Posted on Tue, Mar 27, 2007
Last weekend I spoke at the National Bridal Show in Chicago and uncovered an interesting factoid that will be having a rippling effect in other industries as well. The bridal market for years was powered by the various national bridal magazines. An engaged woman would buy the popular bridal magazines and go through the pages for the latest styles and find out who is carrying the merchandise she likes. Then she would go to the selected store. This is not dissimilar to many other industries that are dependent on a specific consumer magazine for future sales.
Because of the power of these magazines and the business that this method generates, the ads to the vendors kept on rising. But for the first time in the life of these magazines they have real competition and that’s from the internet. It is a very similar scenario to the yellow pages.
So what does all this mean and how will this effect the way I do business? No one is absolutely sure but the facts are that most of these magazines are starting to see some significant drops in readership which translates to lower revenues. The most logical approach would be that these consumer magazines launch major internet initiatives. Many of these publication’s internet participation are average at best and certainly don’t share the leadership position they enjoyed in print.
Having said that, plan on seeing very aggressive media campaigns driving their readership to their web site where they will mostly likely be offering all sorts of free services in their attempts to regain market dominance. This is where the independent retailer will start to play a more vital role than in the past. Google and Yahoo along with many other referral services are waging a battle for eyeballs (visitors to their sites) over the local markets. Look for new marketing schemes and ideas where these publications want to include local businesses. Initially they will want to charge you for your participation in their programs. Don’t spend any money until these ideas become proven strategies. Wait, there will always be time to jump on the bandwagon, but to be the pioneer could be an effort in futility and a waste of money.
Another negative effect that the internet is having on business is the attendance at trade shows. If the customer is saying “we don’t have to hold it, touch it, or feel it to buy it”, then it only makes sense that the retailer would say the same thing and start to place more orders on line. Trade shows are NOT going to die or go away, but they will be getting smaller in terms of vendors. Yes, there are some industries where their trade shows are still growing but there are more shows that reflect a decline. In many cases it’s not the number of attendees that are declining but rather the amount of exhibitors that are.
Again what does it mean to the retailer? I believe trade shows are about to reinvent themselves much like the way Las Vegas reinvented itself from receiving the biggest amounts of its revenues from gambling to now where over 50% of the revenues are generated from non-gaming activities and specifically meetings. The trade show business is booming in Las Vegas and the reason why is because it is the perfect combination of work and play. It is a fun place to go and also do business. Survey after survey show that trade show attendees are requesting Vegas and Orlando because of the fun element.
Local trade shows have a wonderful challenge and opportunity to explore and expand non-exhibitor revenues by becoming the meeting place for retailers to not just buy but to network and bond in ways they have never done in the past. Many shows are doing this– the National Shoe Retailers have been doing this successfully for years. They meet before the show for networking and education. Yet, this is the association running the activities not the show organizers. Watch for the association organizers to venture into the role of meeting planner and conduit of people and ideas. Of course I think it’s exciting because my role of speaker, educator, and facilitator will only be expanding as trade shows realize the potential of these activities.
At the risk of not offending any of my other clients, there are many trade shows that offer educational components with their shows and are doing a terrific job at it. These are generally the shows that are striving and growing. Even here watch how these shows expand their educational offerings and networking activities. New forms of interactive adult learning techniques will be coming to a trade show near you.
The world is changing at speeds that boggle the mind. Industry winners of the past are becoming industry losers of the future unless they adapt and adopt change. After spending 25 years of my life in the woman’s fashion industry, I love change but many of us fight it. What was, was, and what will be is different and can be very exciting. Let’s watch to see how these predictions work out.
I know this was a different type of column for me but even I have to practice change. Tell me what you think.
Have a great week!
As ever,
Rick “Third Cousin once removed from Karnack The Magnificent” Segel
Posted on Tue, Mar 20, 2007
I love real life customer service stories because it gets me to ask myself how I would have handled that situation. Here is something that happened to me this week and at the end I will highlight something we could all learn from it.
