photo credit: powerbooktrance

It must be all those trees we have. They’re so full of customers that businesses just don’t need any more.

As you know, I strongly encourage folks to buy local.

The flip side of that is that locals have to EARN the business. Not just because you’re here, but because you kick butt at what you do.

Jeepers

I called a couple of stores about getting a sound bar for my son’s Jeep as a gift to acknowledge a major accomplishment he recently completed.

One said: “We don’t have them but we have the speakers for them.”

The Department of Obviousness requires that I inform you that the holes in these sound bars are designed to fit common speaker sizes so that retailers don’t have to stock custom speakers.

After checking the store, another said: “I don’t think we can get anything like that.”

No one said “We don’t carry that, but I can get it here tomorrow and install it for you. When would you like to bring the Jeep in?”

The last answer is what keeps people from buying car audio gear on the internet.

The point

While I’m only talking about a $200 purchase plus installation, the big picture was missed.

The size of this purchase isn’t the point.

What you *must* get across to your staff (no matter what you do) is that the real long-term reason to make a sale is to *get a new customer*. 
After that, it’s their challenge to keep us as customers.

I suspect car audio industry research tallies the average annual spending of customers. If that figure is only $100, at one new customer per week, you’d add an average of $5200 to your gross sales per year.

Your market is no different.

Has dealing with your store become so unremarkable that customers would rather pay for shipping and wait a few days?

Walking to Missoula

I was in a cloth store recently, buying some material so a local business owner could make some custom neckerchiefs for my Scouts.

They had less material than I needed. They offered to order more, advising me that it could take 3 to 6 weeks.

They didn’t mention their corporate-run online store. I checked it myself, finding an in-stock quantity of only three yards. That wasn’t how much the local store had, it indicated (incorrectly, I suspect) the corporate’s in-stock quantity.

Meanwhile, the Missoula store had plenty. I know this because the local store is advanced enough to be able to check this from their handheld terminals (nice!). When I asked them about getting it from Missoula, they said it would take “about 3 weeks”.

I can *walk* to and from Missoula in three weeks.

Trucking in the wrong direction

Recently I was outside of Missoula at a truck stop and bought a small toolkit for a task that had me sidelined on the road. As the cashier finished ringing it up, I realized I’d bought the wrong thing. Yes, my fault.

While standing at the counter, before the salesperson walked away, before picking the item up from the counter, while putting my wallet back in my pocket, I asked to return it, unopened.

Without a second’s delay, they said “We have a strict corporate return policy. No returns.” 
Even if the unopened item has never left the store, much less the cash register.

It’s early on Saturday evening and there is no weekend on-premises manager. She won’t be back until Monday and no one else is allowed to take responsibility.

Stunningly “customer-friendly”.

Earl Nightingale once said something like “To be successful, observe what the majority in your market are doing, then do the opposite”.

These are good examples of his advice.

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photo credit: Sabbath Photography

So far it’s been an incredible year for snow in the Northwest.

Two feet in the Washington DC area is a Snowpocalypse?

That’s nothing.

We have 8 feet of fresh pow* in Montana, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado. It’s so deep, we’re carving mad turns in our driveways and carrying avalanche beacons when we go out to get the mail.

Come out and join us and ski and ride your brains out!

Oh wait. Maybe not that much snow, but come on out anyhow.

Which truth is real?

As with other markets where misinformation can lead a customer astray, the internet has a way of finding the truth, even about mad pow*.

When skiers and snowboarders hop off the lift expecting to find the foot of fresh powder mentioned in the snow report and instead, find a couple inches of popcorn**, it doesn’t excite them.

When skiers and snowboard riders find a few feet of waist-deep powdery goodness, they can now use their cell phones to report snow conditions via Facebook, Twitter and this killer skier/snowboarder snow report app.

This app has forced resorts to come clean on their snow reports.

Thing is, it isn’t just snow conditions that are available in (close to) real-time from a source that’s cutting turns in it right now. Whatever you do, there is likely an enthusiast community talking about it

Whether we’re talking about stream flows, fish and wildlife migration, trail conditions, road conditions, whiter whites and brighter brights, parking availability, meal quality, service quality and more…it’s out there on the net for the savvy customer who wants to check you out before buying.

Help them find it – and don’t claim to be shredding pow in your driveway unless you really are

* Translation: Fresh, deep, powdery snow, often blamed for high levels of absenteeism at work and/or school.

** Translation: smallish, hard popcorn-looking snow that looks like that stuff sprayed on ceilings in office buildings and homes. Not really what you want to ski/ride on, but still better than a good day at work.

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Your competition’s employees in LowRentEconomyIstan are willing to work this hard – and not for $50K a year. Maybe for 50 cents a day.

Someone mentioned to me privately after reading Where were you that if he didn’t know better, he’d think I was trying to put a guilt trip on folks.

He didn’t mention it (though I know he realized it) that my real point was that anyone used to competing locally has already found (or will soon find) themselves competing in a statewide / regional / national / global market.

How you react is the critical thing.

Whaddya do, wait, whine or work?

A friend’s business is facing a similar challenge.

For two decades and then some, they’ve competed against local and in-state firms.

That’s all changed now.

In the last year or so, every single opportunity they’ve bid on has had national and regional players at the table.

My guess is that some of you are experiencing the same thing.

