Tag Archives: Business and Economy

May 17, 2012 · 8:03 am

Outrunning The Bear

I expect most of you have heard the old joke about the campers and their encounter with a bear.

Haley the polar bear at the Memphis Zoo.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

However, on the off-chance you haven’t, the gist of it is that two campers cross paths with a bear.  As the angry bear begins charging out of the woods towards them, the first camper starts putting his sneakers on. The other camper screams, “It’s no use, we’ll never be able to outrun the bear!”  The first camper yells back, “I don’t need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun you!”

A number of folks use that as a business analogy to say that in most business categories, we need only to beat our competition to survive.  I disagree.  By  thinking about surviving or “outlasting” the competition, the focus is on the short-term (we need to run only as fast as the other guys) rather than building for the long-term.  Focusing on the other guys as the standard might just mean you’re being dragged down rather than creating enough of a gap so as to make them non-entities.  After all, what is that bear protecting and what kind of opportunity does it present?

The auto industry is a great example.  For years, the US car companies built cars that were responses to what the other guy had to offer.  The standards of production in terms of fit and finish were OK.  It was pretty much a race to stay slightly ahead of one another.  Then the Japanese auto invasion hit and suddenly there was a different standard in terms of quality and innovation.  It was much higher as measured by independent firms such as J.D. Power.  The domestic manufacturers’ share of business dropped quite a bit – imports offered better quality and more car for the money.  Because they were focused on outrunning one another rather than the foreign bear, they almost got killed.  Had they been focused on an altogether different standard – the one that asks “how can we build something that’s great” who knows what might have been.

Let’s assume (hopefully correctly) that you or your company is really passionate about what you do.  You are delivering a great product or service and you have a path to profitability (or maybe you’re even well down that road).  What piece of that equation involves a standard set by others?
Stop trying to outrun the other guys and figure out why you’re running in the first place.  Maybe outrunning the bear isn’t the best strategy or the highest standard.  What do you think?
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April 2, 2012 · 10:53 am

By What Authority?

The word “authority” has may different meaning depending on context. It can mean “power.” It can mean “status.” It can come from a government or from a culture or from within. The kind I got to thinking about today is the kind that’s the kind one commands yet can’t demand.  I suppose some folks would call it credibilitybut I think it’s more than just that.  One can be a credible idiot – that doesn’t make an authoritative voice.

A segment of a social network

A segment of a social network (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I like this from the Wikipedia page:

Authority is an essential factor in the organisation of social life and regulates social control and social change. From a social-psychological standpoint, the use of authority is a type of social influence.

The above implies that authority comes from others – I guess that makes it a gift of sorts.  Then again, it’s basically knowing what you’re talking about, so maybe that’s a gift to others.  Either way, I think as professionals we all strive to be authoritative about something and as businesses we like to be seen as resources that speak in that same authoritative voice.

The real trick is not to pontificate (I can hear you laughing now…) but to listen and respond with useful, actionable information.  Yes, part of establishing my bona fides is part of why I blog each work day but I read thousands of more words each day than I write.  I try to learn from those I’ve found to be authorities on the many fields in which I work.  Great salespeople never “sell” but become the resources I mentioned.  We each have friends who are the “go to” people for movie or restaurant recommendations.

Establishing your authority is a critical part of growing as a business person, both in and out of the office.  What have you done today to boost yours?

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March 21, 2012 · 11:37 am

Showrooming

There’s a relatively recent phenomenon called “Showrooming” that’s becoming a concern for retailers.  In a nutshell, this is the practice of some consumers of going into a physical store to do research and then making the purchase elsewhere, generally online.  Given today’s technology, those purchases can even happen in the store via a mobile device.  A piece from eMarketer quoted a couple of studies that found this is not a hypothetical problem for retailers:

Several researchers have surveyed the number of US mobile phone users who have comparison-shopped via phone while in-store. Their research has found a comparison-shopping rate ranging from 59% of US smartphone owners (InsightExpress, 2011) to 25% of US mobile phone owners (Pew Internet and American Life Project, January 2012).

ForeSee Results findings from between 2009 and 2011 are consistent with this trend toward using mobile phones for in-store research; however, in 2011, the shoppers surveyed were more likely to access the website or app of the store they were actually in than a competitor’s website or app. This means that retailers need to not only be concerned about how their pricing stacks up against others’, but also about pricing consistency across their own channels.

This is sort of the same issue faced by music companies who are trying to sell physical media like CD‘s while enabling the purchase of the same product through digital channels.  The retailers need to differentiate themselves in ways that make doing business with them valuable beyond price.  Customer service, ease of returns, unique merchandise or unique offers are all areas that can be differentiators.  Target has reached out to vendors to do just that, and others are as well.

So the question to you today is this:  what are you doing to make sure that your business is different?  We can go back to the old advertising saw of the  Unique Selling Proposition – as we find in this space a lot, everything old really is new again or at least wrapped in new tools.

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