A year and a half ago I bought a houseful of furniture from a wonderful furniture store in Florida for my new house. One of the items we purchased was a king size bed. It had a pillow top and it was very comfortable. But we noticed that one side was starting to sag. Of course it was my side and yes, I know, I am a heavy guy. But I am not the first big person to buy a Sealy Bed, plus I only sleep in it 5 months out of the year. They are just not supposed to sag. Obviously the mattress was defective. We bought it at a reputable store so we called the store up and asked what we should do.
Our expectations were that the store would take it back, give us an allowance for the bed (we expected an allowance of at least 50% off but maybe as much as 75% off) and then we would buy another mattress from them. That is the set up–now this is what happened.
We called the store and got customer service. They informed us that they must send out a technician to evaluate the bed. That was fine. They said someone could come out in 2 days, which was fine. The tech came, evaluated the bed, and agreed there was a problem. Then he said we would get a call back from customer service within 48 hours with the solution to the problem. .
Four days go by but no call. So we called them. But they have no record of anything. No record of our call, of the service tech making a visit, or any report. They file their reports by customer phone number and he asked if there might be any other phone number. So I gave him every phone number I have from business, to home, to fax, to cell phones. Still nothing.
The customer service person then said, as if I were slow, “Are you sure you have the right store? People do make mistakes like that.” That comment gave me a warm fuzzy. I reviewed everything again with him and asked him to contact his service tech. He said he couldn’t do that until he comes in at 4:30PM. It was 10:45 in the morning. I asked about a cell phone and he said he didn’t have one, which was a lie because the tech gave us his number if we had any problem.
The customer service rep finally said that there was nothing he could do for me and that I should get all of my receipts and come into the store. I started to lose it then and asked if he didn’t believe me. He said that my claim was a bit far fetched and probably I just mixed up stores. Now I felt old and feeble.
So we went to the store loaded for bear. I was about to become the customer from HELL. We walked into the store and asked for a customer service manager. The person introduced himself as the manager. We told him who we were and he automatically apologized for the mix up and said that he would do whatever he had to do to get to the bottom of it. He looked at the receipts, checked his records and noticed that we had one delivery sent to a neighbor’s house, had listed their name for the delivery, then accidentally left the neighbor’s name on the account. He was upset because the phone number should have overridden that. He apologized again and informed us that the sales person who sold us all of our furniture was in and he was going to call her to take care of the problem and get us ANOTHER BED.
They gave us 100% CREDIT for our old bed and our salesperson apologized again for having sold us something that didn’t last. She traded us up into a better bed system and sold us a couple other things and we spent almost $1,000 more.
We talk about loyalty. I was ready to never to do business with the furniture store again but instead I am singing their praise. What a thin line between love and hate. One employee almost lost me and one employee saved me. You tell me how important good training is? Maybe that call should have been monitored for training purposes.
I didn’t expect a complete allowance but when they didn’t hesitate I just felt I wanted to buy something else as a thank you for being so nice. Of course the salesperson was so good when she told us to trade up to the better bed. Her timing was perfect.
The moral: All it takes is one person to make a moment of misery or a moment of magic. Don’t be afraid to be generous with allowances–it will pay dividends. I know sometimes it’s tough to do but it pays off in the long run. Lastly, be aware of the damage that one employee, with a lack of training, can do to your business. The sad part about the whole story is the customer service rep still has no idea how much they messed up, but worse than that, upper management doesn’t know either because I never had a chance to share it. The customer experience at the store was so powerful and positive I just didn’t want to complain and spoil the mood. WOW, that’s customer service or was it just good selling? You be the judge.
Posted on Tue, Mar 13, 2007
I had one of the wildest discussions of my professional life today and something that I believe we can all learn from. I was doing three days of downtown consulting and was getting ready to head for the airport when I got a call to visit one more business. It was a bit of a strange request because although the business was located downtown, it was not a retail business. It was a marketing and design firm.