In that environment, in their market, qualifications aren’t likely to even make it into the discussion before local firms get pushed off the table.

The national firm’s materials will make them the obvious choice (where have you heard that before?) because a local firm’s marketing materials, sales expertise and experience will be *normally* be hard pressed to match that of a national firm.

Of course, those processing the bids won’t acknowledge it and they might not even realize they’re doing it because worst case, it happens subconsciously as if they were staring at a pretty girl or a handsome man.

Because they have to compete on a bigger, shinier stage, these firms have honed their image and their materials over years of competing with other national and regional firms. It’s quite possible that some of them have had to battle it out with international competitors.

That leaves the local firm with the same choice we discussed a while back: Wait, Whine or Work.

Again, we circle back to “what other people do”. What do they do to succeed that you don’t yet do? It doesn’t matter how important *you* think these things are. What matters is how important they are in the minds of your customers and prospects.

In simple terms: What’s the market think? How do they buy? Why do they buy? What puts them over the edge?

Your reasons don’t mean much. Theirs mean everything. Either you deal with global competition or it’ll deal with you.

Waiting around for some Senator to “fix” your competitive problem isn’t gonna help. Fix your competitive position yourself. It’s faster and a lot cheaper than a politician.

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photo credit: truedudi

As we discussed yesterday, anti-competitive businesses sometimes do “unfair” things.

Occasionally, they commit illegal acts to gain an edge. Commonly mentioned examples include bribing officials to get contracts or have them look the other way on enforcement or quality issues.

Sometimes the unethical things are illegal, such as refusing to sell spare parts to repair shops that compete with the manufacturer’s repair department.

The CPSIA/Mattel inspection situation is an example that surely makes you wonder. Legal (perhaps), but unethical handling by both Mattel and the CPSC.

Ultimately, competitive behavior has two sides. Let’s discuss a few examples…

Where were you when Pittsburgh, Tokyo and Guangzhou were investing in internet and manufacturing infrastructure?

• Were you talking about how your infrastructure/facilities were “good enough”?
• Do you (or did you) laugh at the quality of products that say”Made in China”? Do you find better alternatives locally?
• When other companies moved call centers to India, did you follow suit in order to cut costs? Or did you follow suit because they provided better service to your customers?

Where were you (and what were you up to?) when Apple was designing the iPhone? When Amazon was designing the Kindle?

• What – besides stare and/or cuss – have you done to respond to those “threats”?
• If you aren’t the most strategically advanced vendor in your market – what have you done about that this year? Next year, will you be in a higher position strategically than you are now? How will you get there?

Where were you in the 90s when Amazon was investing in the long term, developing their e-commerce platform and despite their youth, doing e-commerce far better than anyone else? Note: “investing in the long term” often called “losing tons of money” on Wall Street.

• Did you spend any time figuring out how your business could incorporate e-commerce – or if it even made sense to do so?
• When the Kindle came out, did you buy one to better understand the competition that just popped you in the mouth with a right cross?
• When Costco and WalMart started offering best sellers at or below your wholesale cost, did you complain about unfair competition or did you do something to make your business a better place for readers to buy books?

Where were you over the last 30-40 years as Wal-Mart laid the foundation for today’s domination? (and then continued to improve upon it – and did so right in front of your eyes)

• Were you making it easier to buy?
• Were you making it easier to park and enter your business?
• Were you making is easier to pay your invoice, shop, ship, get a refund, repeatedly place an identical order, or talk to customer service?
• Were you giving your customers more reasons than ever to come to your store instead of the local box store?
• Did you start to build(or enhance) a high-value relationship with your customers that no minimum wage employee in a blue vest could *ever* break?

Where were you when Mumbai built business centers out of slums, trained tens of thousands of workers, and built a modern communications infrastructure?

• Were you enjoying your existing legacy, built 40-50-60 years ago? (Ask Woolworth where that got them).
• Were you letting your city or your manufacturing plant rot while holding out for another government bailout or sweetheart contract with a government entity?
• Did you spend more on lobbyists in the last 5 years than you did on educating your employees?

Where were you when colleges and secondary schools in China and India were ramping up the quality and technological level of the training they deliver?

• Were you complaining about your school taxes or local school boards?
• Were you complaining about the parking problems caused by the local university?
• Were you whining about the foolishness of having a local community college?
• Did you sigh in disgust after interviewing yet another unqualified prospective employee?
• Did you complain to your CPA or another business owner about the cost of training your staff?
• Were you still running Windows 95 in your schools?
• Were you ignoring the fact that most of the local school’s students are more technologically savvy than their teachers or administrators (much less their parents)?
• Have you ever looked at the budget for your local school board? For that matter, do they make it readily available?
• Have you thought to yourself “Yeah, but we can’t do that here, this is *your town’s name*?”

When things go south

When things go south, our culture (I’m speaking of the U.S., primarily) is to find someone to vilify…to blame. Generally speaking, we must point the finger at someone because it can’t possibly be our fault.

You’ll be glad to hear that I can save you some time there.

If you insist on laying blame, the person who can pull you out of it is the same person can blame: You.

Tomorrow, we talk about that and the ROI (return on investment) of blame.

After 3 days, we’re finally going somewhere positive and useful with all of this.

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photo credit: Meanest Indian

Yesterday, we talked about fierce competition from other places and other businesses, as well as doing your homework.

