I’ve been with the same hardware store for more than ten years. Their work effectiveness is solid.
They are friendly, personal, and make the time to provide good answers to my questions and provide sound advice.
I have considerable confidence in their advice, especially the ‘old stand-by’s’ from whom I seek out for the tough questions. For that reason, I have never thought about finding a new brand in the hardware business.
Then one day my wife and I started spending our winters in Florida. And now the option of finding a new hardware store brand became a necessity, as my old brand was not within my local area.
The new brand changed my entire perspective on the service expectations that I had developed over the past ten years. Why may you be wondering?
The new brand staff was younger and surely “less experienced.” But it didn’t seem this way. They were much more personal, asked important questions, spent more time with me, and did a more thorough job in getting solutions to my problems from home and yard maintenance.
While I have not yet engaged with the entire service staff for sure, the ones I have dealt with were all of the equal knowledge.
This experience opened my eyes to the quality differences with my current brand service staff in my home in the north.
I had come to expect the quality and service that was very good. But the new brand and their staff provided something even better.
Now every time I am in need of standard home maintenance action, I deal with my expert service staff from my new brand, even if it is by telephone.
When I have some new equipment purchases, I hold off until I can give my new brand in Florida the opportunity. The new brand in Florida has won my standard business.
Did you know that Galileo once said that
“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, one of the first things he did was develop a marketing campaign to rebrand the ailing enterprise. Leveraging IBM’s long-running “Think” campaign, Apple urged its customers to “Think Different.” The TV spots began, “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes…”
Yet Jobs’s actual product strategy did exactly the opposite. While other technology companies jammed as many features into their products as they could to impress the techies and the digerati, Jobs focused on making his products so ridiculously easy to use that they were accessible to everyone. Apple became the brand people would buy for their mothers.
The truth is that while people like the idea of being different, real change is always built on common ground. Differentiation builds devotion among adherents, but to bring new people in, you need to make an idea accessible and that means focusing on values that you share with outsiders, rather than those that stir the passions of insiders. That’s how you win.
Great marketers uncover those obvious, but unexpected truths to win consumers’ hearts and sell products.
Examples of business change … here is another example
On December 9th, 1968, a research project funded by the US Department of Defense launched a revolution.
The focus was not a Cold War adversary or even a resource-rich banana republic, but rather to “augment human intellect” and the man driving it was not a general, but a mild-mannered engineer named Douglas Engelbart.
His presentation that day would be so consequential that it is now called The Mother of All Demos. Two of those in attendance, Bob Taylor and Alan Kay would go on to develop Engelbart’s ideas into the Alto, the first truly personal computer.
Later, Steve Jobs would take many elements of the Alto to create the Macintosh.
So who deserves credit? Engelbart for coming up with the idea? Taylor and Kay for engineering solutions around it? Jobs for creating a marketable product that made an impact on the world?
Strong arguments can be made for each, as well as for many others not mentioned here. The truth is that there are many paths to business change.
Here is the business lesson.
Examples of business change … here is a final example
In her bestselling book Mindset, psychologist Carol Dweck argues that people who see their skills as a fixed set of strengths and weaknesses tend not to achieve much.
On the flip side, those that see their skills as dynamic and changeable can continually grow their abilities and soar to great heights.
And surprisingly enough, businesses behave in the same way. Most see their business models as a permanent facet of their DNA, so when their environment changes, they fail to adapt.
And that my friends is why 87% of the companies on Fortune’s original list of 500 top firms are no longer there. You heard me right … 87%. Over time, most companies get better and better at things that people want less and less.
Quite a paradox, isn’t it?
Of course, that’s not always true. Firms like Procter & Gamble, General Electric, and IBM still thrive after a century or more.
The reason they endure is that they don’t see their business as fixed, but have continually reinvented themselves and are vastly different enterprises than when they started.
In an age of change and disruption, the only viable strategy is to adapt. Even the best of the best, like these guys, teeter on the edge of disaster occasionally.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. It has been said:
“If you don’t go, where you don’t go; you don’t know, what you don’t know.”
In other words, look for a business change in the places you never look at.
The more I have repeated that bit of insight, the more profound it has become. We are all creatures of habit. So are larger organizations.
Doing things the way we’ve always done them is comfortable, familiar and easy. It’s human nature to choose these “easy ways.”
Know Carol Dweck?
Do you drive to work the same way every day? Probably! Do you read the same publications—or the same type of publications? Sure!
How about TV and the Internet? Watching the same group of shows or using the same set of websites is also a common habit.
When you do this, what do you get? You get a lot of familiar and comfortable feel.
But true business change often doesn’t make us comfortable. It makes us uncomfortable.
And yet, it is in that discomfort that the new ways, the new ideas, and the new feelings come to light. When you drive to work via a different route, you see different places and sights.
If you go to the newsstand and peruse the magazines that you never otherwise look at, you will see things you simply would never think about otherwise
My business lesson from these examples?
If you are any service and product provider, never become complacent. Don’t provide a standard, average or good enough service. Always look for ways to improve your service and do things better to improve your work effectiveness.
Find staff that is the most caring and keeps themselves well trained on the products you sell.
Because the day someone provides better results, service or qualities than you do … is the day your customer’s loyalty will dry up. Left unchanged and not corrected so too may your business.
Remember, don’t strive to make your presence noticed, make your absence felt. Brands are verbs … what they do matters more than what they say.
Do you have experience with the business change that you can share with this community?
The bottom line
Make your thinking vivid by including what comes naturally to you.
For example, you may not be able to imagine sequences of images very well, but you may excel in imagining other modalities such as smell, touch, and sound. You may be excellent in infusing your visualization with emotional charge and great feelings.
DO not feel compelled to stay within any single modality but make your visualizations and imagination vivid and rich by including numerous modalities.
Your senses are wonderful tools for you to engage while unleashing the power of the imaginative mind. Make it colorful and exciting.
Always make your imagination your ally and your best friend.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of collaborative innovation. And put it to good use in adapting to changes in your business environment.
It’s up to you to keep improving your learning and experience with innovation and creativity efforts. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
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