Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Specialty Consumer Electronics is a rude French waiter.

Lots of Americans who love food will never venture into a nice French restaurant.

Lots of Americans who love music will never venture into a specialty electronics store.

For nearly the same reasons.

They think that, in the restaurant, the waiter is going to roll his eyes and sniff if they mispronounce Terrinede Foie pour Deux or order the “wrong” wine pairing.

They’re intimidated about going into the CE Specialist store because they don’t know what a “120 Hz refresh rate” is, and are afraid the salesperson will discover their ignorance, then roll his eyes and sniff.

Who needs it? Especially when there’s unlimited bread sticks at Olive Garden and a Hannspree HDTV ready to load onto your cart at Costco?

They bite their tongues when their neighbor invites them over for dinner and proudly shows off his new Bose system.

Sure, the food at the Le Café élitiste is terrific and the Runco PlasmaWall nearly sucks your eyeballs out it’s so good, but the fact is, most people, even most of the people who can easily afford the good stuff, are never going to taste the good French food or see the good plasma TV.

Because they’ve been scared away.

Too often, I see specialty retailers wringing their hands as even their regular customers are lured away to Audiogon and eBay. Dealers click their tongues (and roll their eyes) as they lament the fact that “today’s young people don’t care about good sound.” They bite their tongues when their neighbor invites them over for dinner and proudly shows off his new Bose system.

Maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Savvy restaurateurs know they can’t rely forever solely on the patronage of their regular customers. Regular customers move away, get bored or die. Staying in business means always attracting new customers (who hopefully become regulars). Recognizing the folly of an exclusionary reputation, most ethnic restaurants now print their menu descriptions in English.

I haven’t seen many examples of specialty CE dealers (or, to spread the blame fairly, specialty CE manufacturers) doing the equivalent.

I think they should. And I’ll present some specific recommendations in my next post.

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Sunday, August 22, 2010

You can’t make living selling big trombones. Mandolin picks perhaps, and here and there a Jew’s Harp.

Recently, a friend, Tom Scearce, who attends an entrepreneurial roundtable to which I also belong, posted a blog titled 4 Tips for Selling in the Moment.

As a person who has more friends and acquaintances in the field of sales and sales management than any other, I was interested. Sales and how to increase them are subjects we never get tired of discussing. Which is weird, because the things about which we complain and comment never seem to change much.

Every effective salesperson knows they have to 1. qualify the customer, 2. overcome objections and 3. ask for the sale.

Every sales manager knows that twenty percent of their sales staff are going to bring in about eighty percent of the revenue, and that the sales manager will spend eighty percent of his or her time working – not with the top salespeople – but in trying to encourage, teach, incentivize or threaten the mid- to low-level performers to do better.

...what are particularly striking are the references to new technology and product obsolescence that are threatening and bewildering them.

Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man hit Broadway in 1957. It’s a dazzlingly clever musical about a small Midwest town (River City) near the turn of the century. It affectionately teases the morals (and moral outrage) of this community. What made it work so well in 1957 (and today) is showing so clearly that, while context may change, moral compasses remain.

For example, the matrons of River City are incensed by an independent woman(!) librarian who allows on the shelves the work of "ribald" authors such as Balzac. The protagonist, con man and salesperson extraordinaire “Professor” Harold Hill rallies the rubes against the evils of a newly opened pool hall in their midst.

Substitute the late-Fifties clamor to censure Allen Ginsberg’s Howl for Balzac and the video game Grand Theft Auto for pool, and you see the enduring magic of the play.

Continuing the comparison, in the opening number of the musical, (I urge you to see it here) we listen in while a group of salesmen, traveling aboard the Rock Island railroad line, complain and explain the concerns of their profession. They squawk about cash versus credit and the absolutely vital importance of “knowing the territory.” But what are particularly striking are the references to new technology, product obsolescence and general stores that are threatening and bewildering them.

Substitute Internet for Model T, CD player for demijohn and specialist retailer for little bitty store and…well, you get it.

One salesman frets: Why it’s the Model T Ford made the trouble, made the people wanna go, wanna get, wanna get up and go…

Who’s gonna patronize a little bitty two by four store anymore?”