At the end of the day, all things pointed to a single bottom line: What has happened to our business(es) and thus to our communities is JUST NOT FAIR.

If Pittsburgh’s businesses have better internet or manufacturing facilities than your town: That’s not fair.

If businesses in Mumbai only have to pay their workers $10 an hour while you have to pay $42 an hour: That’s not fair.

You get the idea. In fact, I’m sure you could reel off other examples that are meaningful to your business, but ultimately, we’ve gotta find someone to BLAME. So let’s get to it.

Assigning blame

Let’s call the union bosses and blame them for not protecting our jobs. Let’s call the politicians and blame them for raising taxes. Let’s blame engineers, programmers and their employers for creating the technology and automation that’s stealing work from us.

And let’s most definitely blame those danged “foreigners” because they don’t want another generation of their kids living in a disgusting slum and drinking from a stream that 4000 of their neighbors pee into.

They have a lot of nerve, don’t they? We deserve that work.

Let’s blame Microsoft for changing their software too quickly (or too slowly). Let’s blame Apple for putting out a “phone” that made everyone rethink what mobile could really do for us.

Wait, I’ve got it… we’ll say these companies are “ANTI-COMPETITIVE”.

We can get our politicians to put them out of business, or at least make things fair. Maybe we can get the Feds to hobble them somehow.

But let’s not spend any time or money investing in ourselves and improving our business, our people, and our products and services. Let’s not totally rethink the market we serve and how we serve it.

That’s what those other people do.

We’ll continue the discussion tomorrow. I think you see where we’re headed.

In the meantime, I’m curious: What does “anti-competitive” mean to you?

PS: The girl in the photo has a lot of nerve helping her brother and sister with their homework using a small chalkboard while sitting on a piece of slate on the dirt floor or her parents’ shack, don’t you think? It just isn’t fair that her parents aren’t paying school taxes or private school tuition. In fact, she probably isn’t even following the approved government-mandated curriculum. If that’s not anti-competitive…

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That’s Tom Peters via YouTube.

Initially, he talks about teenagers when referring to a quote from Thomas Friedman, but if you step back a bit, “do your homework” could – and should – be applied to all of us.

Perhaps Tom felt it was easier to make the point about China and India (especially given the “clean your plate” anecdote), but it really isn’t about China or India at all (more on that in a moment).

It’s about competition in general.

Depending on what you do, your fiercest competition might come from Seattle (Amazon), Bentonville (WalMart), Guangzhou, Pittsburgh, Mumbai, Memphis (FedEx) or right down the street.

Once someone has put you out of business (CPSIA and similar issues notwithstanding), it really doesn’t matter where the competition came from, whether it was WalMart, Amazon, Radio Shack or Joe’s Electronics.

No matter how you slice it, the people selling all those cheap Chinese-made electronics (or whatever) put you out of business.

Or your competition ships all their customer service or manufacturing jobs offshore, cutting their costs drastically. “Suddenly”, you can’t compete.

Once your payroll checks start bouncing, you’re still history, no matter what the cause.

If only Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, your Governor or Congress had done something…

Please leave a comment and tell me… who/what do you blame?

We’ll talk more about this as the week progresses.

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photo credit: JustinLowery.com

You’ve probably heard the saying “No rest for the wicked” (or weary). Weary might be a better choice in this case.

Should you be scared like the author suggests that Microsoft perhaps should be?

Microsoft, like many successful companies large and small, has reinvented itself before. It’ll probably have to do it again, and perhaps so will Google. I’m not here to help them though.

If Amazon starts selling online to your market and does so with better prices and free shipping – do you just roll over?

I don’t think so, but that’s your choice.

One thing to keep in mind – Never forget what business you’re really in.

If it’s a business in a market that is easily transformed into a commodity, transform how you deliver value. Deliver it to additional markets.

Think a little…

Scared is the wrong word, don’t you think?

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photo credit: carolune

Those of you who know my backstory may remember that I was trained as a programmer and that I worked in the software industry for 17 years before coming to my senses. IE: before owning my own software company. A real one, not those other ones.

So much for that coming to my senses thing.

This whole small business marketing, blogging, writing columns, books, speaking thing came to me by brute force – perhaps like your business came to you.

Like you, I owned a small business, so I had to get myself educated, fall down a time or two, look up from the seat of my pants in the dirt, pick myself up and get something positive accomplished because Kevin Costner’s character in  the only one who can build something and magically expect someone to show up. (To my 7th grade English teacher, Mr. Terry – I will *not* diagram that sentence, sorry).

It’s a small world, after all

The programming world is a small one and one of the benefits of it is that you meet people from all over the world and find bugs in their programs (and they return the favor).

Programmers were social (even the kinda geeky ones) well before anyone thought of Facebook and Twitter. We had Compuserve and Usenet and BBS systems and all that fun stuff.

Nowadays, it’s even easier to meet folks from other places thanks to cheaper (really) air travel, conferences and of course, the internet.

Often you’ll know them for years before you get to meet them face to face. For example, I know several programmers from South Africa.

Despite having some rather brilliant programmers, South Africa has what you and I would likely consider rather horrible internet service. It isn’t necessarily their fault, it’s simply because there’s not enough bandwidth to go around.

