Competing with the Internet: Retail Success in an Internet Age
For a long time in the late 1990s and early 2000s, many were talking about the death of the retail store thanks to the growing popularity of the internet. Recently, these feelings have sprung up again in the wake of executive turmoil and poor financials at Best Buy. Amazon has built its Price Check app allowing it to determine the prices in-store at its competitors and update its online pricing accordingly.
Writers have called Best Buy “Amazon’s showroom” and are predicting Best Buy’s demise. Although not really in the same industry, my recent experiences with another retail chain have led me to believe that there is still significant room for a strong retail chain to compete against online retailers. Surprisingly, this retailer is: Guitar Center.
Now I’m by no stretch a guitar player, or even a musician for that matter, in fact I would even call myself musically challenged. I just happened to be in the market for a nice pair of headphones and one of the retailers which carried it was Guitar Center. This got me to start looking at their website and exploring their options. Now don’t get me wrong, their website can use a facelift and a UX improvement but they offer one advantage that isn’t replicated frequently across retail websites: in-store inventory, especially on sales/clearance.
It seems so simple to implement too, the stores already have near real-time inventory tracking anyway, why not give them an easy way to see what might be in the clearance bins and give them a hook to come into the store. What really brought me into the store was a simple phone call, all I wanted to know was the hours for Memorial Day.
The person (note: PERSON not recording) who answered the phone gave me the hours quickly, and then asked a simple question: “are you coming in looking for anything special?” I mentioned I was in the market for some headphones and although the employee couldn’t speak much about that area of the store, he talked to me about how much he enjoyed spending just a little more on a nice set of headphones and passed along the model he had and loved.
Although it’s much harder to convey in a narrative, the passion and enthusiasm he had towards the product and the store was conveyed and I was sold. Rather than buying headphones off of Amazon, they had successfully convinced me: I went into the store to look at their headphones.
What retailers don’t understand, and what research is more regularly arguing is that by increasing staff and increasing their pay, consumers are willing to stay in the store longer, purchase more, and visit more regularly. Stores like Uniqlo and Trader Joes are perfect examples of this. Circuit City used to be a great example of this as well with their well paid and knowledgeable workforce. Once Circuit City began cutting its knowledgeable veteran employees, its sales began to fall and we all know how that one ended up.
Customer Service in the 21st Century: Is Twitter really the way to go?
I was reading the foreword from Frank Eliason’s new book @YourService which you can also read here, and it started to get me thinking about customer service in the 21st Century, in the age of Facebook and Twitter. When I was bored on a flight several months ago, I started working on a presentation entitled “Your Company is Using Social Media Wrong, and what you can do to fix it.” It was a presentation dedicated to companies like Southwest Air, Old Spice, and the Waffle Truck in NYC, companies which truly excel in their use of social media.
Rather than use the tool to respond to primarily respond to complains and questions like Comcast, Citi, and Verizon do, they use it as a way of showcasing company milestones, announcing sales, and announcing news. This forces customers to go through the traditional channels when they have complaints or feedback. It may work in their favor that they are typically on the receiving end of a disproportionate amount of positive feedback (which the Waffle Truck enjoys sharing with the Twitterverse). I’m sure despite not responding to consumer comments, many of those companies do still monitor the interactions they’re receiving on social media to determine if there’s a larger issue to be dealt with, but they typically defer customer service to their established channels.
I think there’s a balance to be struck with providing good customer service. On the one hand you need to meet customers where they are (customer service went from mail, to phone, and now to email) but on the other a public medium like Facebook or Twitter with their character limits and public messaging. I think that these mediums are great for engaging customers with quick questions or informing them of promotions but more in-depth complaints or issues should be redirected back to the traditional channels. If they continue to come back, it might be a sign of a larger customer service issue where the traditional channels are failing your customers (45 minute hold times anyone?), in which case those issues need to be resolved before you start dedicating resources to “Twitter Help.”
Time for Change: Industries Where Change is Desperately Needed
Paul Graham’s startup accelerator/incubator/insert vogue term here, Y-Combinator is arguably the most well known and most successful (determined by brand awareness and number of widely successful startups) of the startup accelerators although TechStars is quickly catching up. Y-Combinator has funded some of the biggest tech startups in the last few years including Reddit, Scribd, Disqus, AirBnB, and Dropbox among others.
Paul Graham and his team at Y-Combinator also publish a list of what they call RFS’ or Requests for Startups. These are ideas that they have and want to see implemented and encourage any startups with ideas which match their criteria to apply. You can see their RFS’ here.
I’ve decided to keep a list of industries which I think are ripe for disruption and I’ll keep this post updated as I think of more ideas.