Gone. Gone with the hogshead cask and the demijohn, gone with the sugar barrel, pickle barrel, milk pan, gone with the tub and the pail and the fence.”

Substitute Internet for Model T, CD player for demijohn and specialist retailer for little bitty store and…well, you get it.

We're still talking and bickering about the same things, a hundred years past the Model T.

One last thing: The salesmen on the train are intrigued and threatened by stories of a master persuader – a character named Hill. They agree that his product can’t be sold. Yet, this bull’s eye salesman “…lives like a king and he dallies and he gathers and he plucks and shines and when the man dances, certainly boys, what else? The piper pays him!”

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Please don’t poison your presentation with PowerPoint.

Imagine you’ve just paid your twelve dollars to see a new Steven Spielberg picture. You have your soda and you’ve taken your seat. The lights dim and the curtain goes up. The movie has begun.


But instead of hearing a John Williams score accompanying the images, the soundtrack consists of the actors’ dialogue, and the grimace-inducing sound of a child loudly practicing Chop Sticks on the family piano. It goes on and on, only occasionally changing to some other equally dreadful and dreadfully played piece, such as Glow Worm or When the Saints Go Marching In.


You’re torn.Your first impulse is to get up and leave. But then, you paid good money to see this movie. And you can just make out, over the cacophony, that the story line has potential. So you soldier on, trying as best you can to glean the good from the horrible.


This is how I feel during the great majority of business presentations I have endured that are accompanied by PowerPoint presentations.


Why, oh why do otherwise intelligent, well-meaning people – with valuable information to communicate – stink up their presentations with PowerPoint? In nearly every case, this devilish program does nothing except distract and detract from the messages they are attempting to convey.


He or she may as well be juggling knives

while they speak about conversion rates.


The utter inanity of most PP slides is apparent to everyone in the audience. Here are some of the most egregious errors:


Posting a slide with text, which the presenter then proceeds to read to the audience. This borders on an insult, implying that no one can read. In fact, the audience reads the text in a fraction of the time it takes for the presenter. What a waste.


Posting a spreadsheet or some other image so detailed that to properly decipher it would require each member of the audience to approach the screen for a close look.


Posting a single sentence that says something so patently obvious even stating it insults the intelligence the audience. (e.g. “Determine your customer’s needs.” )


Not rehearsing. Slides out of order. Not being able to operate the equipment properly.


Don’t get me started on Venn diagrams, pyramid graphs and the use of trite clip art or stock photographs.


The people in the audience want to hear what the presenter has to say. In many cases, the audience members have paid big bucks to be there. Instead, they are expected to listen, while the presenter simultaneously puts up distraction after distraction. He or she may as well be juggling knives while they speak about conversion rates.


Since I don’t give presentations too often, but I do attend them quite frequently, I don’t have advice. I have a plea: If you are planning to give a presentation and feel that you must include PowerPoint as part of it – resist that compulsion.


Just don’t do it.


The chances that your presentation will be enhanced with PowerPoint are dismal. The chances that PowerPoint will detract from your message are exceedingly high. Do yourself and, most important, your audience a favor and just talk to us.


If part of your presentation absolutely requires you to show a graphic of some sort (a picture of a piece of art, a building or a new logo or something) then go ahead and show just the graphic briefly, then turn off the projector and go back to speaking.


Now I know someone is going to contradict me and say that they can put on a great PP-enhanced presentation, or that they once saw a great PP-enhanced presentation. To that I respond that there perhaps are a few people out there who know how to use PowerPoint effectively. Just as there are a few people out there who can compose film scores for major motion pictures. But unless you’re the John Williams of PowerPoint, keep your hands off the keys.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

You're smart. So why don't you write that way?

Business Speak (closely related to “politician speak”) is an inferior way to communicate. It uses inappropriate, often made-up words that obscure the intended message. Characteristics of Business Speak often include making nouns of verbs (learnings; agreeance) and verbs of nouns (languaging; impact). It relies on tired clichés (think outside the box; new paradigm) in a failed attempt to project an image of self-importance.