Because the demand outweighs the currently available supply, bandwidth gets rationed because there is only so much to go around. Mmm, baby what a great time in our lives to mention rationing. No, we will not discuss health care. You’re welcome.

The Great Race

Recently, one of South Africa’s technology companies apparently got more than a little fed up with their internet service (from South Africa’s largest internet provider) and decided to have a little contest.

Enter the pigeon.

This geeky firm decided to have a little fun with a little race. The goal? To see what was faster: their high-speed internet connection that costs their company R45000 ($6000 = 45000 South African Rand) a month… or a pigeon.

You might call it sort of a Pinewood Derby of the internet.

Contestant number one would copy 4GB of data to a digital storage card (a micro SD if you are taking notes), then attach it to a homing pigeon’s leg and free the pigeon to fly 80 kilometers to one of their locations, then copy the 4gb file from the digital card.

Contestant number two (a computer) would try to transfer that same 4GB file to the same office location 80 km away.

If you’re thinking “This will not turn out well” for the telecom company, you are correct.

An excerpt from tech company’s blog: “Basically we will be flying a pigeon with a 4GB micro SD card from Howick to our central site in Hillcrest. We did a dry run yesterday. Here are the stats: Pigeon took 48 minutes to deliver the data. ADSL is still downloading. Telkom got hold of this via the media and is currently in a flat spin. We got a call from Telkom asking us for our circuit numbers so they can make sure we have good service. Here is the best part. We spend +/- R 45000 a month just on rental for these lines. If we moved to the Avian Carrier Network we will be saving a whopping R 35 000 a month.”

R35000 is $4640.57. That’s savings per month by using the pigeon, while getting vastly better performance. Not a good day to be their telecom provider, especially on the word of mouth marketing scorecard.

If you are in the internet business, you know that even with my whoppin’ 15mb down / 1mb up connection here at the Columbia Falls Data Center (otherwise known as my home office), moving that 4gb file would take the better part of a day – and that’s if I’m downloading it. Uploading would take even longer.

Yes, the internet will be slower than the pigeon over short hops with big files. New York to Los Angeles would be a different story.

I got your value right here.

The point of all this? To provoke you to ask yourself some hard questions.

Are you providing value?

Would you pay your hard-earned money for the products and/or services you’re offering to your market?  Not grudgingly, but gladly – because the value and quality is outstanding.

About the pigeon: Think I’m making it up? Check these out: http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSTRE5885PM20090909, http://blogs.thetimes.co.za/vlad/2009/09/09/telkom-vs-a-pigeon-who-will-win/ and finally, http://pigeonrace2009.co.za/ which provides great comic relief by resulting in “Bandwidth exceeded” messages.

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photo credit: mckaysavage

They just don’t know any better and they’re the ones Seth is talking about here.

They don’t know that you’re supposed to dominate your industry and they are supposed to respect your dominance just because your daddy or great-grandpappy started your business 50 or 100 years ago.

They don’t know that they are supposed to adhere to 2, 20, or 200 year old rules that rule your market for reasons no one can remember, much less explain.

All they know is…they can do it better. And without all your baggage.

That’ll be $40 for 2 bags, sir.

But…not all of them have that baggage. Some see past what everyone else is doing.

Like Toys ‘R Us. Yeah, a nationwide box store.

We’ve talked about how the CPSIA has dealt a tough hand to small lot, one-of-a-kind (OOAK) and handcrafted manufacturers of toys and childrens’ clothes (and a zillion other things for kids under 12).

Most of the noise has come from small businesses, even though the big stores have to deal with it too. They have some upside vs the little guy because their lot sizes are large and they can wield power with suppliers. (Or they’re like Mattel and get an exemption…but we won’t talk about that today)

Despite all the inane things that a lot of these big chains do, this one was different.

They were smart enough to do this.

Most big box stores don’t have the brass to do that.

Be different AND better

For example, when most big box office stores have a big sale whose volume is controlled by how much stuff you can cram into a sack, they exclude a bunch of stuff – usually expensive stuff. And they only let you have one bag.

Guess if I wanted to buy enough expensive stuff to fill 10 bags that might tick em off? I guess I’ll just get it somewhere else.

If they had a trade-in sale, they’d normally limit it to 1 item and require purchase from a specific list of replacement items.

Not Toys ‘R Us.  Their trade-in event appears to have no limits.

Just like those 3 kids who just decided to start a company…in your market.

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photo credit: tm-tm

Earlier this week, Matt Mullenweg (whose software runs this blog) wrote a post about starting a bank.

BUT…it really wasn’t about starting a bank. Not if you look under the covers just a bit.

It was really about how to look at your market and stand out because you don’t do all of the stupid, annoying things that everyone else in your market thinks is OK.

And it was really about standing out in your market because you do all the things that other people are afraid to do, too lazy to do, too stupid to do (and so on).

You know, because it’s always been done that other way. The same way everyone else does it. Cuz that’s just how our industry does it.

Read the first 10-15 comments on that post. Look how many people resonate the thoughts about banks that do this and that and so on. EVERYONE knows those things. Matt didn’t invent them. He *did* have the nerve to suggest the he would do things differently.

What are you willing to do differently? Start by sacrificing your industry’s sacred cow.

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photo credit: michelleannb

Makes no sense, I know. Bear with me, it’ll clear up shortly.

