Closing the retail execution gap with Matt Brown | Former MOHR Retail

Most retail strategies don't fail on paper—they fail on the sales floor. Matt Brown, former SVP Business Development, Operations, Client Success at MOHR Retail shares why execution breaks down at scale—and what leaders can do differently. If you're leading retail ops or frontline teams, this is a must-watch on turning strategy into consistent execution.

Transcript

Glenn Haussman: Everybody. Thanks so much for tuning in. Uh, first thing I wanna say is thanks to our friends over Axonify for giving us the opportunity to have this educational presentation to help educate and empower you. My name is Glenn Haussman, your host, and I have with us Mr. Matt Brown. He's the former SVP of Business Development.

Glenn Haussman: Operations client success with more retail. It's great to see you, Matt. 

Matt Brown: Great to see you too. 

Glenn Haussman: So I'm excited 'cause today we're gonna be talking about how you take that strategy that's at the corporate level and then kind of boilingly to town and making sure people at the retail store level are finding success.

Glenn Haussman: So we're gonna close that retail execution gap for all of you today and help draw those conclusions. But Matt, you've had 30 years experience in retail and you've spent decades leading stores and districts and enterprise level, so. What do you think is the problem with that miscommunication or the disconnect that happens between the strategic level and the implementation?

Matt Brown: Well, I'll say most companies have a great strategy. Mm-hmm. Right? But we see a struggle to take that strategy and turn it into repeated behaviors on the sales floor. So what we see and what we do. At more retail is focus on the people to people skills and the communication skills that really drive those behaviors that bring the strategy to life.

Matt Brown: And that's kind of that missing piece, right? A lot of companies just communicate and move on, right? Right. Where we make sure that leaders have the skills. And the training to do that. 

Glenn Haussman: So what we're really talking about is digging down below a surface level. When you just communicate and move on, you are really not training people.

Glenn Haussman: You're satisfying yourself and convincing yourself that you're actually doing the right sort of thing, right. 

Matt Brown: Absolutely. That's a mistake a lot of people do. But when you have leaders that you train and you give 'em the skills and the strategies to communicate and follow up and reinforce the strategies, then you start to see real behavior change and your strategy comes to life, 

Glenn Haussman: right?

Glenn Haussman: Because saying something once doesn't work. It's about. Implementation over and over and over again. So each of the individual associates can have that become part of their essence, right? 

Matt Brown: Absolutely. Reinforcement is key. We've learned that over time through our research that if you just explain it once, it's not gonna happen.

Matt Brown: It's gotta be part of who you are, how you lead, and how you communicate, right? 

Glenn Haussman: So that way you actually just do it. Not think about it. Right. So 

Matt Brown: absolutely. Always a bias towards action. Yes. 

Glenn Haussman: Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. Alright, so interestingly enough, I find that like retail these days has more data tools and playbooks, right, than ever before.

Glenn Haussman: But why is it still so difficult to achieve at scale? I mean, we've talked about individuals, but at scale when you have so many units, 

Matt Brown: well. Scale definitely adds layers of complexity, right? So, and then when you're at scale, you have a lot of other problems, whether that be turnover, new stores, new initiatives, and a lot of other things going on.

Matt Brown: So that's really where it comes down to the leadership behaviors that we train and how we follow up. Making sure that they have their insights and they're using their knowledge and how they're communicating to the teams. And part of that though is training every day, right? Like always, our leaders should be looking at how are they teaching and training and following up and reinforcing, like we talked about with their teams, and then always pushing 'em towards action, right?

Matt Brown: We're just talking about things and we're not moving it towards action. You're not gonna see that consistency or the strategy come to life. 

Glenn Haussman: And that makes a whole lot of sense. And I know I was told not to really plug it sonify too much, but that's where that like bite-sized learning really comes in.

Glenn Haussman: It reinforces it and it helps team members be more confident. Many leaders out there are investigating, investing in technology, right? Don't wanna gain visibility and control over stuff. But what actually is making teams better in the moment? Verse just kind of doing things by 

Matt Brown: so, so.

Matt Brown: Information is good, but sometimes insight can be better, right? When you think about reporting, reporting is great. It tells you where you've been or what's happened. What's more important about what decisions do you make and where you're going in now, and that's where having insights, the right tools to really make sure that your teams are confident and as they're confident they will make decisions and move the business forward.

Glenn Haussman: Tools is great. That's just a vague word, but how do you figure out what are the right tools for your organization? 

Matt Brown: So when we work with teams, we work on different strategies. That's one of our key tools. We've worked with some of the best performing retailers out there, and the best performing district managers and store managers.

Matt Brown: To understand what behaviors and strategies they use, right? And we've built those into discussion strategies. We know what conversations they need to have most and how to have 'em, and how to follow up and make sure they're successful. So that's a great tool that we provide in all of our training to ensure that those things happen.

Glenn Haussman: That's pretty cool. How do you know that a tool is actually truly helping somebody do their job versus just making it more complicated for their day? 

Matt Brown: Well that's, that's a good one, right? We wanna make sure tools are helpful and things, you right? Mm-hmm. Did you make their day easier? Yeah. Or did you just give 'em another box to check?

Glenn Haussman: Yeah. That, that's right. So that's kind of like, I think really separates the wheat from that chaff, right? Because you wanna implement things that are successful and if it's not, you gotta learn real quick and move on to a new idea. 

Matt Brown: So the first part of that is, yeah. Is really involving your field teams and your store teams early when you're looking at these different tools you wanna bring in, right?

Matt Brown: Whether that be new technology or AI, to understand how they're going to use it and where they're gonna use it. So that you don't have a negative impact on their other processes, that they're not struggling with logins, that they're not impeding the customer experience. So that's first part is involving those people early, right?

