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STOP WASTING YOUR BEST EFFORTS ON THE WRONG CUSTOMERS · WINNING A TENDER IS LIKE WINNING A MARATHON · HARDTALK THE SILVANS WELCOME A NEW FAMILY MEMBER NO. 17 WINTER 2014 DO WE HAVE THE POTENTIAL STARK sends in the Cavalry Hate Private Label before they kill you Mobile salesforce chases ‘dormant’ accounts Everybody loves to to be the Amazon of the construction merchant industry? Win an iPhone 5 S Felix Edition Take me home Kill Your Habits

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DT Magazine is Wolseley's Nordic employee magazine, published three times a year, and read by staff in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. The magazine serves multiple purposes but the most important objective is to contribute to a strong sales culture. If you want to know more about the magazine, feel free to contact Patrick May at 0045 3115 4477

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Page 1: DT Magazine 17

STOP WASTING YOUR BEST EFFORTS ON THE WRONG CUSTOMERS · WINNING A TENDER IS LIKE WINNING A MARATHON · HARDTALK THE SILVANS WELCOME A NEW FAMILY MEMBER

NO. 17WINTER 2014

DO WE HAVE THE POTENTIAL

STARK sends in the Cavalry

Hate Private

Label

before they

kill you

Mobile salesforce chases ‘dormant’ accounts

Everybody loves to

to be the Amazon of the construction merchant industry?

Win aniPhone

5S

Felix Edition

Take me

home

Kill Your

Habits

Page 2: DT Magazine 17

Inside

RECENTLY, my eight-year-old daughter’s Mille got her first pair of glass-es, in an opticians we just happened to be passing. Something I will remember for a long time because the service was out of this world: friendly, competent, with my daughter and HER needs in focus. It felt like everybody in the opticians knew who Mille was or were at least interested in getting to know her. Right from the first contact with the woman who advised Mille (and me), then again with the lady who adjusted the glasses and on the day we picked them up. Even the other assistants who were not involved in the purchase, commented and asked to see Mille wear-ing her new glasses. My daughter felt important, proud. When we went back to pick up the new glasses, the woman at the counter lit up when she saw Mille. She knew that Mille was there to collect her very first pair of glasses and that it was a very special day for this little girl. We

Excellent customer serviceCentral service desk

improves customer experience

HardTalk

Silvan engages in a delicate repositioningDenmark’s preferred DIY chain has introduced their new campaign called ‘We Do It Together’

Cheapy coaches sales to new heights

Beijer redefines the industry standard

“Don’t waste your best efforts on the wrong customers”

Winning a tender is like winning a marathon

Everybody loves to hate Private Label

The Silvans welcome a new family member

9

1012

15

16

18

21

22

28

Kill your habits before they kill you

Have we got the potential to be the Amazon of the construction merchant industry?

Editorial responsibility: DT Group/Trine Baadsgaard Journalistic production and project management: Radical Communications/Patrick May Design and layout: Appetizer.dk/Simon Johnsen Photography: DasBuro, Lars Aarø, Jesper Balleby, Per Lundgren Print: Coolgray

COLOPHON

30USEFUL NUMBERS

DT Group +45 39559700Wolseley +44 118 929 8700Starkki +358 93 541 3000STARK +45 89343434

Beijer +46 752411000 Neumann +47 55549800Silvan +45 87308730Cheapy +46 431 417400

You can write to Trine at [email protected]

Feel free to share your ideas and comments – both positive and critical.

4could have found a cheap-er place, but the staff had managed to create a feeling that we were in good hands. We’ll be back. What’s more, they won a lifetime customer in Mille. After all, that is where she got her first positive cus-tomer experience. It is the small details that make the difference. Being no-ticed when you come in, being listened to, feeling important. I am sure that all of us know examples of excellent customer ser-vice like this, and that we should try to do the same in the work we do every day. I have certainly been inspired to do so.

Happy reading

Trine BaadsgaardChief Editor for DT Magazine

DT MAGAZINE2

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Short news

GOOD REFERENCESIt’s about

Neumann in Mandal has secured two major

contracts: a shopping mall (AMFI Senter), and 60 apartments,

representing a total value of NOK 500 million.

and CarlsenFritzøe, both fierce players in South Norway. When we signed the con-tract in August, we learned we weren’t the cheapest. We got the order because we had very good references from the school project - where construction is still ongoing. They praised our people for being competent and knowledgeable and they felt confi-dent about our abil-ity to deliver in full in time.” The branch in Mandal has an annu-

al turnover of about NOK 50 million a year. Landing this contract, where Neumann’s share is about 10-15%, is a major deal for the seven employ-ees here. “This is the largest contract in the history of our branch,” says Ove. “I’m proud of my team. Mandal is a small town in Sør-landet with 15,000 citizens. Jobs like these don’t go un-noticed. When we do this right, it will be a good advertisement for Neumann in this region.”

THE CUSTOMER, BRG, is one of the largest construction companies in South Norway and they have worked togeth-er before. “They’re building a new school and we’re delivering the supplies,” says Ove Hestad, proud Branch Manager of Neumann Mandal. “The sales process was long and tough. We had several meetings to discuss pricing and terms. We were in competi-tion with Optimera

DT MAGAZINE 3

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If we want to grow, we need to take market share from our competitors. The entire Felix set up is geared to accomplish

exactly this on many different levels.

While the strategic mission is all about using available resources, knowledge, experience and muscle power in the most effective

way, the Felix award is about exploring fundamentally new ideas and opportunities – outside the realm of past experiences. At the same time, it is about stimulating innovative thinking, hoping we get this ONE brilliant idea that changes the entire industry. Like Amazon did with the book industry, or iTunes and then Spotify

did with the music industry, or like AIRBnB, which is changing the hotel industry. They change the value chain, the business model,

the way customers shop.

DKK 1 MILLION! That was the budget for the Felix award to be used to fund ideas from the busi-nesses. The award was established to foster positive com-petitive spirit and innovative think-ing. The concept was launched in April last year and seven months lat-er, an impressive 15 project ideas have been chosen, tried and evaluated by the General Man-agement Commit-tee (GMC), in which all business units and the core ser-vice units are repre-sented. And the win-ner of the award has been chosen: SIL-VAN GARDEN! (DT magazine no. 16). Second place went to STARK’s mobile sales force (page 6) and third place went to the central IT De-partment (page 8) for a rocking smar-phone app. It is mind boggling to think that despite this be-ing the first time we have organised such a competition, it has generated a wealth of diverse ideas, which are already being turned into solid business initia-tives.

AMAZON

Do we have THE POTENTIAL

to be the

of the construction merchant industry?