I want you to read this story about ESPN’s new network for Southeast Conference (SEC) football. Don’t wonder why (too much), just trust that there’s an applicable lesson here and go read it.

Wordsmithing

Now it’s time to do a little wordsmithing while re-reading the story.

As you read the Sports Illustrated story, do this for me:

• when you read “football”, replace it with *whatever you do*
• when you read “SEC”, replace it with your community’s name
• when you read “NCAA” or “college football”, replace it with your national market.
• when you read “Florida”, “LSU” or any other team name, replace it with your business’ name OR if you really want to turn things on their head – with your biggest competitor’s name.

…and continue along those lines so that it becomes a story about your market, your business and your competition.

All done?

Just in case, a sample

Let me give you a sample since I suspect some of you might have thought one read of a seemingly irrelevant story was enough.

To make things a tad more clear, let’s take that coffee shop I occasionally talk about and use it as an example:

“At the core of our agreement is the fact that every SEC-controlled football game mom and pop coffee shop will be have Starbucks coffee available to SEC Starbucks fans throughout the conference territory state, and indeed the country, via an ESPN our distribution platform or through our partners,” said John Wildhack, ESPN’s Some Executive, Starbucks’ executive vice president for programming coffee shop acquisition and strategy.

At a time when most coffee shops and cafes are slashing budgets due to the poor economy, programs Starbucks stores suddenly have more resources at their disposal. Defending national champion Florida Starbucks stores is are adding $5.9 million to its athletic marketing budget next year and still had enough left over to kick in $6 million to cover overhead the university’s general fund.

Scary? Only if you’re the Big 12 or PAC-10 and you’re still reading the original article.

Snatch the pebble

If you truly are in the same business, your competitor’s strength is the target. Take it away and use it against them.

In Starbucks’ case, their strengths are their consistency (coffee is roasted in centralized warehouse roasting centers under highly-mechanized, controlled conditions), their retail/wholesale distribution systems and their buying power (ok, and their people, mostly).

Notice I didn’t say jack about insanely great, freshly-brewed coffee that was roasted by the owner just before the shop opened this morning.

Starbucks can no longer compete with that, or at least, they’re no longer willing to. Putting roasters in 4000 shops costs huge money (sorry, shareholders!) and takes up valuable retail space in those expensive locations they choose, plus they’d have to hire (or train) someone to do the roasting.

Suddenly, their strength is now their weakness, and you wield the Quality Kryptonite.

Update: Odd how these things travel in groups. What Harvard Business has to say about it, sorta.

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photo credit: wilhei55

If you haven’t gotten a free copy of Chris Anderson’s Free by now, you didn’t try hard enough.

The free ebook versions were pulled off the net recently, but a little Googling will still reward you if you look at the publisher’s site. Likewise, the free audiobook version of Free is still on iTunes (a 6 hour+ listen).

While I’m planning on commenting further about Free in future posts, reading what Seth said about the whole Free thing has provoked me to comment a little early about it.

In particular, his response to Malcolm Gladwell’s comments about Free got me going, especially given that I read it not long after posting last week’s Beacon column about the news business.

During the dustup between Malcolm, Chris and Seth, Seth says this: “People will not pay for yesterday’s news, driven to our house, delivered a day late, static, without connection or comments or relevance.”

When you describe a newspaper that way, it sure sounds quaint and outdated, if not irrelevant.

How can your business/product/service be described to make it sound like that?

While “people will not pay” might not be 100% true today, that day is rapidly approaching as my parent’s generation ages. Of course, people also might not pay for it online. Figuring out how to make it work is the premise of Free.

We’ll talk more about the strategy of Free (or not) in the coming weeks, so in the meantime, do your homework: take a listen (or read) Chris Anderson’s Free and consider how it might reinvent your business, or at least, impact it.

You may not be in the newspaper business, but the reinvention of your business is just as important to you and Free might help you figure it out.

Should you give it away?

If you have trouble with ideas on this, think about what would be most painful if your strongest competitor started giving it away. Likewise, what would pain that competitor the most if you gave it away? It’s a place to start the thought process and might even identify a new value proposition for your business.

All of this is less about free and more about finding a way to reinvent your business. Not necessarily because your business is broken, but because strategic reinvention before you need it beats the crud out of reinvention focused on survival.

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Competition. It isn’t good or bad, it just is.

You either are or you aren’t competitive. Thankfully, it’s something you might even be able to learn, at least somewhat.

On the other hand, it’s hard to teach the desire to drive the QB into the dirt and then stand over him. You just gotta.

Anyhow, on that theme, today’s guest post comes from a rather unusual place – a sports blog. More specifically, Dan Shanoff’s discussion about ESPN’s next entry into local sports coverage.

Filter all the sportiness out of it after reading it once and think about a similar entity entering your local market.

A big, powerful, deep pocketed player. In your market. In your town.

Whaddaya gonna do now?

Shanoff lays it out nicely for a paper. How about your business?

Are you going to wait till they arrive to take the next step? Not a good idea.

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photo credit: volante

An essential element of doing business in a competitive marketplace (is there a market that isn’t?) is taking every step possible that will show a prospective client that your business is the only logical choice to provide what they want/need.

Are you taking these steps now? How do you assert (much less prove) that you are THE one they need to do the work?

The obvious one is testimonials. We’ve talked about that many times. I print them all out and include them in the package I give to prospective clients.