Matt Brown: So that when you bring in new tools, they're more easily adopted, 

Glenn Haussman: right? Because if you bring people in early, then they feel connected to it in a more intimate way. And when you get that buy-in. That friction level is gonna drop even before you start a new 

Matt Brown: growth. Absolutely. If you don't do that, chances are you're gonna have friction and that's not what we want.

Matt Brown: Right? We want them to use these tools and see them, that they actually make their lives easier, that they make that not only is their life easier, if we make our team's life easier, the customer's gonna have a better experience. Right. As we stay customer centric, that's really our focus. 

Glenn Haussman: Yeah, that's for sure.

Glenn Haussman: Now senior leaders, they're not necessarily working in the trenches every day, so what kind of operational efficiencies might stay hidden from them? That they've gotta pay a. Little bit more attention to before it becomes too expensive or super disruptive. 

Matt Brown: Well, that, that's easy to happen, right?

Matt Brown: Yeah. Especially when sales are good. When sales are good, 

Glenn Haussman: masks are awesome 

Matt Brown: stuff. Old retail say sales cures everything so at that senior level, it's really easy to get comfortable when you see those kind of results. But what you can see behind, if you look under the covers. Could be operational discrepancies or inefficiencies or not really following programs.

Matt Brown: You could see ineffective visits, you could see a lot of different kind of things underneath there. And when sales are good, those things can stay hidden, right? But when sales tighten, they get exposed. So I would say that those. Are times where you actually need to lean in more when sales are good to make sure that you are identifying and strengthening.

Matt Brown: When we talk about coaching, we talk about strengthening those processes, those communication skills, those leadership skills, so that your execution is even tighter when times are good. That way you're ready for when times are not as good, man. 

Glenn Haussman: Yeah, so true. One of the things that I've seen in my 30 plus years career here is that you see that all the time.

Glenn Haussman: People get focused on other things other than those fundamentals when times are good, but if you keep your eye on them, that's really what's going to separate you from your competition when times get tough, particularly as our economy seems to be on a little bit shakier ground currently right now.

Glenn Haussman: Right? So how do you. Quantify the cost of opportunity of inconsistent, operations across all locations. 

Matt Brown: Uh, when, when you have inconsistencies across it can have major impacts across your organization, right? Yeah. So some of that impact could be simply if you're inconsistent, your brand.

Matt Brown: Mm-hmm. Right? So, so much is about your brand, knowing who you are, who your customer is, and leading into that. So you could damage your brand, but really also your revenue. You could see tighter margins. Turnover and really impacting your front lines experience, which again, impacts your customer's experience.

Matt Brown: So pretty important for the consistent operations and execution. 

Glenn Haussman: Yeah, I I agree. And what actually helps get that new behavior to stick, to get to that internalness that we were talking about? 

Matt Brown: Absolutely. If you've gotta reinforce things. Yeah. So through our research, what we've seen is if somebody goes to a draining or you roll something out.

Matt Brown: And then they go back into the job. What percent of people do you think actually do what they were taught? What percent 

Glenn Haussman: I'm gonna guess. 9%. 

Matt Brown: Well, it's a, it's a little better, but it's only around 20, 20%. But when you reinforce, like with our partners at Axonify, if we have a new skill and they can follow up and answer questions, get reinforcement, or even also their manager asks 'em about their training, that number jumps up to over 85%.

Matt Brown: So that reinforcements. The follow up the reinforcing what they've learned and the engagement of their boss makes a tremendous difference. 

Glenn Haussman: So to bring it back to the beginning by reinforcing and continuing the training process, what you're really talking about is turning engagement at a level of four.

Glenn Haussman: X over there. That's pretty amazing. You're very satisfied with the way that Axonify is helping empower team members and stuff like that.

Matt Brown: I have to say, Axonify has been a fantastic partner. We have partnered with them for over 14 years. We were one of their very first clients. We were definitely one of their first that put leadership and soft skill reinforcement questions on the platform.

Matt Brown: Mm-hmm. And we use Axonify with. Every person we put through one of our leadership training courses. Wow. We work with them on questions before, during, and post training to really reinforce, and that's where we see the magic happen and they really change the behavior. 

Glenn Haussman: Right. And all these things help boost operations, make them more efficient and even more important than that, profitable.

Matt Brown: Absolutely, 

Glenn Haussman: sir. Seeing 2026 moving forward how are you gonna see retailers really separate themselves and outperform operationally from the competition? 

Matt Brown: I mentioned earlier, you gotta know who you are and who your customer is and stay focused on that. But to me it's really around that front, that frontline team.

Glenn Haussman: Yeah. 

Matt Brown: Right. And making sure that your leaders have not only the communication, but the developmental skills to really lead those teams and continue. We see that when. Team members are developed and can see a career path. Not only are they more engaged, but they stay longer, and that's been a big focus. How do you retain your talent in game, that consistent experience?

Matt Brown: So I think those that really focus on their frontline teams and use technology to support that. Are gonna weave. 

Glenn Haussman: What's really crazy to me is how difficult it is for every human being to keep at a consistent level, day after day, month after month, year after year, in our case, unfortunately, decade 

Matt Brown: after decade, 

Glenn Haussman: decade.

Glenn Haussman: So you need those tools to really be sure to keep it fresh for you, keep you engaged, and you don't have that. Natural slip that all units have. 

Matt Brown: Right? Absolutely. And that's where you know, leadership matters. Yeah. And giving them those skills and building it into who they are and their behaviors makes all the difference.

Glenn Haussman: Awesome. Well, thank you, Matt for being here. I wanna thank you guys for watching. To the end, great job. I'm Glenn Haussman. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Have a great one.