DT MAGAZINE4

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More on next page

ic shelf fronts, and then there’s Silvan Garden, our pop-up shop in Næstved. We can be proud of what we achieved here. It has awakened a pi-oneering spirit that echoes throughout the entire organisa-tion. Everyone in-volved worked hard to make it happen. And we had fun in

“THE IDEA of an award is brilliant,” says Freddy Laurid-sen, Silvan MD and the proud ambas-sador of the win-ning project. “A com-pany of our size has to use resources to test ideas. If we don’t, we won’t be in the position to change how the mar-ket operates. Per-haps not all of ide-as will go the way they were intended, but we learn from the experiences we get from imple-menting them. We got funding for two of our ideas in Sil-van. One of them included electron-

the process. Win-ning the award is a huge acknowledge-ment of the efforts of the entire organi-sation. We’ve proved that if there’s some-thing we want, we can make it happen. We’re made of spe-cial DNA. Change is a part of our daily re-ality. We embrace it. We learned a lot thanks to Silvan Gar-den; in terms of how to market a shop like this, our next step in Næstved, and how we can use alterna-tive shop ideas to beat our competitors on their own pitch.”

SILVAN GARDEN

Congratulations

The spirit of Felix

FELIXAWARD

1st

We can be proud of what we achieved here

Asger Buch Sørensen

Freddy Lauridsen

DT MAGAZINE 5

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Continued

and a hell of a sales pitch.

Steal customers from competition“It’s a focused op-eration,” says Jørn Fogh, STARK Sales Director. “Geographi-cally we’re target-ing specific areas in Denmark. The cus-tomers we’re aim-ing for all buy sup-plies for a significant amount of money but STARK is not their preferred sup-plier. YET! 22 men/women, young, old, some with a long history in STARK, others relatively new to the business, will change this. They each have a portfo-

STARK uses con-siderable resources to get customers to either call, mail and/or visit one or more of their 93 branch-es. Once in, visitors meet a professional team, eager to turn them into loyal cus-tomers. But some tradesmen are noto-riously hard to reach. As a result, they might be ignorant of the excellent servic-es the construction retailer is able to of-fer. This means they might pick the wrong supplier. Here’s where the cavalry comes in: 22 sales people, equipped with a phone, a car

lio of 60 customers. The goal is to visit each customer every third week and con-vert them. Just to be clear: the objective is to steal custom-ers from competitors and gain market-share.”

The proactive market approach is revolutionary, not only for STARK, but for the entire indus-try. The pressure is on and it’s going to be interesting to see how competition will react. “We started in August,” Jørn says. “Right now, they’re paralysed. We should expect some kind of reaction but it will probably take

a while. We have to make optimal use of this period to learn from the experiences of the first months. They will be decisive in determining how we will proceed, be-cause proceed we will.”

Speed dating customers“Eight out of ten customers agree to meet me!” says Mi-chael Henriksen, one of the mobile sales-men working in the new setup. “That’s a success criteria in it-self. The tradesmen we contact already have a supplier. It’s just not STARK. More often than not, they are happy with how things are. Chang-ing supplier is not necessarily high on their list of things to do. So when we call them, getting a foot in the door is a good start. From there on, it is about win-ning their trust. If we

STARK MOBILISES THE CAVALRYMobile salesforce chases ‘inactive’ accounts“If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, then Muhammed must go to the mountain.” STARK must have thought this when they launched their latest stage in their go-to-market strategy. An army of 22 sales people is actively calling AND visiting customers who have a hard time finding their way to STARK.

The custom-ers we’re aiming for all buy supplies for a sig-nificant amount of mon-ey but STARK is not their preferred supplier. YET!

Michael Henriksen

FELIXAWARD

2nd

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More on next page

I started, I got sales training, which gave me some hands-on tools to support me when I’m out with customers. The sales process differs from Sweet Sixteen. The canvassing element is more intense. We don’t call them with a specific offer. What stays the same, is that the first call is the one you dread the most, it’s the dif-ficult one.”

Michael and his mobile colleagues are linked to a region and not to a specific branch. They repre-sent STARK, not the branch. “That makes a difference,” Jørn explains. “It might be that the chemistry between a custom-er and certain sales person in the branch did not work. Now there’s a new person and we get a new

chance and hope-fully, we can repair that relation. Other times, it’s just about providing more at-tention to the cus-tomer. Either way, it is important that the sales teams in the branches and the re-gional sales teams work well together. The whole idea is that once the cus-tomer is convinced that his business is best served shop-ping with STARK, the branches will take over the relation en-tirely. That way, the regional sales team all of the time focus on getting new, high-potential, custom-ers.”

can start a dialogue there will be oppor-tunities to convert their business to STARK, slowly but surely.”

“I get my meet-ings, promising that we can do it in 15 minutes or less,” Mi-chael tells. “Once we get talking, the meeting might take longer. I leave that up to them. It’s im-portant we get to know them. I ask. I listen. I want to un-derstand their needs and requirements. Doing so, I’m better positioned to explain how STARK can sup-port their business. We all know that we, in many ways, oper-ate in a conservative industry. The local carpenter and ma-son, does as he al-ways has done. This is true, also when it comes to shopping. Instead of to the

right, I have to con-vince them they now have to drive to the left. Many of them are surprised by the fantastic services STARK can offer to them. I am convinced that in the end, our sales efforts will make a significant difference.”

Winning new customers. One at a timeA proactive sales approach is not en-tirely new to Michael. “In STARK Brøndby, I was a part of the sales team calling for the Sweet Six-teen project (sales initiative to build structure into the pro-active sales ac-tivities). For my new job, I moved to Silke-borg, where I origi-nally come from. My hunting ground is Øst Jylland, Ikast and Herning. Before

I get my meetings, promis-ing that we can do it in 15 minutes or less.

Once we get talk-ing, the meeting might take long-er. I leave that up to them.

The spirit of Felix

DT MAGAZINE 7

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Continued

cess to products, they want to know about suppliers, customers and col-leagues. The latter is important because if they meet a cus-tomer inquiry they lack the expertise to solve, they should be able to find an expert colleague who can.”

Your phone is your Swiss knifeThe prioritisation of

“THE APP LIVES UP TO THE F60 RE-QUIREMENT IN FULL,” says Hans Henrik Junge, DT Group IT Director. "We have designed a model of the app with four core func-tionalities in mind, all centred around the employee with cus-tomer contact in the branches. They want instant, real time ac-

these four function-alities is not a coinci-dence. It is the result of interviews with Beijer and Silvan em-ployees, evaluating what would support their sales process-es. “We discussed the possibility of a mobile app long be-fore the Felix award. But the award was a catalyst that made us to speed up the process. What I am most proud of, is the very simple and intu-itive search function-ality. For example, product search be-comes much, much easier. Employees in an intuitive way, can find all product cate-gories, products and get produce specifi-cations, prices and they can interact with purchasers and suppliers immediate-ly. It looks good too.”

“For the moment, It’s of course still a mock up, a demo mod-el only,” says Hans Henrik. “But imagine how it would trans-form the average em-ployee’s working day if they had an app on their phone that could pretty much support the most im-portant tasks. Per-sonally, I can’t wait for us to get started in developing the re-al app. That we came in third, means a lot to me and the en-tire IT department. Right now, we can fly! That we didn’t come in first, is only fair. Silvan Garden is a unique project. I vot-ed for them as well. What is really impres-sive is that within the timeframe, they ac-tually managed to open, run and close a store. If we managed

to develop the app instead of a demo,

I’m pretty sure we’d have a good

chance at winning the prize.”