Another obvious one is to be Google-able. When they Google your name (and they will), what will they find?

Your reputation and your work’s reputation are huge as well. We talk about improvement here at BIP almost every day.

What else can you do?

Beyond the Obvious

Here’s one example of what I offer potential technology clients: I give them a ready-made interview form to help them interview and evaluate potential technology consultants.

First, the instructions and evaluation form I provide to prospective clients. I call the interview “The 17 Questions Your Computer Consultant Hopes You’ll Never Ask”.

Next, I provide them with customizable forms I provide to prospective clients for their own use (Word 2007 or Word XP/2003). Free.

Finally, I provide them with a copy of the interview form that I have filled out about my business.

What are you doing to make yourself the obvious choice and thus, the only logical choice?

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photo credit: jas kaur

Not long ago, I was having a conversation with a photographer friend about a photographer he knew that was in the middle of shooting a Sikh wedding.

I’ve never been to one, but it sounded like it lasts several days and ends up resulting in 6000-10000 photos. Quite a celebration.

I suggested that if one really studied their ceremony, their beliefs and learned more about these things than anyone else in their large community, this photographer would really standout and as a result, dominate that business.

The end result would be to become the #1 expert in photographing Sikh weddings in that area, perhaps nationwide.

My friend said “Standing out is the new normal.”, in effect saying that everyone stands out in that business and that standing out is no big deal these days.

Maybe he’s right, but I haven’t seen that yet.

I believe there is always room – in any market, to do what others won’t do, to learn what others won’t learn and to provide service that others can’t or won’t provide.

As I remarked to him, “even in a room full of billionaires, the 80/15/5 rule holds true.”

In other words, even in a room full of highly-successful people, 5% of them could kick the crap out of the others in business, tennis, mountain climbing or whatever they attempted.

Yet they’d all be billionaires.

To that end, Tom Peters’ site posted “Be irreplaceable” today – definitely worth a read.

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photo credit: foxtwo

Earlier this week, I was watching the Apple keynotes from Macworld 2009 and the iPhone 3.0 SDK announcement, mostly to prepare for the keynote from the Apple WWDC (their developer conference).

These keynotes are where Apple traditionally reveals their Next Big Thing as well as their accomplishments over the last year. It isn’t Wall Street conference call yawner sort of stuff. Instead, they do it at their customers’ level of interest.

A few things stuck out of these conversations:

In 2008, 3.4MM customers visited Apple stores every week (on average).

2008 was the biggest year in the history of Apple, as far as sales of Macintosh computers are concerned: they sold 9.7MM macs.

Apple currently dominates the smartphone app market.

For example, the number of applications available for the leading smartphones:

• iPhone 50000+
• Android 4900
• Nokia 1088
• BlackBerry 1030
• Palm 18.

No, I’m not sure why Windows Mobile apps were not in that count, but I think it’s safe to say that the Windows Mobile platform can’t claim 1 billion app downloads between April 2008 and June 2009.

Apple sold 13.7 MM (million) iPhones in the first year.  When you include the iPod Touch in that number, it leaps to over 40MM.

62% of programmers in the iPhone application developer program are NEW to Apple platform. Having been in the technology biz for 25+ years, I can tell you that this is an insanely successful number.

By now, you might think that I’m an Apple fanboy. Nope. Maybe a fan, but I try to remain pragmatic. I don’t yet own a mac or an iPhone, but I find Apple’s ability to compete pretty impressive – particularly HOW they compete.

It’s 100% cultural.

We’ve talked previously before being able to do something right in your competition’s face, having them observe your success and then do nothing about it – particularly nothing similar.

The Apple way

Apple has long talked about making things easy (and yeah, I know that not everything is), but it really is the focus of everything they do.

Let’s compare how an iTouch deals with wireless connectivity vs that of a Windows laptop.

Windows will ask if you want to diagnose or repair and tell you about the DNS it can’t find and so on. Seems to me that if your wireless is on and there is a network in reach, it’s a little silly to ask if you want to try again to connect after the first failure. My laptop drives me bonkers with this sort of stuff as I travel and deal with disparate networks across the country.

Meanwhile, an iTouch either connects or it doesn’t. On the same network that will provoke a laptop to ask about repair and diagnosis, the iTouch just does whatever needs to be done to try and heal the connection.

But it’s far deeper than that.

When Apple Marketing Chief Phil Schiller introduced a new version of the Apple spreadsheet software, he simply said “It works the Apple way.”

Everyone with a mac knows what that means, especially if they have MS Office for the mac.

At the core of all of this is a clear desire to stand out by doing things for the customer that they shouldn’t have to do themselves. Former Clarion Software CEO Bruce Barrington is said to have uttered a similar comment. It goes something along the lines of: “Anything the user has to do every time shouldn’t have to be done at all.”

I try to do these things in the software I write. It’s a profound approach, despite being so common sense. It makes you rethink design, which (surprise) is what Apple is so identified with: great design.

Self-cleaning ovens

Now…think about your products, services and customer interactions.

What are your customers forced to do every time and how can you eliminate those tasks?

That’s the kind of competitive strategy that gets customers to gobble up your products, but there’s more to it than that. If your products do more, automatically, then your staff and your customers will spend less time on customer support – because they won’t need it.

