Why can’t you buy a green truck anymore and why is that important to your growth? Hold that thought…
I’m a terrible consumer for companies that spend lots of money on advertising because I tend to always buy the same brands over and over. I have mentioned previously in this blog that I have been driving for more than 47 years, and I’m on my sixth Ford pickup truck.
I hate to admit this, but in 1995, I was compelled to buy a new truck simply by an ad I saw in a magazine which featured a new F150 in a shade of green that I loved. I’m usually much more practical when it comes to deciding when to replace the current truck. That was one of the few times in my life I made a large consumer purchase based on an emotional reaction to an ad, which I even tore from the magazine and saved.
But here is what is interesting – try to buy a green truck today. Yeah, I know – there’s a chip shortage and there aren’t many new trucks or cars available anyway. But even before the chip problem, there weren’t any green ones. I’m sure some truck manufacture offers one, but for the past few years, I’ve been consciously looking for green pick-ups, and there are none. What happened?
Here’s my guess – somewhere along the line, some auto executive latched onto a morsel of evidence that said that green trucks were no longer popular. Or that green truck purchasers had a low lifetime value. So that manufacture killed green as a color option and the rest of the manufacturers, thinking that extensive consumer research had gone into this decision, decided to follow suit.
Why is this important to you?
There’s been a ton of new hiring occurring. LinkedIn is full of postings from companies looking to hire. Every recruiter is slammed trying to find candidates. As each one of these positions gets filled, new employees bring new ideas to established companies. In so many cases, I’ve seen those new hires get stifled in their new job because they get told “That’s not the way we do it here. No one buys green trucks, so don’t even bring it up”.
Conversely, I’ve seen new hires – mostly at very senior levels – come in and do serious damage to companies by insisting on changes that were relevant at their prior company but are not necessarily true of their new job. “I’m telling you; your sales numbers are flawed. I know from my own experience that green trucks don’t sell. We are no longer going to sell green trucks”.
In many cases, the individuals that make these major changes leave the company quickly, usually within two or three years. With their departure, there’s no one around to ask how or why decisions were made. The decision becomes part of company legend, as if a team of data scientists had poured over spreadsheets and spoken to thousands of customers to arrive at the ultimate conclusion. No one remembers – or dares admit – that a former VP simply made a major decision based on either their personal preference (I hate green) or at least on insufficient data.
And so the company no longer does what for so long was successful and profitable. For years. And no one questions it. Sales go into a long, slow slide, which everyone blames on a host of outside factors.
The pandemic created a massive shifting of individuals and staff at companies in numerous industries. No one is hiring any “new” catalogue professionals. If anyone gets hired at a catalogue company, they will be online/eCommerce staff. Online marketers, merchants, and web designers are replacing retiring cataloguers.
There will be a HUGE transfer of ideas and new business methods. Many, many great new ideas will get exchanged. But many bad ideas will get promoted too. The beauty of our industry – catalogues, eCommerce, retail – is that you can easily TEST new ideas.
Don’t fall victim to the new VP that starts making arbitrary changes without setting up tests to quantify the impact. Incremental changes do matter. Conversely, don’t be a jerk and stand in the way of changes because they run counter to the way you’ve always done things. Not all new ideas are worth pursuing, but they are worth examining. Do your due diligence.
My inspiration for writing today’s post is not green trucks, although my current F150 truck is a pretty ugly bright blue, and I see others like it everywhere – what was I thinking?
My inspiration is knowing that many of you have grown stale. You are fighting supply chain issues, potential paper shortages, inflation fears – the list goes on. And many will question whether having decreased the number of catalogues was a good idea if sales have gone down. There may even be a rush to want to begin mailing catalogues again if they had been previously eliminated. (Of course, there’s no paper, but, we’ll overlook that point for now).
One point I have stressed over the years is to “sell the dream”, but not your dream, your customer’s dream. In some cases, a catalogue may be the most effective way of doing that – as in home furnishings where a customer can easily spend $10,000. Or a company may need a catalogue because their customer is 75+ years old, and only 20 per cent of the orders are online. If you have been a constant reader of this blog, you know that I believe that ultimately, mail order companies need to be less dependent on catalogues. But, in both of the cases mentioned above – as well as others – you can try to steer your customer towards a website, but it may not be as effective as still sending a catalogue.
As you hire new staff, keep an open mind to the potential for change, but don’t shoot yourself in the foot by following a track that is inconsistent with what your customer wants and to which they respond.
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