YOUR APPYour personal genieSmartphone penetration in the Nor-dic countries is over 80%. Basically, that means everyone has a smart-phone today or soon will have one.

These multi-functional devices are increasingly becoming our person-al assistant, connectiing us with friends and family, games platforms and our music and movie library. There is even an app that shows you how to help deliver a baby. Develop-ers are continuously creating smart-er, better, fantastic apps.

Now DT Group’s central IT depart-ment has also taken an important step towards developing an app for internal use. The jury? Well they loved it, hence its very solid third place in the Felix Award competition.

Imagine how it would transform an em-ployee’s average working day if they had this app on their phone

FELIXAWARD

3rd

DT MAGAZINE8

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F60

CENTRAL SERVICE DESKimproves customer experience

With an average assortment of 20,000

products to choose from, sometimes it can be hard

for customers to locate exactly what they need.

trance, engaged, vis-ible and easy acces-sible for customers. The sales staff in the branches are trained for their new roles. Where they traditionally had a dedicated special-ism, like for example paint or tools, they now can provide ad-vice and support to customers for their entire building pro-ject. Meaning that they get a lot of new product knowledge as well as training in

how to sell complete solutions. The cen-tral positioning of the service desk makes it easy for custom-ers to find help and service. It makes it at the same time easier for staff to not miss a customer entering the branch. Five branch-es, including Stark-ki’s flagship store in Turku and Kotka, have already implement-ed the central desks. The rest will be imple-mented by the end of December.

STARKKI’S sales people are key to ad-vising customers on projects and for lo-calising the required goods. Traditional-ly, the sales force is split up and dedicat-ed to different ser-vice desks, spread throughout the entire branch. To improve customer service, Starkki is now gath-ering their sales staff around one central service desk.

Close to the en-

APPROVED

S P I R I T

DT MAGAZINE 9

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In an enterprise with more than 6,300 employees and 260 branches, the top

management may seem very distant. With HardTalk, you get close to top management, because here we put you in contact with DT

Group’s most senior manager.

Ole Mikael answers your questions however searching they are.

1Mission Felix has now been running for a

while. What is the status?We are in a very exciting phase. Since we started Mission Felix almost a year ago, more and more people across the com-pany have become in-volved in it. We have now defined all of the pro-jects to be started under the three Felix headlines

Hardwith

Ole Mikael Jensen

Talk

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HardTalk

Fix Basics, Work Smarter and Proactive Sales.

It has surprised me that there are actually so many of the solutions and things we want to do across the divisions that are identical. It is re-ally positive and for me it confirms that we are right in saying that we don’t all have to reinvent the wheel.

So the status is that all of the divisions are bustling with activity. I’m looking forward to seeing the results coming in.

2Why do we not have results already? Is it

not a long time since we started?We have chosen to fast track the projects re-garding Proactive Sales. Therefore, all of the di-visions now have plans for how they can become more proactive in their sales as quickly as pos-sible. And in Silvan this means that they are now clearly taking market share and Beijer is fol-lowing the market. It has been a bit heavy to set things up and we have probably spent more time planning than we

have had a tradition for earlier, where we kind of plunged into things. This corresponds rough-ly to starting to build a house before the draw-ings are completely fin-ished. It has the advan-tage that you can adapt continuously, but it also means that there is a lot of wasted time. In the future we will be better at planning, in turn, pro-jects should also run fast when they are started and we will no longer see projects celebrate three-year anniversaries.

3How as an em-ployee, can I help to make

Mission Felix suc-ceed?Firstly, by doing things right the first time. Doing things wrong takes so much extra work to cor-rect the error. Secondly, it is important to be open to new ways of doing things. There are actual-ly some who have found out how to do things the best way, and no, there are not 6,300 best ways .

The customer should always be in focus. In recent years, we have changed a lot of proce-

dures to free up time. This time should be spent on the customer and not on new adminis-trative tasks.

When I was young, I worked as a Saturday casual at the local super-market receiving empty recycled bottles. When there was no bottles to receive, I swept the floor and the place was al-ways spotless. Today I can see that I should have spent my time try-ing to sell more beers and softdrinks to the customers instead of sweeping to perfection.

4Have you ex-perienced an example of ex-

cellent customer ser-vice recently that in-spired you?My family and I buy our groceries online at a store called nemlig.com and we are very satisfied with their service that in-cludes very punctual de-livery within short time-frames, quick complaints service without discus-sion, extremely polite and helpful service, super website, short order cutt-off, fresh products and a mix of sharp discount

prices, exciting and new specialty products from the best places. This service that works so well has really made life easier for us.

52013 has been a tough year. Are

there any signs of improvement?I wish I could say that the times are getting better, but unfortu-nately it does not look as though the market is going to change dra-matically in the near future. I believe we’ve bottomed out in Den-mark and Sweden, but in both Finland and Norway it still looks bleak. So the market will not help us. There is only one way and that is to take mar-ket share. Just like on the soccer pitch, we must strike when our competitors are weak and we know that is what they are right now. Many of them are not making any mon-ey, spending their time negotiating with the banks. It is essential that we move now - and I know we can!

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trend in the Do-It-Yourself segment in Denmark. “The semi-profession-al amateur, the one who’s able to swing

SILVAN’S new slo-gan is far from a coincidence. It’s a well-aimed reac-tion to a persistent

a hammer and fix it all, is a dying breed,” says Silvan’s Mar-keting Manager, Su-sanne Christensen. “Our customers in-creasingly have the character of the ‘ea-ger, but clueless’. These custom-ers need more help from our staff. They bring their problems and ideas to us, and they expect us to help them in real-ising their project. Whether small or large, from a-z”.

How “Meet The Silvans” became “We Do It Together”That kind of sup-port, requires a lot from The Silvans. “Meet the Silvans” was brilliant when we introduced it,” Susanne explains. “We needed to both dust of our rath-er dull image and differentiate our-selves on service parameters from our competitors. That’s exactly what the campaign did. It was a good, first step on our jour-ney. The destination of that journey, has not been defined in so many words. We are already the pre-ferred DIY merchant in Denmark. But that doesn’t mean we cannot grow. A dream scenario would be that when people consider DIY, they no longer think DIY but actually think Silvan. So we kind of become syn-onymously connect-ed to DIY”.

‘We do it to-gether’ is a not to be misunderstood hint for the fantas-tic development Sil-van employees have gone through. “It’s not just a smart slo-gan that we invent-ed together with

DELICATE REPOSITIONING

Silvan engages in

‘Meet The Silvans’ has been the slogan for Silvan since 2011. The campaign, popular both among employees and custom-ers, now has a successor. In August, Denmark’s preferred DIY chain introduced their new campaign, called ‘We Do It Togeth-er’. The slogan signals a social evolution of the well known term ‘do-it-yourself’, which emerged in the fifties.