The people who use Business Speak are not stupid themselves. They have simply never learned the skills necessary to communicate clearly to people outside their own peer group.

Who can blame them? Pity the Manager of Product Development who is called upon to make a presentation to a boardroom of people who have little technical expertise. The Manager is used to working with her own team, a group which naturally develops its own vernacular, acronyms and verbal shorthand. Trained as an engineer, not as a public speaker, her presentation takes one of two possible paths: 1.) She falls back on the familiar, peppering her speech with terms that, while natural and appropriate when dealing with her team partners, leaves her present audience confused and bored. Or, 2.) She makes the mistake of using the language she thinks is used by members of audience. She uses Business Speak.

Either way, the results are the same: miscommunication, misunderstanding, wasted time.

Business Speak infects more than presentations. You see it in reports, in web site content, some folks even use it in verbal communication. (I’ve heard with my own ears people use phrases such as “That project was not of my genesis,” “Let’s look at the investagory nature of this,” and “That’s not a firm fit for my core competencies.”) Ugh.


Man is a pattern-seeking, story-telling animal.

Remember that when preparing to communicate.


Effective communication takes an idea from one person’s head and puts it into another person’s head, with a minimum amount of translation error. If that’s your goal, then it is counterproductive to use words unfamiliar to your audience, or words that obscure or detract from the message you intend to convey.

Clear communication is not “dumbing down” language. On the contrary, it is the result of appreciating the wants and needs of your audience. If you’re making a presentation, writing a report or web site content, your focus should be on giving people what they want to know. If that’s a room full of theoretical physicists who want to know about Higgs Boson detectors in the Large Hadron Collider, effective communication will compel you to freely use the acronym LHC and casually throw around terms such as Electroweak Symmetry.

On the other hand, if you’re speaking to a high school general science class, you would avoid acronyms and arcane facts in favor of explaining general concepts and using anecdotes that would be interesting to a group of this knowledge level.

Regardless of the audience, illustrative stories and appropriate metaphors are excellent ways to communicate effectively and memorably. Remember, man is a pattern-seeking, story-telling animal. Take advantage of that when preparing to communicate.

I believe clear communication shows you are aware of and respect the time and interests of your audience. Viewed that way, Business Speak is disrespectful and wasteful.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Who are these people and why are they giving you all that money?

A number of years ago, I was attending an executive committee meeting. The president of the company was there. So was the CFO, COO and VPs of sales and purchasing. In my hand I had a list of names I had gathered from a report I had run. I asked the group, “have you guys heard of any of these people?”

I read the first name and looked around. No signs of recognition. Then the second and third. Nothing. I kept reading names until someone got impatient and interrupted me, asking me to get to the point.

The point was that I was reading a list of the company’s best customers, people who had purchased many tens of thousands of dollar’s worth of goods and services from us. One of the people in the top ten (an OCD sufferer perhaps) had visited one of our stores to make a purchase over 60 separate times over 18 months or so. (This is truly remarkable. We were running a specialty consumer electronics store, not a 7-11.)

And none of the leaders of the company (including me) knew these people by name.

Pity.

Less than 3% of our customers 
provided 26% of our sales. 
Conversely, 73% of our customers 
provided less than 20% of sales.

A little more research revealed just how important these folks were to the bottom line. For example, less than three percent of our customers were responsible for twenty-six percent of our sales. Conversely, seventy-three percent of our other customers provided less than twenty percent of sales. (The remaining folks were between those two extremes.)

During this period, most of our advertising budget was invested equally among all of our customers. So the crass perspective is that the ROI was extraordinary with our best customers. One could also make the case that our best customers were also the most loyal, so we’d have to do something really bad to have them switch to a competitor.

Well, with the stakes so high, and competition so much more prevalent today, I would advise you to do the extreme opposite of taking these folks for granted. I would recommend making every effort to give them every reason to love you. Like these folks do.

Pagliacci Pizza: My call really is 
important to them.