But this was not some local yokel ad agency that handled the car dealers and the local folks in town. This was a high powered 25+ person office that handled some very prestigious Fortune 500 accounts. After just 5 minutes of talking to their CEO, I could see why. Their approach to marketing and branding was nothing short of brilliant. As he talked about branding, I was mesmerized with their concepts and the way the words just rolled from his lips. I feverishly tried to write down the pearls so that I might express my philosophies as elegantly at a later date.
He talked about a brand as the soul of the company, the essence of who you are and what you stand for. Your brand is your passion and it is that distinctive difference that is understood and shared by everyone who works at the company. In his company’s own brand he used words such as “smart, brilliant, innovative, and uncommon”. It was their goal to grow their clients business beyond their expectations. I am WOW’d again just writing those words.
He gave me a wonderful example of what was more important–the Mercedes Benz Brand or all of the plants, machinery, and even the people? Obviously, it was the brand. When a brand is so strong and dominant, it serves as a pathway to success. The factories and people could produce other cars but they wouldn’t be a Mercedes.
This company created websites that were $25,000+. Now that is a far cry from my recommendation from the Essential Online Solution that a quality website can be built for less than $100.
At this point I was wondering why he even wanted to talk to me. So I asked and that opened Pandora’s Box which led to some of the liveliest and provocative discussions I have had in a very long time. I was there because of their interest in my book and my expertise in web marketing. The question came up about the definition of a successful website. Of course my cute answer was “one that works!” But he followed up with how do you determine that? I look at the website experience as the same as a customer’s shopping experience. The basic rule is the longer someone stays in a store, the higher the probability is that someone will buy. Therefore, the longer someone stays at a website, the more interested they are in your business and the greater the likelihood they will buy. Simple? You bet but remember I am a “Dummies author”.
So what could be wrong? First was my criteria for success because through their eyes, success would be determined by how effective the brand was translated onto the medium of the web. Wait a minute! It was starting to sound like the Field of Dreams – “build it and they will come”. Maybe for baseball parks in Iowa but not websites on the information highway.
Then came a series of bombshells from both of us. I don’t believe in the use of a Web Designer anymore. Let me explain. Years ago designers were critical to the successful site but today there are so many templates available that were created by great designers that the need for the true designer is just not necessary. (That’s from my point of view.) Having said that, I believe there is a place for the web planner. Let me put it this way– it’s the difference between a short order cook and a master chef. Many of your major restaurant chains have great chefs that are creating the dishes and the sauces but the cook at the restaurant is just following orders and heating the prepared proportioned meals. That’s why the price to create a website must come down.
Then I asked what would I get if I were to pay you $25,000? Here is another bombshell: I would get a site that reflects the essence of my company, my soul, my passion, my brand. So I asked if there was anything else I might expect? The response was a confident look as if to say, there is nothing else that is as important. Duh?? How about a pay-per-click campaign, website optimization strategies, blog development, or Ezine creation and distribution? Those words were never uttered in the $25,000 price. Linking strategies were never on the table nor was article distribution. I am a very small company yet my articles are picked up by 40+ magazines regularly, plus over 100 newsletters.
What about an associate or affiliate program strategy and how are you protecting domain names by reserving multiple variations and of course the issue of misspellings? I have almost every version of ricksegel.com possible because my name is often misspelled. But I didn’t pay $25,000– that was just common sense.
Then we really started to disagree on one point. I am of the school that the web is all about convenience. Therefore make the site as simple as possible to navigate. And whatever you do, DON’T use any music on your site because people look things up at work and the sites with music are shut off so fast because no one wants to get caught surfing the web, even the boss.