Your products will stand out even more, and the competition will simply stand there and watch as you eat their lunch.

Here’s a simple example to close things out today: Most self-cleaning ovens aren’t self-cleaning.

They still have to be told to clean themselves.

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Download audio file (ShippingIsPersonal.mp3)

photo credit: freeparking

As some of you know, my wife is a junior high school teacher.

6th grade to be specific.

Know what that means? Hormones. Drama. Lots of change. Who knows what else.

People think it’s amazing that I’m a Scoutmaster for a Scout troop, but that’s easy compared to being a teacher.

Instead of having to be on my game 5 days a week with 25 6th graders, I spend 90 minutes a week with boys who want to be in Scouts. Once a month, we go camping for a weekend (and I don’t try to teach them math and history).

Back on topic – Having a teacher in the family also means something else: We watch every teacher movie ever made.

Last night, The Ron Clark Story was on. It’s a true story about a teacher who takes on an inner-city elementary class in Harlem and turns it into a high-performance environment (you knew that, since they don’t make movies about crappy teachers).

Just before the big standardized tests are taken, the kids are trying to explain why they didn’t do well on a test they took while Mr. Clark was out sick with pneumonia.

“It’s nothing personal”

One of the students says “Hey man, it’s nothing personal about you, we just cant pass these tests.”

Clark comes back and tells them “Everything that happens in this room is personal. Everything we say to one another is personal.” (and he goes on from there)

It works the same way in your business.

Everything you do for (or to) your clients.

Everything you say to (or about) your clients.

Shipping is personal

Yesterday, I had a conversation with some folks about shipping.

Like Coke vs. Pepsi and Ford vs. Chevy, this one was one of rivalries.

This time is was about Fedex vs. UPS.

During the conversation, I reflected about the service my company received from a Fedex driver who has been the only driver in Columbia Falls for 10 years.

We used them because their shipping quality was a reflection upon us. We didn’t want the very first thing we shipped to be reflection of our service.

Fedex vs. the post office or other services is always a no brainer, in my experience.

Tim our CFalls Fedex dude picked up almost every one of those packages. He still picks them up for the folks who own the business now.

These days when I have a package or I see him in a store around the Valley, he calls me by name.

If you think about it, it’s not that big a deal. After all, during a delivery, my name is on the package.

Kinda obvious, don’t you think?

Yet not one UPS driver has ever called me by name.

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photo credit: FlyNutAA

The other day, one of our dogs chased a huge moose out of the yard.

Who cares, right? Maybe. Read on.

If you haven’t ever seen a moose, they aren’t quite as friendly as Bullwinkle. In fact, they have a reputation for being pretty mean once provoked.

Readers of the Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet series will remember a scene where the moose attacks Brian in a high mountain lake, almost drowning him.

If you remember past posts, you might assume that Blondie, our 85lb+ Golden Retriever/Alaskan Husky mix might be the one who chased the would-be Bullwinkle out of the yard. Even though Blondie can fill the back seat of a Suburban, you’d be wrong if you assumed she was the moose chaser.

It’s an understandable assumption. After all, a full-grown moose typically weighs between 800 and 1300 pounds and stands 6-7 feet high at the shoulder. You’d assume it would take a big noisy dog to scare off something that big and that mean, right?

The trouble with that theory is that Blondie is really of the species doggus fireplacus-snoozus, meaning she’d rather lay in front of the fireplace and snooze.

The dog that chased off the moose? Our Bichon Frise, Gigi (no, I didn’t name her<g>). That isn’t her in the photo above, but the dog in that photo looks just like her.

Gigi weighs all of 8-9 lbs and stands maybe 6″ tall at the shoulder. So I’m looking out the bathroom window into the back 40 and I see this little white wanna-be tasmanian devil yapping her brains out and this moose trotting off while looking over its shoulder looking like it wishes it were in another county.

Here it comes

Yeah, there’s a lesson there. You knew it was coming.

The assumption is that the big competitor can’t be made to blink – or in the case of the moose, can’t be made to take their marbles and go somewhere else.

Many times, that assumption is made because the competitor is “too big to fail”. Bet you’ve heard that a lot lately.

In the case of the moose, that would be my assumption as well. The likely reality is that the moose realized that this little yappy white critter coming after it with fangs bared and a maniacal yap (is that even possible?<g>) not only wasn’t scared of it, but wasn’t going to back off.

Suddenly, whatever brought the moose into the yard simply wasn’t worth it anymore. Trust me, I have those days with Gigi from time to time myself:)

The dirty little secret is that if the moose got close enough to Gigi, she probably would have run for the hills, but coming to that one particular spot just wasn’t attractive enough for the moose to chance it.

The moose doesn’t know what Gigi is capable of, much less willing to do in order to win the battle. Because it really doesn’t need this little corner of Montana in order to survive, it leaves.

Like Gigi, your ability to compete against a large, entrenched competitor is largely up to what’s inside of you.

Do I mean that you can sell more insulin or diabetic socks than Wal-Mart? Probably not.

On the other hand, in your market, you might be able to create a great success selling diabetic supplies to the right market by selling better than they do – simply because of delivery, service, insurance handling, convenience and so on.

Even Wal-Mart has weaknesses – some by design

Ever seen a drive-up window at a Wal-Mart? Ever seen a Wal-Mart delivery vehicle in a neighbor’s driveway?