In our new campaign we turn the focus 180% degrees away from ourselves, towards our cus-tomers

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Backstage@marketing

More on next page

our advertis-ing agency in a ludicrous moment. It’s a solid prom-ise to our customers, one you can make ONLY if you truly can live up to it,” says Susanne. “Young peo-ple moving from their parents, are DIY il-literates. They can barely drive a nail into the wall. But in their dreams, they turn their apartments in-to these totally cool NY attics, as seen on television. The ‘We Do It Together’ promise is, that we at Silvan have the ability to relate to their dreams, that we have the neces-sary products and materials. AND that we have the skills and competencies to advise and help them do it. We’ve scouted this trend at an early stage and we’ve gone to great lengths to train our sales peo-ple in the stores. They now have the know-how that makes customers, also the ones that are clueless, con-

fident in the belief that we’re in this to-gether.”

“In our new cam-paign we turn the focus 180% degrees away from our-selves, towards our customers. They’re the centre of our at-tention. That’s also what they perceive when they visit us. Our brand neces-sarily has to match what customers ex-perience when they visit our stores. Our sales people there-fore, are all mar-keting consultants. They are the ones that have to keep our promise and live the brand. Every sin-gle day, in every sit-uation.”

that in spite of a highly popular web-site that you can ac-cess from your com-puter, tablet device or smartphone and successful television commercials and other well designed

SILVAN uses a mul-ti-channel market-ing approach. In everyday language this means that you can’t escape be-ing exposed to Sil-van’s advertising, unless you live as a hermit - far away from the nearest Sil-van store. But who would have guessed,

Sales Cataloguechampion of conversion

65 million! If you would stack them, they’d be 1,000 times taller than Turning Torsø in Malmø, the tallest

building in the Nordic region! We’re talking about Silvan’s sales cata-logue. The DIY merchant produc-es 1.3 million copies a week*. Con-sidering the ever growing amount of devices that people use to surf the internet, you’d think it’s about time to put this traditional meth-od to reach customers on ice. But the truth is, it is still the most effec-tive way to generate visitors to the stores.

* with the exception of two weeks DT MAGAZINE 13

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popular, while at the same time, a grow-ing amount of peo-ple choose to decline printed advertising in their physical mail-boxes. But as long as the catalogue is the most effective medium, we do eve-rything to optimise the effect.”

When Lars says everything, he means EVERYTHING. The production pro-cess is planned in detail. Every little aspect is analysed and accounted for. “We know exactly, what amount of pag-es works best,” Lars says. “Just like we know, what content we should prioritise, so it has the best possible impact.”

and well crafted me-dia, the traditional printed sales cat-alogue is still the champion of conver-sion? The numbers prove it. Silvan’s me-dia agency crunches any thinkable num-ber they can get their hands on, prov-ing time and time again that the print-ed catalogue is the medium that drives the most sales.

Meticulous processLars Ø Halse, re-sponsible for the co-ordination of the catalogue, is sure that it’s a matter of time before this will change. “The oth-er media are get-ting increasingly

City customers drive lessThe production cy-cle of a typical cat-alogue, is 10-12 weeks. Sales num-bers are the deci-sive factor when al-locating the amount of pages each prod-uct category gets. The category man-ager, together with his/her product managers, discuss what products they want to promote. Pictures, texts and prices of the agreed upon products are inserted in page templates. When the product man-agers are finished, all of the pages are bundled and a small committee including the marketing man-ager, the purchas-

ing and market-ing director, two branch managers

and sometimes even the general manag-er, evaluate the pro-posed draft.

Once approved, an in-house design department ensures that everything looks professional and fi-nalise the catalogue so it can be printed. 10-12 weeks from start, roughly 1.3 mil-lion Danish house-holds receive the catalogue in their mailbox. Which is half of all Danish house-holds. This number correlates with the geographic location of the stores and the distance people are willing to drive. Lars reveals that peo-ple from the coun-tryside are willing to drive a few extra kil-ometres compared to city slickers. Sil-van has profession-alised the production of their catalogue to an extent, where al-so Cheapy feels con-fident to leave the production up to The Silvans.

As long as the cata-logue is the most effective medium, we do every-thing to optimise the effect

We know exactly, what amount of pages works best

Continued

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F60

CHEAPY COACHES SALESto new heights

Small stores, limited staff. In a nutshell, that’s

the characteristics of a typical Cheapy store.

part of the Cheapy Business Acade-my. Ten sales peo-ple are being trained to be sales coach-es for their col-leagues working in the branches. The objective is a dou-ble whammy. First of all, people with no or little experi-ence, should be-come more comfort-

able at selling. While the know-how and competencies of the people that have ex-perience are continu-ously developing. “It is an absolute must,” says Mattias Kovacs, Cheapy Business Controller, “If we want to take marketshare we can’t afford to let people leave our stores empty-hand-ed.”

THIS MEANS that when customers vis-it the store, we have to have all hands on deck. And everybody, without exception, has to feel comfort-able approaching and helping cus-tomers. Therefore, Cheapy has intro-duced a coaching programme. It is a

APPROVED

S P I R I T

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the industry standard

If you’re anything like 80% the popula-tion, then administrative tasks are not your cup of tea. Yet according to a study conducted in December 2012 (Beijer and STARK), this is what we spend most of our time doing. 60% of our time in fact! Even worse, this relates poorly to the Felix strat-egy, where the main goal is to spend 60% of our time serving customers!

Turning that ratio around might seem like a pipe dream at first, until you see the rig-orous plans Beijer has initiated. And good news for the 80% of the population: say farewell to those dreadful administrative tasks.

APPROVED

S P I R I T

Beijerredefines

“SPENDING zero time on admin is im-possible unfortu-neately,” says Mel-ker Nilsson, Beijer Regional Manager for South Sweden.

“But if we manage to go from carrying out 40% customer-relat-ed tasks to 60%, we will beat all sales re-cords.” An ambitious goal, that requires a significant organi-

Anders Westerberg

Melker Nilsson

Pierre Nyström

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the same time, they have a larger varia-tion of seizes of tim-ber. For the custom-er, it doesn’t matter from which location the truck leaves, as long as it arrives with every-thing in time. For us in Liss-ma however, it has made a considerable difference. No more outbound trucks, less inbound trucks to replenish our stock, meaning less disruptions. Which in turn means more time for our custom-ers. We have more time to make sure the place looks neat. I can honestly say,

the changes have put the fun factor back in our jobs”,

“Customers no-tice the difference,” says Anders. “They get the support they need. And they ap-preciate it. How do we know? Last month we experi-enced a significant increase in sales from our pick-up customers.”

Splitting up sales functionsThe change making the largest impact, is undoubtedly the functional speciali-sation of the sales organisation. “Bei-jer is an organisa-tion of generalists. Everyone does eve-rything. The conse-quence is that we do things twice and not necessarily to our best ability. Both efficiency and qual-ity will increase sig-nificantly by special-

sational change. A change, many Bei-jer employees have been longing for. “It’s like the amount of admin tasks slow-ly but surely have been growing upon us in the past years. Many employees have dreaded this, because it meant they could spend less time on custom-ers. We’re reversing this now. Very much to the liking of our staff.”