On top of that I am not a believer in all of this wiz-bang, fly-in and out flash stuff that is on some company’s home page. I define that as a graphic designer having an orgasm. I was shocked when he disagreed and told me it’s not about convenience and those graphic depictions only enhance the site. Maybe he is right but how come any of the powerhouse sites have opted away from those techniques?
Then it hit me what the problem was and he confirmed my suspicions with his answer. I asked, how successful was his company in generating good qualified leads to his agency via the web? His response was NONE! Do you have a blog? He admitted he didn’t know what a blog was. How many misspelled and variations of your domain name does your company own? His response was NONE.
I am sure they will figure this all out. They are just too good to be making mistakes like these at that magnitude. However, the lessoned to be learned for all of us is question every price and just because they look and act bright, they might not be right for you. In negotiations it’s referred to as perception power. Because they look like they know what they are doing doesn’t mean they do. Web prices are dropping faster than a rock and what was paid 3 years ago is ancient history.
Never hire anyone who hasn’t done it for himself regardless of how prestigious he is. The other lesson is that just because someone or some firm has a strong reputation in one area does NOT make them an expert in another and the web is an entire category all by itself. But what is even more important than that is why can’t we be the company that someone is willing to pay $25,000 for a job that you can buy for $5,000? So maybe this marketing consultancy is not all wrong and maybe they are 100% right when they talk about brands and brands equity. I think they are BUT you can’t lose the equity by playing in areas where you are not up to date. That is unless the sole of the company is to overcharge for an inferior product and I know it’s not.
The last word–would I hire them to do work for me or my clients? In a minute. It just wouldn’t be anything related to the web, well at least for now. They are just too smart, too brilliant, and just too uncommon to have this happen to them.
So if anyone wants a referral to a top-notch marketing firm that can move your business to the next level but d
Posted on Tue, Mar 06, 2007
Did you ever focus on the wrong thing and have it hurt you? Of course you did. Everyone does. Let me show you how counterproductive it can be and what we can do about it.
Last week I received some evaluations back from a recent speaking engagement. The evaluations were terrific. They included 72 people who rated my program as excellent with a 4-point ranking out of 4. Four people rated my performance as good or 3 out of 4. Then there was one person who gave me a fair with a rating of 2 out of 4 and one person who apparently hated me and only gave me a 1 out of 4 rating. That is a 3.88 rating and it was the highest of all of the other speakers who presented at the conference.
But am I happy? No! Why not?
Because I am focusing on the two people who didn’t like me. Shouldn’t I be focusing on all of the positive comments? Of course I should be focusing on all the positive comments, NOT the negative ones. What made it worse for me was that there were 2 people who didn’t like the program. If it was one I probably could have justified it, but 2? The sky is falling, the sky is falling! What will I do with evaluations like that? Here is the other component–the meeting planner called and booked me for next year but that didn’t matter. How could this happen to me? Poor me. I try so hard to be perfect but 2 people didn’t like me. Woe is me.
This is like déjà vu from the days I was a retailer. Someone comes in and complains about my prices, my displays, or just having a customer simply say to their friend , “They have nothing!” This would drive me crazy especially after I had just gotten in a massive amount of merchandise and had finally gotten it into stock.
I am about to give some advice I need to take myself. Focus on the customers who love and appreciate you. We are never going to please everyone and the more we think we are, the worse it gets. I avoided doing other work just to satisfy one fruitcake. Remember 4% of your customers belong to the PLO. Pushy, Loud, and Obnoxious. Don’t focus on the 4%, but focus and build on the customer base who loves you and what you do. It’s all part of business. We must take the bad with the good. Worrying over things that we can’t control is counterproductive.
I wasted more time worrying about something that I had no control over. Just get up for each customer and do your best and listen to your good customers. They will help you build your business. The complainers of the world will almost always be the complainers of the world who are just trying to make the world a miserable place. Don’t let them get to you as I will try hard not to let them get to me.
OK, time for a group hug and a couple of bars of “Kumbaya”. Now doesn’t that feel better?
