Turn the Page

I spoke to a customer of mine last week.  He has been a customer of ours for as long as I can remember.  And well he should have been as his family shoes store has been run by three generations of his family for 103 years.  It's a great story of blood, sweat and tears all rolled in to a business that has not only supported a hard working family but a small town in South Carolina during celebrations and special events since before World War I. 

Next month they are closing their doors for good.

It's a stark reality that the mom and pop community stores are being replaced by discount stores, big box retailers and the Internet.  As one of my colleagues reflected well, "it's the end of an era."  Now, I am not here to lament the demise of the solely owned proprietorship in America.  Time and progress marches on and business - big business - is still being done every day.  It's just being done in very different ways.  Our challenge is will we adjust to market changes or will we succumb to them? 

It's an easy question to ask and the answer presumably comes quickly, however just going with the flow and relying on past successes may delay the inevitable but eventually you will end up in the same place.  The more difficult questions really are much more difficult to ask and even harder to answer.  Where is your market going?  What changes must we make to not only keep up with the market but also to affect the market overall.  Note well, the days of mimicking competitors and hoping to win on better features and benefits (price) are over.  Don't believe me?  Consider a few examples:

• Who would have thought 20 years ago that people would line up on nearly every street corner to pay $3.00 for the "experience" of buying a cup of coffee?
• How did an entire industry resist the opportunity to "unbundle" album sales and put their customers in control of what music they wanted to listen to and buy?  Why did it take a technology company named after a fruit to figure that out?
• What possessed newspaper and magazines to resist putting content online until people did it for them and put many of them out of business and/or on the brink of bankruptcy?

Get the picture?  There are dozes of other examples where all of us have benefited by the insight of a company or industry to make it easier and more fun to interact with them.  If your business or industry hasn't yet been affected by a game changing service or technology enhancement (and I challenge anyone to convince me you haven't) then I suggest you start preparing now because they're coming sooner and more devastatingly than you think. 

All of this is not meant to scare or intimidate you.  It is an encouragement to do something rather than sit idly by while your business gets changed by something beyond your control.  I have two words for you.  Market.  Intelligence. 

Definition:  If you don't know what is going on in your market and what is going on with your customers you better find out.  You better know and observe their business and find ways to help them before someone else does.  The days of just turning on the lights in the morning and giving your customers good service while providing a good product are over.  You better turn the page and see your business in a whole new light.  Before your competitors turn yours out for you.