Less stress, more fun – and more moneyAnders Westerberg, the branch manag-er of Beijer Lissma, agrees with Melker’s analysis. The Bei-

jer branches in the greater Stockholm ar-ea are ahead in the change process com-pared to the rest of Swe-den. “The most important time waster we ex-perienced in Lissma, was distribution. On peak days, we had to operate ten outbound trucks. We had to pick the sup-plies and load the trucks, while at the same time taking care of visiting cus-tomers. Or rather, getting frustrated, because we didn’t have the time to take proper care of our customers.”

Today the team in Lissma still han-dles customer or-ders, but they’re picked and distrib-uted from the cen-tral hub in Stock-holm. “That is so well thought through! The hub is specialised in logistics and as a result they make less mistakes. At

I can honestly say, the changes put the fun factor back in our jobs

Anders Westerberg

Melker Nilsson

More on next page

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develop our custom-er base. Hiding be-hind your computer is no longer an option. But frankly, people who need that should maybe consider find-ing another job.”

“The biggest chal-lenge we face is changing the mental-ity,” says the sympa-thetic sales director. “Our employees get different job descrip-tions. We’re chang-ing the way peo-ple are working. It’s a chance for peo-ple to specialise in those areas of their jobs they’re most happy with. Realisti-cally, it will take an-other six months be-fore we get to where we have the organi-sation ready, the way we envisioned it. Once we are there, we will make a lot of noise in the market. We will raise the bar for how an efficient and customer-orient-ed building merchant will operate in the market. Our competi-tors should be very wary.”

ising,” says Pierre Nyström, Beijer’s new Sales Director. “We’re differentiat-ing the sales func-tions. We’re estab-lishing an outbound sales organisation, probably between 25 and 30 people. All of them focussing 100% on pro-active sales. They will be operating regionally, but they of course will be linked closely to the branches. On a branch level, sales operations will have an inbound charac-ter. Here, sales peo-ple will manage the customers in terms of customer service, drafting quotes and planning deliveries. We’re doing this in the Stockholm area already. Successful-ly. We’re taking back the marketshare we lost in the past years.”

Ditching time wastersMelker can hardly wait for the new or-

ganisation to fall in-to place in the South of Sweden. “When we introduced Fe-lix and the organisa-tional consequences to staff, it came as a big relief. Especially to employees that have been with Bei-jer for a long time. We are going to up-grade competenc-es. There’s a huge difference between picking up the phone to take orders, and proactively chas-ing new customers. We’re introducing the Beijer School of Sales to train people in their specific roles. Many administra-tive tasks are, or will be centralised and a few that did not add any value, have gone. We use a re-plenishment system, helping us to auto-matically keep the right level of stock. For some products, doors and windows, we have centralised the offering process. Removing time con-suming tasks, frees time we can use to

Pierre Nyström

Continued

on the wrong customers”

‘KEEP IT SIMPLE’ seems to be Tim Mc-Carthy’s mantra. The

Beijer business analyst and controller has de-veloped and success-fully launched Beijer’s

new sales planning tool.

It’s an excel sheet, usu-ally used to plot and

calculate numbers in. The tool enables Beijer

to categorise its 35,000 B2B customers, based

upon their sales poten-tial.

It’s a small but impor-tant step in putting Bei-jer’s sales organisation into a league of its own.

“Don’t waste

yourpearls

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plies from our com-petitors, is classed A1. A large customer doing most of their business with us is classed A4.”

Rocket science? “Maybe not. But very important neverthe-less,” Tim says. “We now have a map that tells us where the biggest potential re-sides. That makes navigating where we should use our re-sources a lot easier. Typically salespeo-ple in Beijer have be-tween 60 and 250 customers in their portfolio. Also typi-cally, they focus on the top ten. Custom-ers ranked 11, 12 or 25, get less atten-

tion. But the top ten next year, might dif-fer a lot from this year. Meaning you already now might be focusing your at-tention on the wrong customers, while the customers you should be paying at-tention to, slip un-der your radar. On to our competitor. The planning tool chang-es this.”

Using our muscle power to get market shareIs this yet another smart tool ending up

We now have a map that tells us where the biggest potential resides

“THE OBJECTIVE is to increase the ef-feciency of our pro-active sales activi-ties,” Tim explains. “We want to feed our sales people with the best pos-sible leads. We have classified all of our B2B customers in terms of their size and growth poten-tial. The excel solu-tion we have come up with is a tempo-rary measure, until we get a real cus-tomer relationship management tool. We kept the solution, the categories and the targets simple. And therefore easy to implement and work with.”

This is not rocket science – it is simple and it worksBeijer works with four main catego-ries of customer based on the size of the business (A to D). Very large = A, large = B, small = C and very small = D. Size alone is not sufficient as a qualifier for poten-tial. “Equally impor-tant, is how much of their business is done through Beijer,” Tim says. “There-fore we have sub-categories, 1 to 4. A large construction company buying all or most of their sup-

More on next page

Tim McCarthy

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egy, Felix, we have all the ingredients for growth. We just need to leverage what we have.”

The key to marketshare is more attention to high potential customersThanks to the cat-egorisation of cus-tomers, Beijer now has a structured framework to ap-proach the right cus-tomers, with the right frequency and with the right mes-sages. “It gives us a better foundation on which to discuss the level of service for different kinds of customer. One of the levels we have de-fined, is the amount of sales calls cus-tomers get. High-potential customers should get more calls and visits than low-potential custom-ers. There’s a strong correlation between sales growth and the attention we give customers.”

“At Beijer,” Tim

says, “we are still at the beginning of the learning curve. There’s so much we can do. We’re going from being a prod-uct-oriented com-pany to a customer-focused company. That’s a major shift in mentality. In the new sales organi-sation, there will be more specialised roles. We’ll have peo-ple that can kick open doors, oth-er people than can make world-class offerings, and again others who know what it takes to grow and maintain a customer. There’s a wealth of opportu-nities. I cannot see why we should not be able to go from an 8% to a 15% mar-ket share. Felix has given us the much needed momen-tum. Right now we’re working on all fronts at the same time. Waiting for a CRM tool to arrive is not an option. We have to keep the momen-tum going.”

Combined with our new sales focused strategy, Felix, we have all the ingre-dients for growth

in a drawer some-where at headquar-ters? “We use the tool to create local hit lists, which we send to the branch-es,” says Tim. “The sales team in the branches use them to proactively con-tact customers in the B and C cate-gories. The goal is to contact and visit 1,000 high potential customers within a five-week period. In the first sales round, we managed to ac-tually visit 1,039 cus-tomers. On De-cember 14th, we concluded our second round. But it’s too early to share the results of this round.”

