Spartadia: A Battle Plan for Today's Business

By Ray Martin

What does it take to grow a successful company and be a great leader?
A lot more than simply a strong personality or great salesmanship. A thriving company must be built from the inside out, combining an unshakeable commitment to a vision and a passion with a profound understanding of the potential and abilities of the people who bring the company to life.

Spartadia discusses the essential components of building a strong business presence, by first focusing on the abilities and potential of every hire, and then using key, proven leadership skills and sales strategies. Together these lessons will help you leverage the full power of intelligence and passion to build lasting relationships with customers while never compromising on quality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329080706

Book preview

Spartadia: A Battle Plan for Today's Business

SPARTADIA: A Battle Plan for Today’s Business

by Ray E. Martin

Copyright © Ray E. Martin 2015

First Printing: 2015

All Rights Reserved. No portion of this document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

ISBN  978-1-329-08070-6

The brand names and technologies mentioned in this book are property of their respective companies.

http://spartadia.qualifirst.com/

Introduction

Spartadia

Many people pick up a management book expecting it to reveal a secret collection of steps that will guarantee the success of their department or company. But it doesn’t happen that way. In my years as the president of a prosperous and still-growing business, I have found out that success never actually comes from a single prescribed checklist, secret or otherwise. It can’t. No two businesses are alike enough to make such a list valid. Although there are pieces of wisdom that a leader or manager can absorb along the way, true progress is actually an organic concept; based on personality, aptitudes, drive, instinct and awareness.

Business is a battle; there are no two ways around this. Anyone who goes into business seeks to gain something positive, to change the status quo, and usually to do this with the assistance of others. Although business battles need not be bloody, they still represent conflict, if only between the business itself and the market forces that surround it. There is the competition to consider, as well as the customer, the industry and the economy. It is fought on many fronts.

In forming a philosophy for managing my business, I have turned on many occasions to the history of the Spartans of Greece. The Spartan army was an elite Greek military force that fought many battles in the era around 450 BC, and it excelled, in spite of its comparatively small size. It was famous for devising and operating in a phalanx, a unit of soldiers in which no one was considered superior to any other.

The prevailing attitude of the Spartan forces was that the only way to win against larger competition was by being yourself. The Spartans believed that a soldier (and an army) must move forward on faith, trusting gut instinct, trusting each other, and trusting its leaders. The sword, in Spartan times, was not something given to a recruit on his 20th birthday, but instead was placed in his hands when he was a small child, so that it became part of his body in mind and action.

What I see in the Spartan philosophy is an internal matching of ability with role, and this is very dear to me. I perceive the ability to fight a battle as something personal and intimate, both for an individual as well as for a company.

The Spartans were not unique in their philosophy. Other schools of combat, such as martial arts, similarly rely on a collection of subtle, fluid moves that are coordinated by both the body and the mind. These moves become almost instinctive techniques that come from within and which move with the energies of the moment, rather than lash out against them.

To guide a company, I believe a leader needs a philosophy that emulates the martial arts, and parallels the Spartan approach. Leadership skills and talents exist on a fundamental and intensely personal level. They require the ability to move in accord with instincts and internal forces, rather than relying solely on externally mandated approaches.

I believe that in today’s business world, small, lean teams are incarnations of the Spartan phalanx style. These teams, when formed carefully and thoughtfully, derive their strength from personal skills, combined with faith in leadership. The people who are invited to join a team are recognized for their innate abilities, potential and preferences, rather than as blank slates. Mastery of work comes from communicating with and relying upon each other and the dynamic flexibility of such is one of the best ways to help ensure prosperity for an entire company in today’s high-speed economy.

Leadership is about connecting dots forward, not backwards, using internal gut-feel more than external rules. It is a manifestation of what is inside the individual, communicated in a way that unites and inspires others. This is what I believe in, and it is upon such notions that I have based my management philosophy over these past twenty years.

It is not my intention in this book to overuse these Spartan battle analogies. They will be alluded to sparingly, but suffice to say there is similarity between taking on adversaries in combat and fighting the battle that is business.

About Me, Ray Martin

I am the president of Qualifirst Foods, an importer and distributor of high-quality food products, with offices in Toronto and Vancouver, and satellite operations in the U.S. and Europe. I wasn’t hired as president; in fact I started out in the shipping department, just after graduating from high school. But that job helped me work my way through college. I was a business major, but I had never considered a long-term career with a gourmet and specialty foods distributor. I never even had a true passion for food, at least in the beginning; but I did have, and I still have, a passion for business.

From the beginning, I found myself enjoying the work at Qualifirst, along with its daily challenges. From shipping, I made the leap to sales, where, over time, my efforts paid off. As an outside sales representative, I increased our retail sales by 37 percent and our food service sales by 100 percent.

After a brief hiatus with another company, I returned to Qualifirst and stepped into a management role. I soon found that though my title had changed, my approach to growing the company had not. I went from running a $500,000 company to managing a business with over ten million dollars in sales per year, by figuring most things out on my own and learning lessons as I went. I remember early on, for example, placing an order for sparkling apple juice and having absolutely no clue how the process worked. But I was hungry for success. I just made the order and observed what happened. As a result of that experience and from observing and acting on what I learned, I was able to cut our transport costs by 50 percent over the next two years.

That’s how I learned to run and grow a business: through trial and error and by doing each job myself. There have been some incredible ups and downs, and the company has pivoted more than once. But each time Qualifirst has prevailed, and we have maintained our position as a leading-edge niche company.

The Odds of Success

Fifty percent of new businesses fail within the first year of operation. Of the survivors, fifty percent fail in their first five years. Only about a third makes it to ten years without going under. And so it goes. Teams too, departments, in fact any group of people bound together for a common cause face greater odds of failure than they do of attaining their goal.

