Fix the Behavior, The Sales Will Follow

30th August 2026

In this episode of the Productivity Podcast, we speak with Kayleigh Fazan, founder of the International Retail Academy, to discuss why transforming the customer experience has to start behind the scenes. Kayleigh shares her insights from over 20 years in retail, explaining why true productivity is all about empowering leaders, building team confidence, and getting the basics right.

Here are the key takeaways from our conversation:

Behavior Over Metrics: Retail leaders often fixate on lagging indicators like conversion and ATV that only show what happened yesterday. To genuinely improve productivity, managers must focus on the daily behaviors that create those results.

The Power of Service: Delivering an exceptional, consistent customer experience is one of the most commercially productive activities a retail business can perform.

Targeted Training: Overwhelming part-time staff with massive libraries of learning materials is highly ineffective. Businesses should instead empower their leaders to separate critical, “must-do” training from optional “nice-to-have” learning.

Sustainable Growth: Retailers cannot simply cut costs to achieve growth. Adopting a bottom-up approach to customer service naturally boosts commercial numbers, which in turn allows for future budget growth.

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