Tim, who start-ed at Beijer in April 2013, expects a lot from the planning tool. With a past in sales in Johnson & Johnson, known for consumer health products like mouth-wash, skin and hair-

care, as well as a very structured and effective sales pro-cess, the potential Beijer has in this in-dustry leaves Tim totally baffled. “We are the market lead-er. But we only have around 8% market share. This means that the market is very fragmented. To a large extent, the industry is rather traditional. There are only a few competi-tors with the same kind of muscle power that we have. Con-sider our network of branches, the cen-tralised synergies from DT Group and Wolseley we can benefit from - com-bined with our new sales focused strat-

Continued

Tim McCarthy

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Mission Felix

WINNING A TENDERis like winning a marathon

Participating in a tender or providing an existing customer with a project

quote are both sales disciplines. But their nature

is significantly different. To be effective in both

disciplines, STARK has established an organisation

team of four people in Odense who will focus on winning

tenders.

“and make it the re-sponsibility of spe-cialist to find the best prices, the best product mixes and where possible and relevant, alternative products, like for ex-ample our private la-bel products. An ex-ample of the latter, could be a particular ceiling the custom-er has requested - where we go in and suggest a better al-ternative.”

The branches bring home the bacon“We believe that we can improve the quality of our of-fers significantly and by doing so, im-prove our hit rate significantly. What is equally interest-

ing is that we can increase our margin, for example by bun-dling products for different projects and negotiating bet-ter prices from our suppliers. Helping branches with their offers on a central level, provides us with a better over-view, which opens opportunities like this. We’re doing this with doors and win-dows already.”

Søren’s unit is an initiative arising from the new Felix strat-egy. Centralising an important but very time consuming task, frees time at a local branch level. “Mean-ing more time to do what they’re good at, servicing our custom-ers,” says Søren.

TODAY, bidding on tenders and large projects is the re-sponsibility of lo-cal branches. In es-sence, this will not change but the branches will now get intelligent sales support, specifically in the most painful area - the calculation of the offers. This is a time consum-ing and very data-intensive task. Yet it is crucially important because it defines the quality of the of-fer and in the end the chances of win-ning the order.

“We centralise a very important ex-pertise,” says Søren Lysemose, responsi-ble for the new pro-ject organisation.

Søren Lysemose

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Everybody loves to hate

T here was a time, 12 to 14 years ago, when DT Group Private Label products were mostly produced in China. SILVAN was the pioneer in this field and the focus then was

on low price – some might say, too low – and in some cases, they might be right.

We were merchants, with little or no experi-ence within Private Label and started where almost all companies who venture in to Private Label start, i.e. with low-price, low-risk dis-count products.

That was back in the day. A lot has happened since then. Today, we have 14 years of expe-rience in Private Label sourcing and have gained experience in manufacturing process-es, quality control and testing. This know-how has resulted in Private Label products that can stand on an equal footing with branded coun-terparts.

The sad fact is, whereas the quality of our products have developed, our perception of Pri-vate Label has not quite developed at the same rate. Many of us still love to hate Private Label products. But is it justified?

PRIVATE LABEL

Stuart Kilpatrick

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products they put in their baskets. The inescapable conclu-sion: customers have confidence in our own products. May-be even more confi-dence than we have?

As a hardcore STARK, Starkki or Beijer reader, you might be inclined to argue that profes-sional builders are more quality con-scious or that they specifically demand a certain brand. If you consider the share of PL prod-ucts contra the en-tire sales volume in these business units (10% in Beijer and STARK, 4% in Stark-ki), you’d probably say: ‘told you so. We could leave it here and pretend that we got to the bottom of the PL myth, but the simple truth is, we

wouldn’t do our own products justice.

A focused approach makes a huge differenceTo start with, STARK, Beijer and Starkki introduced PL prod-ucts seven or eight years ago. Much lat-er than Silvan. They also started with a much smaller range of PL goods and have gradually built on this, gaining ex-perience along the way and expand-ing their PL ranges where it made sense. A very important el-ement in this suc-cess has been the business unit prod-uct managers who

STUART KILPATRICK, DT Group’s dedi-cated Private Label Brand Manager, has been on a mission for almost a dec-ade, working on two fronts: the quality of our own products and the perception of that quality. His agenda obviously, is to sell the concept that there’s nothing wrong with our PL products. Can we ex-pect him to present objective arguments that can convince us to change our per-ception?

Silvan customers love PLThe fact of the mat-ter is, that we can get convincing ar-

guments elsewhere. SILVAN, the first business unit to adopt private label products in their as-sortment, today - re-gardless of the early, experimental histo-ry - can report that a whopping 25% of all products sold are Private Label. Why is this interesting? If you consider the nature of SILVAN’s business, customers pretty much decide for themselves what

More on next page

Better margins, so we make more money on selling our own products.

Greater insight into production processes and costs, which we can use when negotiating with our branded suppliers, who otherwise guard this information from their customers.

Owning and controlling our own PL brands and products also improves our negotiation position with suppliers of regular brands. We’re not as dependent on their products because we have our own and this makes us less vulnerable.

Having strong PL brands and good quality products gives us an advantage over our competitors because we can offer our customers products that they cannot get anywhere else. If customers prefer our PL brands, they must buy them in one of our branches.

SILVAN can report that a whopping 25% of all products sold are Private Label

REASONS WHY PRIVATE LABEL IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS4

12

3

4

Private Label

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ing and after pro-duction. “One of our biggest challenges,” says Stuart, “is often our own perception. One mistake or one poor quality prod-uct can affect how we feel about all of our PL products and can undermine our confidence in one of our brands. Once our sales staff has lost confidence in a brand, they will un-derstandably recom-mend another brand to their customers. We have learned the hard way that we cannot make any mistakes or accept lower quality as even the smallest mistake on one product, im-mediately rubs off on the entire private label range.”

We are actually good at thisStuart goes on to point out that our

consistent focus on quality has paid off big time. It is im-pressive, that about 8% of DT Group to-tal sales is Private Label, which adds up to Private La-bel sales of nearly EUR 185 million an-nually. That is an enormous amount of goods, with rela-tively few claims or complaints from cus-tomers. “I think we have a tendency,” says Stuart “to focus on a few bad cases that inevitably pop up from time to time and forget all about the successes. Per-sonally, I think our sourcing guys do a great job finding high quality products and suppliers and are quick to step in and take actions if any problems arise”.

You’re in chargeStuart dreams of a time where we love and trust our own brands and will proudly recommend them to our custom-ers. And why not? If you’re a good sales person, you are the brand. You are the trusted partner that with all the confi-dence in the world can suggest your customer to give our own products a try.

have been diligent at finding the high qual-ity products that our B2B customers de-mand. Carina Manns, Beijer’s Product Manager for doors, windows and kitch-ens, proves that it is possible to promote our own brands to an extent where it becomes the cus-tomer’s preferred brand. Compared to last year, she man-aged this year alone, to boost the Pri-vate Label share for doors by 56% !

There are more success stories like these, and they indi-cate, that B2B cus-tomers, with the right approach, can learn to love our PL brands, just as much as Silvan’s custom-ers do. Stuart has recently added a co-rdinator to his team, with the objective of finding and building

on existing success stories.

