It's All Bull - Barry Bull

Experience v Service

While many businesses have grown by opening more stores or franchising, Bull says his success came because he didn’t expand. He had to look for other ways to build the brand. He says this, reinvention and diversification, is the only way for the retail music industry to survive in a climate where music sales have been declining between seven and 10 percent per year.

While there will always be customers who want to visit the store to buy a CD, digital forms of delivery are increasingly eroding this tradition. Despite that, Bull puts a lot of thought into making the shopping experience special for his customers.

Relationships with customers are also key to Bull’s success but he maintains this goes beyond customer service, beyond ‘have a nice day’. “Customer experience has to replace customer service,” he stresses. “In other words, what happens to your customers the moment they come in contact with your business to the moment they leave. What is that experience? If they want a CD, we find it for them, we may have to order it from overseas. It’s about rewarding our customers with what they want.”

Bull believes too many businesses are focused on price point, with disregard for service values. “A specialist like me is never going to win on a pricing judgement but we work on experience,” he says. “The customer remembers the experience long past the price.”

And because he only has one store, Bull says he can be sure his staff works to those values every day, beyond learning how to operate the point of sale systems and approach customers. “They’re given this little culture about trying a little harder, smiling, offering information and creating conversation that leads to more business but also to customers feeling that we’re here just for them.”

Bull pays close attention to continual training and support for his staff, to ensure the team provide this experience. “We talk about that with every customer interaction. What is it that you did with that customer you just served that was a little more than you had to do?” And while this takes time he recognises it’s an investment that more than pays for itself. “Our competition is flat out getting staff to meet the job description, but it’s the way you teach and train that counts.”

Similarly, staff wages reflect his desire to get the best from his team, but the rewards don’t come free. “We pay a little more, and we expect a little more,” he explains. “If we can have our people performing that little bit more every day, every week, every month, it’s like compounding interest, and at the end of the year it’s very bankable.”

The real return on investment, Bull says, is measured by the number of referrals to the business. “Retention plus rewards equal referrals,” he quips. In the home cinema arm alone, for example, a huge 90 percent of the business comes from referrals.

No matter whether you’re a plumber, accountant, physiotherapist or retailer, Bull says the lessons in business are simple: “Know your customer, know what they want, when they want it, why they want it and where they want it. Spend time finding out what the customer needs, so you can tailor your offering. The business with a product or service I am going to choose, is the one which informs. Information is powerful.”

Then, he says, retain each customer with a goal of keeping them for life. “If you can keep that customer for life, you have no further acquisition costs.” He says too many businesses make the mistake of spending their time attracting new customers when they need to be taking care of the ones they already have.

Bull embraces his own mistakes as lessons to learn from. His biggest errors came from setting unrealistic goals, or goals with unrealistic time frames. But by failing to meet these, he was forced to sit down and more adequately plan his goals, giving the business more direction in how to achieve them. “A whole new set of business protocols that I was unconsciously searching for myself, fell into place.” These ended up being the ‘hit list’ for his first book and principles he embraces throughout his life.

Bull knows there comes a time when a business owner, particularly in a family business, stops being valuable to the business in terms of what they bring to it. From music marketing whiz to retail legend to author and speaker, 63-year-old Bull can’t see himself retiring, certainly not in the near future. What he does see is more reinvention in whatever form it may take, leaving the day-to-day running of store to his three children.

Even though not directly involved day-to-day with the business, all of Bull’s current activities involve continuous brand building, carrying the bull further and entrenching himself more deeply as the music man.

The Bull Hitlist

1. Vision: Bull didn’t aim to be the biggest but the best.

2. Goals: he set goals with a realistic and flexible timeline.

3. Difference: celebrities came to the centre and drew more customers.

4. Connections: Toombul Music offers loyalty clubs, tracks purchases, and maintains databases of customer info so they know what customers want.

5. Value: Bull diversified his range to add more profitability to his store.

6. Change: embracing new forms of technology.

7. People: develop and retain key people—some of Bull’s key staff have been with him for 25 years.

8. Accountability: the buck stops with Bull.

9. No is negotiable.

10. Happiness: it’s the key to success, not the other way around.