I love
Pagliacci Pizza in Seattle. They make a really good pie. Not the best pie I’ve ever had (that was in Florence), but a really good pie. But that’s not the reason I love them. I love them because when I call up, the phone is answered immediately. If the lines are full, I hear a recording of an extremely pleasant woman’s voice. Instead of a hollow and clichéd “your call is important to us.” She says, “As one of our best customers, you know we get slammed sometimes and that we’ll be with you in a second or two.” And always, always within a few seconds, a live person picks up the call. “Is this the Lee residence?” they always ask. They always ask if we would like to hear about the specials. They always ask if we would like salad, gelato or soft drinks. They always confirm the order. They always deliver within the promised thirty to forty minutes. My call really is important to them.

What they haven’t always done is charge me for my pizza. Every once in a while, their regular customers are given their order free of charge. (Maybe only once, but so what?) It's just a “thank you” for being a regular customer. Which I will remain forever. (In fact, because I like them so much, even if they someday screwed up an order or delivered late, I’d forgive them with hardly a thought.) 

We tell all our friends. 

Pagliacci does other endearing stuff. They send out an oversize newsletter that features big pictures of their employees. I read it. Their pizza boxes are printed with scenes from the neighborhoods they serve. Pagliacci is part of the very fabric of the city.

There are other businesses in town that could consider me “a regular.” But they do nothing out of the ordinary in acknowledgement of my out-of-the-ordinary patronage. I suppose I continue to buy from them because they have a convenient location, or because of habit. But such a relationship is tenuous. And that may mean that someone else could come along and fairly easily claim my business.

I wonder if they know my name?

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Saturday, May 02, 2009

Would you rather Twitter or have your eyes eaten by ants?

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s answer to the question posed above was very clear during a recent interview with Twitter founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams. Said Dowd, “I would rather be tied up to stakes in the Kalahari Desert, have honey poured over me and red ants eat out my eyes than open a Twitter account.”

I’m a baby boomer, just a couple years younger than Dowd. But I’m of an ilk who rages at the dying of the light by mounting a daily battle to stay hip and happening. (Since starting this piece, I’ve listened to tunes by Gnarls Barkley and Lavender Diamond–eat that Old People.) Also, since I live in the present, I have waded into “social media” such as LinkedIn, Facebook and–god help me–Twitter.

…but they most definitely do not “get” Twitter

I have lots of Baby Boomer friends. They know I’ve always listened to a wide variety of music and accept that in the same way they would accept any other harmless hobby. In fact, they sometimes seem to approve of it–definitely a step up from the flat-line acceptance of other developments of maturity such as hair loss and weight gain. So they “get” the music thing, but they most definitely do not “get” Twitter.

With extremely rare exceptions, when I mention to anyone born before 1970 that I have a Twitter account, I get the same reaction: a pause, an involuntary facial expression reflecting surprise and disgust and then a grunted one-word verbal response: “Why?

They then continue: “Why do I need to know every time someone (insert one or more, and feel free to make up your own): “feeds their cat; walks their dog; takes a leak; gets the aisle seat; has a hot flash; has a cold; is enjoying the sunshine or hating the rain; is listening to the newest Dylan album or the oldest; making chicken stock or shopping for socks; etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum." Heavy on the nauseum.

Yes! Sign me up so I can instantly hear the latest 
pearls of wisdom from Ashton Kutcher.

Then they invariably launch into a rant about the profligate time-suckage of nearly all things Internet-related that have already infested and attached themselves. “Right Bruce. E-mail’s not enough–I really should spend more time watching that You Tube video of the dowdy Scottish woman singing on Britain’s Got Talent. And did I forward that IQ Quiz? How many squares did you see? I’ve checked my Netflix queue only three times today. Have you seen my new smart phone? Now I can have it all, all the time! Yes! Sign me up so I can instantly hear the latest pearls of wisdom from Ashton Kutcher. I’m always dying of thirst and love drinking from the fire hose!”

I greatly enjoy spirited debate, but only when I think there’s a least a soupçon of a chance I might sway someone’s opinion. There’s no use arguing with the Twitter Intolerant.

Besides, it’s not like I’m some True Believer. My jury-of-one is still in deliberation, and I’m definitely not alone. Headlines within the past few days have had fun with variations of “Twitter losing its Glitter” or “Twitter Quitters.” They’re harping on the evidence that Twitter appears to lose around 60% of new users within thirty days.

