Our successes are defined by the successes of others—by the successes of people like you.  2017 was a great year for The Mann Group, but it wasn’t a great year because our costs dropped or our sales increased. It was a great year because of you. It was a year of growing sales and happy customers, of lessons learned, of good habits formed and bad habits broken. For us, yes, but more importantly, for the clients we work with and the folks we influence.
From Mann U to GEAR Online, from strategic planning to simply reading ORBiT or an article like this, our purpose is to challenge you to change, learn and grow. Now, it’s one thing for us to say it; it’s something else entirely for our clients—your peers—to profess the merits of this change themselves.
That’s why we tapped some of our clients from 2017 to share their insights into why and how The Mann Group helped their business grow. We’re not trying to toot our own horn (we’ll let others do it for us).
Accomplishing Goals
As a business owner or manager, you’ve got a full plate. That means that sometimes those big goals are often shunted aside in favor of daily, seemingly unavoidable tasks. You may have a vision (like reconsidering your visual merchandising strategy, or defining you company culture), but actually executing it can seem daunting. The Mann Group often is, or helps facilitate, the big change.
“We knew what we wanted to accomplish, but were unsure as to how to get there,” says Ben Hinker, manager at Motion Makers Bicycle Shop.“The Mann Group helped us with a guideline and gave us guidance on not only starting this journey, but how to stay focused on our goal.” The Mann Group helped Hinker put his plan in motion, and keep it there—which is another hurdle for many business leaders, who fear they won’t be able to follow through on big projects.
For many managers and owners, they even recognize they need help, but finding the right person to give it can be a challenge. “Giving a great guest experience has always been important here at Macpac, and for the past year or so we had been looking for ways to get more consistency throughout our 600 store staff,” notes Alex Brandon, Chief Executive Officer of Macpac Ltd. “We’d looked at a variety of training options and hadn’t settled on anything, then we saw Dan at OR in July. As soon as we saw Dan in action we knew we wanted him to coach our store managers at our upcoming conference in New Zealand.”
It’s easy to dream up ideas, but sometimes you need a little push or guidance to actually accomplish them. That’s where The Mann Group comes in.
Training Staff
So you’ve got big ideas, and you’ve recruited The Mann Group to help—what do those results look like?
A lot of our clients note a marked improvement in their staff. Whether we train your staff, or train you to train them, the positive effects are unparalleled. “We were also facing issues with our staff not engaging customers in the manner we desired,” Hinker adds. “The Mann Group helped us learn how to get the results from our staff so our customers were getting the service we strive to provide.”
Great customer service is integral to many business’ success, but Deek Heycamp of Next Adventure points out another benefit of a well-trained staff, also gained through The Mann Group. “In my experience, people are happiest when they feel in control of their life and work situation. By exposing them to Mann U, they have gained tools and understanding for how they can influence and control their personal success and the success of the company.” Not only do his staff care more following their experience with The Mann Group, they’re more consistent, which is an oft-overlooked key to great customer service. ““The Mann Group has helped to create a company ‘structure’ for our company culture,” he adds.
Better Communication
Success lies in communication. Unfortunately, many leaders don’t recognize the power of their words (and body language). The Mann Group helps remedy that as well.
“The difference we see in ourselves is being better at almost all aspects of our business,” Hinker says of the positive effects of working with The Mann Group. “From being able to conduct better interviews to dealing with difficult staff conversations and decisions, we have learned a better way to shape our employees behaviors.”
What Hinker mentions is the core of The Mann Group: communication. We write about it often in the newsletter, but it’s also the subject of Dan’s book, ORBiT: The Art & Science of Influence.
Follow Through
We know there are other guys like us, but we do something no one else does: we stick around. We remain a constant, reliable resource for our clients, long after our session ends. “Dan and Leslie have followed up with us, kept on us and obviously take ownership of moving us forward,” Hinker says. “We’ve attended other training similar to this, but the difference is in what happens afterward.”
We know the training we provide is implementable, but we also know how difficult it can be to actually follow through once you return to reality. That’s why we offer as much help as we can: we practice implantation at the end of training, offer correlative training through programs like GEAR Online, and offer personal guidance to anyone who seeks it after they return to work.
Tangible Growth
All of these things are good and well, but without tangible growth like rising profits or dropping costs, it could seem like the investment is for naught.
Don’t worry, The Mann Group delivers there, too. “Many managers tell us that the methods Dan taught them are helping them achieve better sales in their stores,” says Brandon. With more refined strategies, many retailers experience sales growth of up to 20% within the first year of working with The Mann Group.

For other businesses, the growth experienced through The Mann Group is actually integral to their survival. “My involvement with the Shimano Dealer panel and The Mann Group have saved my business,” Steve Donahue of Recycled Cycles told us. And he’s not alone; we’ve worked with several businesses who were just months away from shuttering their doors, and they’re thriving today.
Again and again, we hear positive feedback that reflects the visible growth made possible through our partnerships. “The tangible effect of working with the Mann Group has been having the best two years we’ve had in business,” Hinker says. “The staff engages our customers much better than before, and in turn we have seen an increase in our business. We also strive to provide an unparalleled shopping experience, and thanks to The Mann Group helping us set the bar high, we have been working in that direction. It’s always a work in progress, but Dan and Leslie have been extremely helpful in this process.”
Change is hard. We say this in a lot of our articles, perhaps because we want to acknowledge your own hesitations, but also because the implication of change being hard also means it’s possible.
We’ve worked with businesses big and small, in retail and manufacturing, and all of them seem to harbor that same hesitation to change. But once they do—once they release those misgivings and reluctance—they always wish they’d done so sooner.
For us, that embracing of change—even though it’s hard—is what it’s all about. There’s nothing that makes us prouder or happier in our own careers than seeing you succeed.