Movies/TV/Music
Kickstarter is actually well on its way to jumpstarting the careers of several aspiring Movie and TV Producers as well as the careers of up and coming musical artists. The difficulty here is that Kickstarter works great for the tech products and the tangible goods because people either want it or they don’t and they spread great virally. Look at the pebble watch as the perfect example, people either want it or they don’t and they know pretty quickly. They also are easy to describe, share, and convince your friends to back. Entertainment is much more complicated.
For entertainment, its 95% implementation which can make or break the idea and I’d be far more willing to back projects if I knew I’d like the end result. This is where the need for a curator comes in. I’d argue that most people still find their music from some curator or another whether its the radio station or a close friend who knows their music tastes. Imagine if there was a product which could go through your music collection (or TV or Movie tastes, similar to Netflix) and make spot on recommendations of small time bands performing in the bars in their hometown. Not only would this catapult the small time performers and creators, but it would fundamentally turn all of the industries so ripe for disruption upside down. Cutting out the middle man and connecting producers and consumers with their exact wants.
Credit Cards
Credit cards have become so ubiquitous now that we’re quickly moving to a cash-less society. Which is great because the only thing more annoying than carrying around cash is carrying around coins. Despite fees not having changed in nearly half a century, the processing and transaction costs of doing business have fallen drastically for the processing companies (I couldn’t find anything to the contrary, let me know if the fees have fallen too).
While its a great time to be Visa, MasterCard, or AMEX, merchants are getting hurt by the transaction costs of credit cards, rising costs across the board (blame the ones using their credit card on a $0.79 candy bar). Although square has brought lower fees to small businesses by utilizing its power to get lower processing fees, no one has yet leveraged the power of the internet to bring fees down drastically across the board. Unfortunately no one will get rid of their credit card willingly or switch to a card that is accepted virtually nowhere, this would have to be a “sneak attack” to capture market share.
I genuinely have no idea how this would be done, but I think the two biggest hopes are going to be square or one of the NFC payment providers. Square needs to build wider adoption, but I think if they’re able to do it, they could easily create their own credit card system. They’re already starting to do it by allowing people to open “tabs” at participating stores, the next step is to give them their own billable account directly connected to their bank account. The other option is to hope one of the NFC payment providers will take off. Isis probably has the best shot at this by allowing consumers to bill to their mobile phone bills. If they can continue this and begin cutting out the credit card companies, I think they have significant potential to lower the costs of business and create significant disruption in the industry.
Being a Connector and Hiring the Best
I passed the resume of a friend along to someone I knew who worked at his ideal company. Although I had never seen his resume explicitly, I knew his work ethic and knew from his background and knew he’d be a great hire for the company and already had some experience working at other companies in the industry. What I didn’t know ahead of time was that the person I’d passed the resume along to was also trying to get a job there themselves despite having already worked there as an intern.
Now, presumably already having worked there would give you a leg-up over an outsider, but this person was too worried about securing a job themselves that I’m not really sure that the resume did get passed along. This led me to share it with multiple people at the company just to make sure that it did get passed along. I thought its a very interesting dilemma because for the middleman you risk jeopardizing your chances, but it’s not like the resume won’t find another way to get there (and it did).
In my opinion, it’s better to be what Malcolm Gladwell called a “connector” in The Tipping Point than to just be another intern trying to land a full-time position. Talk about what it says about you as a person too.
I know a bunch of talented people, if you need something done I know who to ask. I’m resourceful and know the strengths of different people, I can play to different people’s strengths.
I’ve always been a firm believer in hiring and surrounding yourself with people who compliment you, who are smarter than you, and who fill in the gaps you can’t. When I’m looking for someone to join my team the first thing I look for is someone who will bring a different viewpoint or way of doing things from what everyone else on the team already brings. Creating a homogeneous team only hurts the group in the long run with one routine way of doing things, you need someone creative and unique to keep everything interesting!
You’re Selling Yourself Short Part 3 of 3: Sharing
The key to selling yourself and coming off as a true professional is to truly put your best side public and forward. The key here is to put forth so much content of your choosing that any negative content just doesn’t appear. Now, I can’t entirely talk because the 3rd result for googling my name is “My Neighbor Ian Markowitz at Skypoint Tampa is a Kook”, but at least its specific enough that most people will know that it isn’t me.
I think that you should be comfortable sharing everything with everyone. If you’ve got a Facebook or a Twitter, I think that you should expect that it may not always be safe/sacred. In the case of Twitter, all the tweets are being archived in the National Archive, so nothing is entirely sacred. However, if you’re trying to market yourself but don’t want to share everything, the key is making enough public that it doesn’t look like you’re hiding anything.