Even in a market with a large, entrenched competitor, you’ll find things that your competitor is unable or unwilling to do. Things that the customer would be happy to have you do for them as part and parcel of delivering your product or service. There are *some* customers that will gravitate to you because of that.

Others wont care about delivery, drive-up, or whatever you use to differentiate. Let them go. Assuming that everyone is your ideal customer is a great way to bore the market to death (the death being that of your business).

Focus on the clientele who revels in or depends on the differences you offer.

What would your competitor simply hate to find you doing in “their” market? What could they do if they wanted to that would really please their customer – but they wont because of their compliance department, laziness or their business model?

Be the Gigi of your market. Defend your corner of the yard like a maniacal, fluffy little dog that is convinced it cannot lose.

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photo credit: h.koppdelaney

Part 2 in our series, “What else can you use to generate ideas for new products and services?” hits the streets today. Slide over here if you need to see part 1.

Last time, we talked about listening to feedback from your customers (rather obvious, but if everyone did it, I wouldn’t have to say it), and we talked about ways to learn about new trends / methods / products / services in your niche as well as how to borrow ideas from other niches.

Today, I’d like to give you four ways to come up with even more ideas. It’s especially timely for the CPSIA-impacted businesses who might be losing a revenue stream (such as 12-under kids clothing).

You might think that these are oriented solely toward service businesses, but they really apply to both products and services.

Think about your ideal customer’s day. 

Walk through it in your mind, step by step. If you aren’t sure about their day, do you really know enough about your customer’s business? 

Look back at each step. What can you do to smooth their day, take away the roadblocks and annoyances? How can you turn that into not only a one sale, but a repetitive one? 

Think about how your business can help them improve their efficiency, safety and profitability

For example, if your products/services involve safety risks to the employees who use them, how can you help them reduce or eliminate accidents and injuries? Training? Improved products? Their insurance firm might reduce their premium if they see documented steps to reduce risk. 

Direct marketing expert Dan Kennedy has a saying: “If I wake up at 2 am thinking about you, you’re in trouble.”

What has the customers in your market tossing and turning at night in today’s economy?

Is that different than what costs them sleep in a middle of the road economy? Maybe so, maybe not – but that’s the sort of thing you need to consider when coming up with ideas. 

If something is keeping your customers awake at night, it would be in your interest to find out what it is and do something about it. 

What are the top three things that frustrate your customers every single day?

How can you take those things off the table? If you can’t do that for some reason, keep going down the list of frustrations until you can. 

Take at least 5 minutes today (preferably more than that) to mull over at least one of these things. Do a different one tomorrow. Keep a list. DON’T DISCARD ANY IDEA. Prioritize them, perhaps, but don’t discard them. You never know when the seed planted by a “bad” idea grows into something spectacular.

Jim Rohn talks about harvesting in the fall because you planted in the spring and cultivated in the summer. It’s time to start planting, even though there’s snow on the ground (at least up here, anyhow).

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Download audio file (FindingNewProducts.mp3)

photo credit: apesara

One of the questions I hear with regularity is “Where do I get ideas for new products and services?” Of course, the most obvious place would be “Your customers”.

It isn’t that easy though. If every business waited for their customers to ask for that next amazing new product, a lot of great new products and services wouldn’t come to market nearly as soon. Some might not ever come to market.

Did one of Apple’s customers ask them for the iPod? Not likely. 

What’s the biggest problem your customers have that you aren’t doing anything to solve?

Sometimes you need to be ahead of your customers’ thought process.

If you’ve positioned your business well, you are the authority in your market (and if you aren’t, you should be working on that).

You are the one that everyone looks to for the newest information in your market. You are the one that everyone looks to for the newest products that help them with problems they didn’t realize they even had.

But how do you do that?

Staying on top of your market means reading about trends and new discoveries in your industry’s publications. It doesn’t matter if that means a trade paper, a blog, a podcast, a video or a monthly conference call, you simply have to not only keep up but stay ahead of the “also rans”.

What more business owners should do is spend time reading about trends and new discoveries in complementary business niches. The really aggressive folks should be looking at these things in niches that appear to have nothing to do with their business.

For example, if you sell bicycles in a specialty retail shop, what would be the point of reading about the newest strategies used by those who retail kayaks or rent high-end digital SLRs, telescopes or ice climbing gear?

Simple – the customers who spend money in those markets are also inclined to spend money in your specialty bike shop.

Looking at ideas that worked in non-complementary markets has value as well. What can you take from successes in a completely unrelated niche, bring to your business, massage a little and make your own?

Plenty, if you put a little thought into it.

How many businesses have drive-up windows these days?

Do you think coffee shops, libraries or dry cleaners were the first? Nope. Oddly enough, the first drive up window appears to have been at a bank in 1928.

20 years later in 1948, In-and-Out Burger claims they opened the first drive-up window at a restaurant. Why it took the restaurant business 20 years to pick up on that is anyone’s guess.

Sometimes, you might be replacing a product line instead of simply adding a new one to widen your reach. In extreme cases, it might be about survivability.

For example, if you’re one of the many businesses that is threatened by the CPSIA, you’re looking at eliminating product lines for kids under 12. Presumably, you have items for kids over 12, but that isn’t always the case.

What else can you use to generate ideas for new products and services? We’ll talk about other ways shortly.

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