic at scale in an organization? And what's really kind of been the difference between a boutique kind of small luxury business that you've done more recently and some these bigger companies that you've worked with?
SPEAKER_01:So they both have their advantages and disadvantages. Obviously, in a larger organization, the biggest difference is span and control, right? How do you get 35,000 people to change behavior? And it requires, you use the word a couple of times, a very systematic approach, really great communication tools, change management processes, and then the frontline managers, district managers have got to believe. Because at the end of the day, that district manager, area manager, whatever term they use, they're the ones that are going to make that change happen in the field. And so again, and I keep sort of reinforcing this point, we had them involved from the beginning. And so they felt part of the build and then felt part of the process. So when they went back to their teams, they could speak as passionately about the project as all of us who had built it. Obviously, the more challenging part is you do. You have, you know, If 20% of your population doesn't believe in it, that's a large number of people who don't believe in it. So that does make it more difficult. And in large organizations, there's a lot of red tape, let's just say it the way it is, getting everyone to buy in. And if it's a huge budget, getting executives who don't necessarily know the stores as part of their core, it becomes a sell. And so I literally went to executive office to executive office. So when we went to the big room, everyone had sort of understood what this was all about. The smaller boutique is easier in that you can evangelize it almost one-to-one, right? If you have 30, 40, 50 stores, if you wanted to, you could call every store. The difference is, is there's much smaller budgets. And so you can't necessarily get all the functionality that you want. And you have to be willing to process it. prioritize exactly what you think is going to make the biggest change and then focus on that and then add functionality as you go. It's, I mean, obviously resources.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:well, that's the resources. So, and I was just thinking this through. We had the first time I rolled this out, just an exceptional training department with a lot of people, resources, right? And so to rely on them to be able to build out the training and then a very robust IT group that could help us, all of that was there. When you're a small company you might have a team of two, team of three. So there's a lot of work to be done that sometimes can be overwhelming, especially if you're also launching a POS and you're launching an ERP system or what all this happens to be. So there are some resource constraints.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, great, great insights. You know, John, we're coming up on 30 minutes here. And what I think we're going to do is break this into two parts. And we'll stop here at this part and pick up with a couple more questions I have for you. Maybe we'll turn it into two different shows. I think what you're saying is It's just incredibly valuable for our listeners. And I know I'm excited to hear more from you. So why don't we pause it here and we can pick it up on the next show.
SPEAKER_01:That sounds great. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:We'll be right back.