Now, there are few trends I don’t at least consider bucking, but I regrettably find myself empathizing with the “Twitter Turncoats.” (Ha, ha. Thought of that one myself. How droll.) I was first drawn to Twitter while attempting to follow The New Rules of Marketing and PR by Robert Scoble. I interpreted the promise as one more (extremely fast-growing) channel to get the word out to potential clients about the benefits of hiring my company. I can’t seem to get out of the blocks, however, due to a problem I think is encountered by many of the 60%: They aren’t celebrities. We all hear about CNN and the aforementioned Mr. Kutcher racing to the goal of a million Twitter “followers.” The White House successfully started an account recently and everyone knows Oprah finally got on board. So famous! So insightful! Apparently a lot of people wanted yet another method of hearing about the latest weight loss program or hot LA club.

…Twitter is perhaps best viewed as just another 
technological teat on the flank of the Star-Making Machine.

None of the folks I follow on my Twitter account is a first-tier celebrity. I have my free-thinking rabble-rousers such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, a coterie of conservative talk-show hosts (for more on that, see my blog article), master magician Penn Jillette and my friends Ian Lurie and Steve Lawson. They’re all really interesting people who tend to say really interesting things, but there are only fourteen of them. (I don’t know what that says about me–that I must find most people uninteresting? But I prefer to believe that many interesting people don’t have Twitter accounts.)

More pathetic is the number of followers I can claim: thirteen. And there lies the crux of the problem for me and (I speculate) a lot of others who–unlike the outright Twitter-haters–are open to the idea of Twitter, but disillusioned when the reality sinks in. The reality that Twitter is perhaps best viewed as just another technological teat on the flank of the Star-Making Machine. Albeit, a Tweet Teat. (There I go again! I tell ya, I’m on fire here.)

So, while Britney may have (according to last count) 1, 284,837 subscribers eagerly awaiting her latest missive (3:20 PM Apr 23rd: “Britney and her sons’ nanny, Lourdes, planted these flowers in the courtyard of Britney’s house on Tuesday.”), I bet most folks are like me, with enough followers that you don’t feel like the last kid picked for the team, but not so many that they wouldn’t comfortably fit in my living room. (Can I get anyone another beer?) And when you think about it that way, it’s hard not to wonder if Twitter is essential–really worth the time you put into it. Or whether that time might be better spent doing something else, like feeding ants.

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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Is Specialty Retail Going the Way of Home Milk Delivery?

I did something 21st century mundane the other day: I shopped for an iron. Which means I never left the chair in which I’m presently seated. Our old steam iron (a wedding present from thirty years ago?) died and so I did what we would all do: Googled “steam iron reviews” and began poking around. Within minutes, I had narrowed down my choices regarding brand, preferred features and price range. I then checked reviews of people who had gone before me and actually purchased the models in which I was interested. I decided on the model I wanted, and found it available online and at Target and Macy’s. I had a credit on our account at Macy’s. A couple days later, my wife visited her sister in Portland (which has no sales tax) and picked up the iron there. (It’s a Rowenta–which I recommend.)

Of course, there was a time, not so long ago, when I would have actually “gone shopping” for the iron, spending time visiting a store or two and maybe asking a few friends for their opinions.

Please cover your mouth when you yawn.

One more. A few days ago, my sister e-mailed me and asked which Blu-ray Disc player she should buy. Within minutes, using the techniques virtually identical to the ones described above, I narrowed it down to two recommendations (a Sony PS3 or a Samsung BD-P3600).

The reason my sister asked me–instead of someone else–about Blu-ray Disc players is because I have been deeply involved in the consumer electronics business for over thirty years, specifically, the specialty retailer part of the consumer electronics industry. You know–your friendly neighborhood audio/video store. The one where you bought your first real hi-fi system back in college. You went back there for your first VCR, compact disc player, DVD player and big TV. Yeah–that place. When was the last time you shopped there? I didn’t when my sister sent me her question. I didn’t even e-mail or call any of my friends in the business and ask them for their take.

I feel a bit traitorous.