Some people choose to have two twitters or two facebooks one for their social life and one for their professional life. While this is a good idea in concept, one initially falls to the wayside (9/10 times its the professional one), nearly defeating the purpose. But regardless of what you do, make sure you’re easy to find and work on your SEO and web presence to make sure that you’re near the top of Google results for whatever your focus is. It doesn’t matter if your name is John Smith or Jaeden Oskolowski, if your name is searched with a field you want to get into you should work on becoming one of the top results.
This last piece I can’t stress enough, if you’re going to be a collector and sharer of news and information, be more than just a sharer. Make sure you share why the information is important or why its relevant. If the title is self explanatory then call out a particular area that you thought was important. If it’s a list or a news article on anything such as the 20 best sauces at mcdonalds, highlight your favorite one while you share it, give your posts some personality, and let people see and understand who you are, it goes a long way. Besides, it shows people you’re not just regurgitating links, there is reason and relevance behind each one.
You’re Selling Yourself Short Part 2 of 3: Your Brand
There are a few sure-fire ways to get your resume/cover letter passed around the office. One, is you do what this NYU student did for his cover letter and become the laughing stock of the company and ultimately of the industry. Another is having a crazy email address which, if noticed, can impact the decision consciously or subconsciously. No one is going to be enthusiastic about hiring someone whose email address is jews4jesus@aol.com or miSSygymNASTY2398@yahoo.com, and trust me, this isn’t just impacting you getting hired either. It’s probably impacting the customer service you get via email as well. The email address is probably one of the first points of contact for anyone with you, especially in the absence of actually getting to know you, so you might as well make it count. The last way to get noticed is to be truly memorable or remarkable in one way shape or form (by far the hardest).
Preventing option two is your best bet especially since its one of the fastest and easiest fixes possible. Ideally, buy the domain for your full name (ianmarkowitz.com) or if you’re lucky buy one that’s your last name or a variation there of (mrktz.com). Try and keep it as short and easy to remember as possible because no one is going to want to visit CollegeStudentJohnSmithDoeIII.com.
Domains are usually around $10 a year and at this point virtually all come with at least one free email address. Set up your email account and start using it as your primary one. If you really can’t afford to or don’t want to shell out the money for a new domain then pick up a professional looking Gmail account and begin using that email address as your new primary email account.
While there are more follow ups to this post coming in the coming days, I leave you with this picture from the oatmeal.
What #Conan2Bentley can tell students and entrepreneurs about social media
In an IDCC class on the Bentley University campus on social media, students are working on bringing Conan O’Brien to Bentley’s campus. They’ve been doing this through hashtags, tweets, flashmobs, facebook pages, and twitterverse spam all in the efforts of attracting some form of a response from Conan. While I see the benefit to the campus in attracting Conan (it would be awesome, you should check out his commencement address last year while you’re at it), I think people are missing how crucial these skills are for entrepreneurs in particular.
Let’s be honest, the probability of Conan seeing a twitter campaign directed at him is almost non-existent, its far more likely that he sees it coincidentally than anything else. What the campaign is very successful at is generating awareness from the campus community and alums in the project. The area this project has been lacking in has been the crossover between social media and traditional/e-media and its the easiest way to get attention. HerCampus and Bostinno are smaller scale blogs which are always on the prowl for content especially relevant to their demographics and they are step one, now that they have gotten the coverage online.
Step two is bringing in the non-traditional social media, exploring LinkedIn connections, student connections, etc. All of these raise awareness about the campaign and although not directly social media they all trace back to the original social media campaign. Step three is stepping up to the larger scale blogs and newspapers. The mashables, the gizmodos, and the like. Once you keep growing exposure and coverage, the chance of either Conan or one of his “minions” is much higher.
Thinking it through further, the larger the blog, the more likely it is that they’ll investigate it slightly further, potentially reaching out to Conan and his team for comment. Think about the relevance to entrepreneurs and startups and how you build awareness for your own campaigns and goals. Besides, funneling these types of stories or other “good” stories to bloggers makes you far more reputable so when you’re looking for coverage on your company or your startup, the writer will already know you and will be more willing cover you and your story.
You’re Selling Yourself Short (Part 1 of 3)
Regardless of what your major is, but especially if you’re aiming to get into some area of business you should be working on selling yourself. Ultimately, the ones who can sell themselves are the ones who are able to get out there and sell whatever product a company is building to the world and can also sell internal projects to the rest of the company/team.
If you’re interested in getting into Marketing/PR/Sales then this is less of a suggestion and more of a necessity as your entire career hinges on your ability to sell. While nothing is going to be sure-fire bet, you definitely want to stack the odds in your favor.
Details on how to boost your odds in coming posts!