The past haunts usMost of our PL products are actu-ally sourced in Eu-rope nowadays and according to Stu-art, the quality of our PL products is at least as good as their branded coun-terparts. In product tests, our PL prod-ucts get high scores, in some cases even better scores than comparable prod-ucts from traditional brands. PL products that are produced in Asia are constant-ly monitored by our own sourcing office in Bejing. The man-ufacturers that are allowed to produce our PL products, have been care-fully selected and there’s continuous quality control dur-

Most of our PL products are actually sourced in Europe nowadays and the quality of our products, is at least as good as their branded counter-parts

Continued

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Private Label

Private Label is an important part of our strat-

egy and these pages will give you an insight

into new additions and give you inspiration

and in-depth knowledge about the Private La-

bel products we sell in our stores. The continu-

ing development of these products and brands

helps ensure a healthy economy in the group.

Product ranges and brands may vary from di-

vision to division.

PRIVATE LABEL

helps business units to share success stories

Our new

GOOD NEWS for Pri-vate Label - the or-ganisation has hired Henriette Sørensen as Private Label Co-ordinator. Henriette comes from a posi-tion as sourcing co-ordinator in Silvan. All business units in their three-year strategic plan are committed to selling more pri-vate label products. The Private Label Co-ordinator will play a key role in supporting the business units to esnure they achieve

their goals. The main fo-

cus for the coor-dinator will be to expand and get leverage from ex-isting success stories. The key word here is best practice. We will be taking the best results from our business units and work diligent-ly to build on these results in all of our business units.

Where possible, the new coordinator will align our Private Label assortment in order to have a more common product portfolio throughout the business units.

The DT Group Sourcing Direc-tors have agreed to start with hand tools and screws in our B2B busi-ness units. The experiences we will gain, we will use when align-ing other product groups. There will always be coun-

try-specific prod-ucts that will not be Nordic, but the aim is to have as many common products as possible. A larg-er level of product alignment will make it easier to work with product ranges and order coordination, stock and logistics.

Private Label Coordinator

Stuart KilpatrickBrand Manager, DT Group

THE PL DEPARTMENT has designed and developed these new fireplace tools, which are manufactured in China. This means that the tools are unique to DT Group. They cannot be pur-chased elsewhere.

To appeal to as many customers as possible, the tools can either be wall-mounted, attached to the base or free-standing. The tools are currently on sale in Silvan stores where we are awaiting the customer’s ver-dict.

Blue Mountain fireplace tools

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Silvan introduces

RECENTLY we re-furbished Silvan’s paint departments and upgraded the Domestic brand with a new and innova-tive in-store con-cept. Together with our supplier and Jane

Bjerrisgaard, Product Manager in Silvan, we have developed a new eye-catching concept, built on three tiers of colour ranges, each designed to help our customers choose the colour they want.

New Domestic paint concept

Showing the thousands of colours possible with Domestic paint.

Colour books

Then new colour cards are extra large and made with real paint. This way, customers can get en even better idea of the end re-sult. On the back of each card, along with information about the paint, there’s a barcode - telling the tinting machine what colours to mix. This minimises the risk of mistakes and makes life easier for you. On the left, you can see the new display for the Domestic colour-cards.

Colour cards

Raptor professional

paint

NEW

IF YOU RECALL, we described the new design and in-

store material that have been devel-oped for Raptor pro-fessional paint in our B2B stores. The latest news from STARK is that sales are up and gross margins are better than ever. “We are

very pleased with the sales and profit from Raptor paint,” reports STARK Product Manag-er Allan Jakobsen. “Since we launched the new design, sales have never been better”.

2

1

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Private Label

BOTH STARK and Starkki have had great success with RAW com-posite decking. We source the material from China, where we work togeth-er with two differ-ent suppliers. This will change from the coming season: Starkki will switch to Tech-Wood, cur-rently supplying Stark. This will help us to pool volume and achieve better conditions with the supplier.

In order to sup-port sales, the PL department will pub-lish a brochure. This will include laying in-structions, so cus-tomers can see how easy it is to work with the product.

We are develop-ing a samples kit. It will be distributed to all Stark and Stark-ki stores. The sam-ples kits, along with our brochures, can be distributed to our best customers, to help them sell com-posite decking to their customers.

RAW composite decking

The new 50 ml tester pots (unique in Den-mark) let customers try out colours before investing time, effort and money in paint-

ing. The tester pots come with pre-mixed Domestic Eco 10 wall

paint in about 90 of the most popular colours. They cost €2.70, a tiny investment that helps customers to choose the exact right colour. “We

are excited to see how cus-tomers react to the tester pots,”

says Product Manager Jane Bjerris-gaard. “As a customer, I know I would wel-come a small trial before investing in a large tin of paint”. While new in Denmark, tester pots are well known and popu-lar in the UK. People use them for hobby paint-ing. If you want to paint a small item in your home, it is easier and more eco-nomic to buy a tester pot (50 ml), than the smallest size paint pot (380 ml).

Tester pots

NEW

3

THE DOMES-TIC tinting ma-chines have been upgraded with new soft-ware and a bar-code scanner, eliminating the possibility of mistakes and enabling any-one to operate it with minimum instruction.

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The Silvans welcome a

Meet Steen Mortensen. Steen is 40 years old. He works in Silvan, in Ballerup. Steen is intellectually impaired, so his job has been

adapted to suit his abilities. He mows the lawn, cleans floors and tidies up the staff area. Tasks

that a fifteen-year old might do during his or her summer job.

For Steen, this job means the world. It is his chance to be recognised by real colleagues in a real job. Steen is not alone. To date, another

sixteen Silvan stores have hired colleagues with similar impairments.

new family member

“A LOVELY girl-friend or boyfriend, and a real job! That’s what they want,” says Claus Bergman Hansen. Claus is a consultant, working for KLAP, a project initiated by LEV - a nationwide organi-sation representing 36,000 people with intellectual impair-ment. “We can’t help them with the girl-friend or boyfriend. A job, we can do.” KLAP started two years ago, as an ex-periment to create jobs for LEV’s im-paired members. The initiative is spon-sored with DKK 14 million from the Dan-ish Ministry of Em-ployment. Since the start of the project, 300 people have seen their job dream come true! And an-other 200 jobs are on their way.

VIP visitor for SteenFor Silvan HR Man-ager Morten El-bro, participating in the programme was natural. “These

people have impair-ments but with a lit-tle support, there’s lots of tasks they still can do. Depend-ing on their impair-ment, they can work in the warehouse, fill shelves, clean shopping baskets and some of them with a little training, might even be able to help customers with smaller errands. I think it’s great that as a company we can help give these people some pur-pose in their lives. Our ambition is for each store* to hire one.”

The experiment drew the attention of Denmark’s Minis-ter for Employment, Mette Frederiksen. She visited Steen in Silvan in Ballerup last year in August. “She asked a lot of ques-tions about KLAP and my work here,” Steen Mortensen says. “I also was able show her around but whether she’s a Silvan custom-er, I wouldn’t know. I guess, being the Minister and all, she

*Silvan has currently 40 stores

Steen Mortensen

Mette Frederiksen

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Social responsibility

specific problem in society. It is a good signal, also to our customers.” Steen is paid a salary, like everybody else. His wages are adjusted to his contribution. What Steen did not expect, was that he shared in the bonus scheme, like all his 37 colleagues in Sil-van Ballerup do. “He got a shock when he found out that his wages were almost triple the amount he was expecting,” Claus says.