Thanks to the Moore’s Law-like trend in consumer electronics, 
the cheap stuff is now pretty good stuff.

But I’m in the advertising business, which means I have a habit of making my first consideration the wants, needs, passions and whims of the buying public. I’ve done lots of advertising work for specialty retail stores, so let’s look at some of the benefits those stores claim to have over rivals such as the Internet and Big Box stores. (Note: For the sake of clarity and familiarity, I’ll address here the world of specialty consumer electronics retail, but the concepts apply to many other specialists as well.):

1. Our stuff is better than their stuff. Well, this certainly used to be inarguable. You went to the discounter or the Big Box when you wanted the lowest-priced (which was correspondingly the lowest quality as well) products. You want the better stuff? You go to the specialist, who often was the exclusive local franchisee for higher performance brands.

However, thanks (or no thanks, depending on your point of view) to the Moore’s Law-like trend in consumer electronics, the cheap stuff is now pretty good stuff. An HDTV of any sort (and price) blows away the finest analog TV of a short time ago. All CD players sound very similar, and who listens to CDs anymore anyway? Reliability and longevity? Why spend a ton on today’s technology when it’s bound to be different, better and probably cheaper next year? People don’t hesitate to throw away something with a power cord the way they used to.

2. They’re clerks and we’re experts. This is still (generally) true. A big box or discounter’s “help” continues to be the subject of disappointment and ridicule. The perception is that generally, they’re (often very friendly and eager-to-please) order-takers. But then again, they don’t have to justify to their customers why they should spend $300 instead of $100 on a DVD player (or $3,000 instead of $1,000 on a TV). There’s no incentive for the clerk to do so-–they’re not on commission. And besides, as stated above, the cheap DVD player and TV still look pretty darn good.

And one more (really big) thing: That damned Internet. No matter how knowledgeable your salespeople are, they’re not as knowledgeable as Google. Google can out-geek the best of us, and provide us with reviews from both testing labs and (supposedly) unbiased owners.

3. People still want to see, hear and touch stuff before they buy it. True dat, at least with genuinely sensual products such as loudspeakers and items that are considered “expensive.” And specialists have a big advantage over the Big Boxes and the Internet in providing display areas that greatly facilitate the comparison process. But demonstrating a product’s benefits and getting someone to buy it from you are two very different things. Ask any specialist salesperson who daily hears shoppers say something to the effect of: “That Sony ABC-123 really is the bomb. But you want $1,000 for it. I can get in online for $800.” Sigh.

4. We Service What We Sell! We Deliver and Install! Serving Springfield Since 1972! These are all nice things. But I needn’t remind anyone who touts these benefits that they don’t seem to have the persuasive punch they might once have had. A lot of CE specialists have gravitated toward “custom home installation” and figured out a way to make money off it. Good on them, but I suspect they would also be the first to admit that it is a very messy business (which is why the Big Boxes stay away from it). Sure not as easy as taking a box from your warehouse and putting it into the trunk of a customer’s car.

OK, I’ve pushed pins into many of the benefit balloons common to the specialty retailer. What can be done to preserve it? (Assuming anyone wants it preserved, which I do.) Here are some suggestions, minus (until another article) the vexing details attendant with each:

1. Do everything in your power to keep the people who bought from you in the past to keep buying from you. You’ve already gained their trust and overcome their objections. You don’t have to start from square one with these folks. They are lovely people who are keeping you in business right now. Treat them like the royalty they are.

2. If you’re not advertising now, start advertising. People are much more likely to consider shopping with you if they know you exist.

3. If you’re advertising like your competition, stop advertising that way. I see lots of specialists advertising the same products and prices as the big box stores. Why?

4. Put the pressure on vendors to keep specialty lines special. Expensive, enthusiast-oriented products simply cannot be sold effectively at Big Box stores. It is in the best interest of the manufacturers of these products to do all they can to preserve and protect the specialty retailer.

5. Put pressure on manufacturers to do their part to help create demand. You shouldn’t have to shoulder this burden alone.

Personal Plug:  I know a lot about this kind of stuff. If you would like to know a lot more too, please contact me.