Luck won’t help much. Succeeding in business is never about luck, because even those who catch a lucky break stand to lose its benefits if they are unable or unwilling to manage life’s day-to-day realities.

Nor will misguided passion be of any use. There are many books and motivational speakers out there that talk confidently about following a passion and living a dream and so on, but I feel that impetuously following such a path generally leads to dissatisfaction. For example, choosing to give it all up to change careers completely and become a baker because baking is what you truly love, only to discover five years later, that baking isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, is not a path to success; it’s a false lead. Passion is vital, certainly, but it needs to be well understood; something that matches a person’s abilities and ties in with existing experience.

I do believe strongly in success. I believe that its traditional rewards, such as increased sales, career satisfaction, leadership excellence, managerial excellence and a balanced life can all be achieved; but to do so requires an identification of, proper use of, and perfection of what already exists inside the individual: an internal talent. I call this the craftsman approach. Instead of making a huge life or career change, you can attain greater satisfaction and achievement by becoming passionate over your ever-increasing level of internal expertise. Years spent working and honing a craft eventually lead to mastery. I believe this to be the type of success that individual leaders and managers can realize, and I believe, too, that this same excellence can be both instilled and nurtured within employees and teams.

In fact, I apply the same concept to hiring. As president of Qualifirst, I do a great deal of hiring, and I believe strongly that the most productive, happiest employees are those who match the types of work that fits their internal aptitudes from the get-go. They are masters-in-waiting. Their skills already exist, and it is up to me, their leader, to match these with the work that awaits them.

In an age where everything moves at high speed, many new hires expect to be happy from day one. My approach, however, is that excellence and satisfaction take time and perseverance. Every individual needs to develop career capital: a banked collection of skills, experience and relationships that will eventually move him or her forward in a consistent and genuine fashion.

The Moving Platform

The Internet age has ushered in an existential crisis in which established, traditional distribution and sales models have slowly broken down. Borders, such as that between the U.S. and Canada are becoming more porous, thanks both to trade regulations and technology, and leaders must not only seek a better method of operation, but must do so while standing on the moving platform that is the modern marketplace.

There are new rules at play in the retail business. They speak to experiential and multisensory definitions of quality and loyalty. For example, when consumers hear the names Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Disney, Apple, they get excited in anticipation of both the shopping experience and the three-part consumption experience—future (anticipation), present (current purchase) and past (memory)—which actually exerts a positive chemical effect on the brain that can influence future behaviour.

As such, the branding, marketing and delivery of any product or service must influence as many of the five senses as possible. Concepts such as pre-emptive distribution (getting to the consumer ahead of the competition with precisely what they desire and where, when and how often they want to receive it), and superior value-chain control (total control of the value chain from creation to consumption) point to a major change in which fifty percent of existing retailers and brands will disappear. Major department stores will have to create localized neighbourhood stores, and private in-store sales will be expanded using specialty store formats.

In short, things aren’t what they used to be. The customer is becoming better informed through social media, and consequently less loyal to any one brand; and innovators and competitors spring up daily, from new sources, start-ups and crowd-funded ventures.

Sellers of any product cannot rely on a five-year plan any longer. Instead, they must learn to observe the competition as well as the comments and demands made by the buying public, and improve ceaselessly.

Business intended for the marketplace of today and tomorrow cannot use on an old model. It is time for a new model used in which goods move from manufacturer to end user with only one intermediate step, and maybe not even that. Direct-to-end-users from the manufacturer is even better.

Costco and Walmart, for example, buy direct from manufacturers, they enjoy high turnover and they make money while charging less than half the margin of the traditional store. This reduces cost, but also reduces margin, which means that the previous wholesale price becomes the new retail price. That is today’s business reality. To survive, companies must sell to the customer at wholesale, and if an intermediary is involved then they must sell at below wholesale.

It is highly likely that any reader of this book either is in business or is in management at an organization. Perhaps the department or venture isn’t performing as well as hoped, and perhaps a reboot is needed. Or maybe the business hasn’t come that far yet; the basic idea for a business model is mapped out, but there remain more questions than answers.

I maintain that business success is attainable, and can be achieved without spending money on expensive consultants, at least not yet. I hope that this book can act as consultant and coach for the time being. I believe that business success in this age comes down to a few simple components: a passion for excellence; pride in the work; the willingness to engage in fierce conversations with oneself and with others; and the application of diligence to every facet of the business.

My goal with this book is to share a battle plan that is appropriate for this new age. It runs the gamut from people to products to technology and seeks simply to offer some real-world experience that is by no means exclusive to the food business, but is applicable to anyone who oversees a team of people whose goal is to move a product or service to an end-user, and to do it better than anyone else.

About This Book

I am not the only company president ever to have written a book on management and strategy, obviously, but the ideas and concepts laid out here are based on my real experiences – both good and bad – my learning, my observations, and my general attitude and approach. Some of these beliefs may run in direct opposition to what other business experts say, and that is good. Because true learning comes through the friction of two or more experiences moving against each other, and it is up to every interested reader to make sense of outside knowledge and apply it judiciously.

I have divided this book into six sections, each of which covers an essential area of business, as follows:

Setting the foundation for a business to exist

Hiring, training and paying employees

Managing and leading a team

Thinking and strategizing

Selling and marketing

Running and operating

Each short chapter contains a sidebar, like this one, that offers up specific examples of how we handled the challenges of the chapter’s specific issue or topic and defined ourselves at Qualifirst.

I believe any ambitious, diligent person has the potential to succeed, no matter what the industry, or how the economy is doing. But there have to be some clear ideas to carry along the way. Since everyone has to start—or start over—somewhere, I suggest here might be a good place.

Section 1: