Radio Shack is closing many outlets across North America. A February 1991 sales flyer listed items that were “must-haves,” including: calculator, weather radio, alarm clock, pager telephone, answering machine, stereo headphones, video camera, tape recorder, camera, mobile cellular phone, global watch and computer. Who would have thought that all of these devices would one day be given to you with a telephone subscription?
Vanessa Wong wrote in Businessweek, “The days when fried chicken was synonymous with a certain white-haired southern gentleman are over, at least in the U.S. A new champion has claimed KFC's long-held chicken retail crown:Chick-Fil-A.”
CFA has only about 1,780 retail outlets while Kentucky Fried Chicken dwarfs them with almost 4,500. But CFA is beating KFC by almost a 3-1 margin in sales as of 2014. CFA is primarily located in the Southern US so their “footprint” is more limited … and remember they are closed on Sundays, so they are spotting KFC an entire sales day.
Movie theaters are trying desperately to restore customer attendance. Even though Disney’s “Frozen” was named the best and most popular animated film of all time, many people chose to wait on it to come out on DVD. Why? Movies cost a lot… not to mention the refreshments.
Netflix and Redbox have forever changed this industry. Producers began rushing movies to home video many years ago in an effort to get the most money. In the effort, they crippled the theater experience.
Tesla is the latest product to be attacked by traditional business. The new start up company out of California is reinventing automobile purchasing… maybe. Several states are outlawing sales of the automobile you can only buy online.
Why?
Fresh off the story of a young woman who was fired from McDonald's after paying out of her pocket for a group of firefighters to eat, I stopped by my neighborhood store. My goal was to purchase a Medium "Micky D’s" sweet tea. When I pulled up to the window and paid for the drink I was handed an Extra Large tea. “I only ordered a Medium,” I said. She looked at me like I was another nuisance in her day and replied, “Look, they all cost the same thing! Just take it!” Then I got that look that you get when someone thinks they are smarter than you.
Most people have a problem with their priorities and blame...
I taught time management for years and learned a valuable lesson from that experience. Time cannot be “managed.” You don’t manage time; you manage yourself. You have as much time in a day as I do or anyone else does. What you do with the time you have and where you spend it is your choice. It is not to be managed, but savored with every bite.
In 2011, I asked my readers in Reinvention Made Easy: Change Your Strategy, Change Your Results, “What are you the THE of?” Using examples like Johnny Cash, The Man in Black, Aretha Franklin, The Queen of Soul and Coca-Cola, The Real Thing I asked what is the primary reason your customers turn to you for products or service. Let me restate that question:
What do people associate with you apart from all others?
The book and magazine publishing industry is undergoing a major overhaul. Publishers are scrambling to catch up to the rapid changes that are taking place. Years ago they published paper books and kept the rights and most of the profits. The invention of the printing press centuries ago meant a more empowered individual and spelled the end of the educated class' control of the population.
My wife sent me an advertisement for a program to grow sales with the tag line: “Stop Cold-Calling.” I did some research and the people who put this plan together are making money on the books you are buying, not their methods.
The best way to be successful is doing something different, make some money, then write a book and start making money on the book. You don’t need to keep utilizing the method. Just write a book about it and make money on the book sales.
People can’t be motivated by another person. They have to motivate themselves. If you are a parent of a teenager, you already know this one…. If you are a manager of a slow performing group of individuals you know it, too. You hold meeting after meeting; contest after contest; workshop after workshop to no avail. No matter how hard you push, explain or reward, you can’t force them forward.
No you can’t motivate others. But you can make them feel uncomfortable with their own status quo… Because everyone (just like) you is influenced by others. John Maxwell says, “Leadership is influence.” If you are a person of influence, you got in that position by working differently than anyone else to make changes happen. You provoked the problem enough that others had to act in the direction you wanted.
With a new year, many people make resolutions to think, act and do better in the next twelve months. I have done this in the past… but like most people, I find that by mid-February my “To Do” list has become vacated. It is difficult to stay focused on the goals that I set in a hurry back in January.
Instead of listing what I can do, I am starting to list what I won’t or can’t do. I think it will help accomplish more if you first believe in your limitations. When I was a child I thought I could do anything. But as I have grown older I know my limitations and what can and can’t be done. Clint Eastwood said in the movie Magnum Force,
“A man’s got to know his limitations.”
Everyone knows that you have to do more than just THINK your way to success…You have to ACT on it believing it will happen. I know people who harbor negative emotions and can’t understand why they result in one traumatic episode after another.
Someone once said, "All the so-called secrets of success' do not work unless you do." There was a book out several years ago called “The Secret.” It basically says that if you think positive thoughts and focus your mind on the results you want, you will be successful in life and business. I don’t disagree with the power of positive thinking… I disagree that this is some mystical secret.
My great-grandmother once said, “Bought wisdom is better than taught wisdom.” It was a lesion that didn’t make sense to me as a child. But as I grew older, I found it to be true.
What she meant was that you will learn more as you make mistakes and grow from the experience than anything anyone teaches you.
People change when the pain of changing is LESS than the pain of keeping the status quo. The fact is everyone is changing all the time. But many of us like to settle in and get comfortable. We find our place, our niche our warm and fuzzy place and we don’t want to be moved.
In my prior occupation as a church minister, we sang a hymn that said, “I shall not be moved.” That was truer about attitudes and complacency than it was anything religious. I don’t know anyone who likes change except a wet baby… and some of them hate the process.
We fight change. We deny it. We want everyone ELSE to change; not us. Sometimes it is inevitable… it HAS to happen, but we still want to keep everything the way it is. We like to stay in our comfort zone.
People will change every time when it hurts more to NOT change... When the comfort is better in the new position than the present one we are ready to change.
When my family went on a cruise to the U.S. Virgin Islands I was surprised to see the cars all driving on the left side of the road… just like in Great Britain. Their automobiles however are equipped with the steering wheel on the left, just like in the USA.
What’s that all about?
When the Virgin Islands were bought from Denmark, they couldn’t teach the donkeys to walk on the right… They were too stubborn to make the change.
Always ask better questions than anyone else. Successful sales start with great questions about what buyers value. Superb customer service results from great questions about what needs to be done. Even top managers learn to ask great questions to coach their teams to excellence…
At a recent gathering of credit union leaders, the topic of mobile and online banking was prominent. Most customers hated going into the branch to transact business, preferring to do it all remotely. The credit union has always based its business on people coming in to interact with tellers and managers.
The "walk-in routine" is slowly going away.
You are a doctor or nurse practitioner.... Your patient calls in with an ailment.... And their own fairly accurate diagnosis! They want you to confirm it and write a prescription based on their findings. You dispute their opinion, but to no avail. They have already researched your argument.
This would have been unbelievable a few years ago, but with the advent of internet sites like WebMD, it has become all too common.
As medical information and research becomes more available to the average customer, more and more practices are having to answer to the trend. WebMD is making people more knowledgeable about the technical details of their health.
Unthinkable? Not really.
The term was coined in Ken Blanchard's book, "Leadership and the One Minute Manager." It refers to leaders who fly in, make noise, dump on everyone and fly out leaving their staff to clean things up.
They are unattached from the day-to-day operations and thus have no idea the havoc they create. They are very self-centered (remember the seagulls in the Disney movie, "Finding Nemo," who said, "Mine!" all the time?). They keep performing actions to bring different results; but they only produce poor performance, lack of motivation and enmity among staff.