What’s in it for Silvan?Steen has a job and a sense of purpose. But what is the in-citement for Silvan to participate? “To start with,” Morten says, “A lot of tasks that we normally do not have the time to do, like making sure there are enough shopping baskets and that they are clean, gets done now. That’s a luxury

we did not have be-fore. Like Ender al-ready said, it sends a good signal to our customers. A few years ago I was in McDonalds and two of the staff were de-velopmentally im-paired. They were cleaning the tables. One of them was outgoing and very pleasant and willing-ly chatted with cus-tomers. It touched me deeply and it in-creased my respect for McDonalds. Sil-van customers most likely will have a sim-ilar experience. Last but not least, I think it is an enriching ex-perience for our ex-isting staff to work together with people like Steen.”

“Studies show there is a great-er general feeling of pride and dignity in an organisation where there’s room and place for staff who are impaired.” Claus adds. “Peo-ple are happier too. There’s of course a down side. There’s always the fear of bullying. They’re con-sidered the weak people in the organi-sation, the perfect victims for malicious pranks. Fortunate-ly, we haven’t wit-nessed one single case so far. On the contrary, our people are being met with respect and camara-derie.”

is pretty busy and does not have a lot of time to fix her house.” Steen lives in Mørkhøj, together with six other resi-dents. It is 7 km from home to work. Since Steen does not have a driving license, he uses his bike. Re-gardless of the weather.

Happy, loyal camper“I love it here,” Steen says. “I’m putting supplies on the shelves, I sweep the floors and occasion-ally, I help customers. I can’t always an-swer their questions but then I ask a col-league to help out. What I like most is fooling around with colleagues during the breaks. Having the opportunity to work here, makes a difference in my life. Without a job, I’d be at home - boring my-self to death. Here I meet a lot of new people. Colleagues as well as custom-

ers are treating me good. I will be here as long as there’s a need for me.”

“It’s a pleas-ure to working with Steen,” says Ender Deveci, Steens’ man-ager and unit man-ager in Silvan Bal-lerup. “He’s one of us and we treat him as one of us. We try to keep his job as simple as possible. We see Steen grow-ing in the job. He in-creasingly shows initiative. I welcome the fact that Silvan is socially engaged. We’re contributing positively to solve a

A lot of tasks that we nor-mally do not not have time to do, now get done

Morten Elbro

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before they kill you

“When your horse is dead, get off,” Torben Wiese says. “It’s an old In-dian proverb to remind us that if we’re doing something that is not working, we should stop doing it.”

For the past eleven years, Torben has been making a living out of helping people to kill habits. What about you? Is your horse dead? Did you get off it in time?

KILL YOUR HABITS

ally, we know chang-ing is necessary. But, more often than not, the changes we make, don’t last. Not even the ones, we voluntarily agree to.”

Why brains love habitsHabits, are our auto-matic pilot. “Brains don’t use energy when we ‘do as we always do’. Commit-ting to change on the other hand, re-quires a massive portion of energy. Besides, changes make ‘the good old brains’ insecure. Not something our up-per story fancies too much”.

Status quo, is a deceitful perception of security. “Heracli-tus, an ancient Greek philosopher, once said that the only

WE MEET Torben on a chilly monday morning, in Silvan Birkerød. His Silvan. To talk about hab-its. Or rather, how to break habits and make change work. “Habits,” Torben knows, “are poison for change. Ration-

certainty we have, is that all things pass and nothing stays the same. We’re ex-posed to tons of im-pressions and can’t avoid getting in-spired. Even during a crisis, where you might expect the fight for survival to kill creativity, inno-vation sprouts. We got an enormous amount of patents submitted during the crisis, to show for”.

Change at gunpoint is a bad idea “We can of course choose to ignore what we instinctive-ly know is right. But reality has a habit of catching up on us,” Torben says. “Maybe your health is rapidly declining. Customers stop buying. Crisis

Torben Wiese

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F60

one. Keep in mind, for you, I might be customer number 63 of the day. For me, the trip to Silvan is the highlight of my day. I have most like-ly planned it. I even look forward to it. The way you ap-proach me, the cus-tomer, makes a dif-ference.”

Don’t let customers leave empty handed“Customers are the most impor-tant resource. Sil-van spends money to get them to visit,” Torben says. “Make it your personal goal to establish eye con-tact with everyone entering. And don’t let them leave emp-ty handed. Intercept them before it’s too late.”

alike circumstanc-es, force us to react. But with our backs against the wall, the odds to make chang-es that will turn the situation for the bet-ter, are not good.”

“We considerably increase our chances for success when we change BEFORE it’s necessary,” Torben says. “But to do so, you need to set out clear goals. After all, how can you score without a goal?”

If habits are poi-son to change, goals, according to Tor-ben, are the anti-

Custom-ers are the most important resource. Silvan spends money to get them to visit

dote. “Goals help you to get on track. Goals are not solely earmarked for life’s physical aspects, like loosing weight, or running a marathon. Why not choose to feel loved? Having more constructive thoughts? Or learn-ing something new, every day? Those goals will inspire you.”

Dreadful or exhil-arating - what do you choose?“Silvan is one of many alternatives, where I can buy my stuff. I need a good reason to spend my money here. Here’s where you come in. You can choose to turn my visit into a dreadful experience. Or, make it a fan-tastic, mind blowing

Torben, 51, took up kite surfing, winter bathing and became a beekeeper - last year! “Change, makes life interesting. It nurtures personal development and keeps you young. The most important things in life, you should not leave up to other people. They are your own responsi-

bility.”

“Silvan is a sensa-tional success. Every big success, requires many small suc-cesses. Successes, you can make hap-pen, every day. But you have to adapt your thinking, to hav-ing the mindset of a leader. Ask yourself how you can contrib-ute. Solve the issues you meet. Make the necessary changes

happen. Don’t be a victim, the kind of person that things happen to. De-cide today, that you want to be the kind of person, that makes things hap-pen.”

HABITS THAT WILL MAKE YOU MORE SUCCESSFUL3

Think of three things you can do to give your customer a great experience – do them every day.

Think of three things you can do to make your working place exciting and fun – do them every day.

Decide that small, negative things you meet on your day, cannot ruin your day.

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DT MAGAZINE 31

Page 32: DT Magazine 17

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1How many mobile sales people is STARK putting on the road?

A 45B 22 C 4

2Beijer is the market leader in Sweden. How large is their marketshare?

A 28%B 17%C 8%

3What is Silvan’s new mantra?

A Meet the Silvans

B We Do It Together

C Inspiration for Building Projects

4When did we introduce our first Private Label line?

A 14 years agoB 8 years agoC 4 years ago

5How can you contribute to mission Felix?

A Make sure my store is spotless and ready for customers

B Getting things right the first time and focus on customers

C Grab whatever opportunity occurs to sell

The winner of an iPhone5S is Kjertil Myrvold, from Neumann in Bergen. Congratulations.

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