Preparing in good times pays off during bad times
By Michael Greene -- Furniture Today, April 1, 2002
In the good ol' days, it used to go something like this when two home furnishings honchos would meet in High Point or at a good-cause dinner: They'd shake hands, slap one another on the back, pick up some sturdy liquid refreshment, then sit down in a corner to skim over old times, old business buddies, their families and the final seconds of last Sunday's game, which included a huge pileup of every player that still could breathe.
But things have changed. First of all, there are a lot more markets, a whole bunch more good-cause dinners, new liquid refreshments that include all kinds of bottled waters from France, business "buddies" that are actually talented women, and last Sunday's game was a tennis match.
Of course, the business talk has changed a lot too. The vocabulary is richly sprinkled with words like Internet and Web sites and brick-and-mortar. Talk about factories includes once-exotic names like Guatemala and China and Indonesia, and some of the main concerns are for maintaining the strength of the American dollar and containing turmoil in countries around the globe.
However, the questions and discussions regarding retail have remained remarkably the same: How are you keeping your head above water, Joe? Where are you in the race to maintain the quality of your sales force, Charlie? And if you find them, can you keep them, and are they worth keeping? Are you hitting your goal numbers? Finally, it settles down to customer service, salesperson product knowledge and the effects of 9-11.
Well, recently I did some visiting with good friends of mine in our home furnishings battlefield. And what did I discover? Nothing that I haven't heard and been involved in for decades. One young entrepreneur in Illinois reported to me that since August of last year he has racked up plus sales numbers every month, right up through February.
How come? What new formula did my friend suddenly discover to rack up these plus figures? Nothing new, my friends. Nothing at all. He just did what he always has done, capitalizing on the power of a strong team.
A strong team concerned with knowing the right answers to consumer questions and concerns. A strong team that understands that repeat business depends heavily on what they did for the customer the last time she left her hard-earned money with them.
Now, here's the kicker, my friends.
You can't swing such power in a day or a year. You can't wait for business to be "bad" to put improved business tools to work. You've got to do it day in and day out when business is bright and shiny, so you have a team prepared to clear the cloudy days that are sure to roll in.
When business is sunny you just can't sit back and enjoy the show. Like the Marines, you have to be prepared.
Thanks, again, for listening.
