|
Jeffrey Eisenberg has a wonderful post over at grokdotcom, in which he lays out in several simple statements his "Gut Check for Retailers." The reason its a great post is because it nails exactly what all companies, not just retailers, need to understand about the Internet.
The post is quite specific in what customers will do to challenge companies and how companies tend to respond. You might see yourself in those responses. If you do, it's because you realize that you need to change, but you are not discriminating between two very different kinds of changes.
In the excellent book, Leadership on the Line, the authors make a clear distinction between technical and adaptive changes. Technical changes merely adjust our behavior (such as raising incentives when sales drop), while adaptive changes require that we change how we think—adapt our philosophy about what we do.
Adaptive changes are far more difficult than technical changes, and, you guessed it, the Internet requires companies to make adaptive changes. We must think differently about our businesses.
For example, local businesses succeed because they are physically proximate to their customers. When they launch a Web site, they aren't any "closer" to customers than any other Web site, so they must rethink their businesses. They can't blather on about having the widest selection or the lowest prices or the best service, because that's what all the rest of those Web sites say, too. Instead, they must specialize on the part of the business they do best and target those customers, rather than trying to serve the wider market they do locally.
That requires an adaptive change. And it's hard. But it's easier than looking like every other business on the Web and having no reason for customers to seek you out. Jeffrey called it a gut check for retailers, but I think he is talking about a wake-up call for any business that operates on the Web.
Leave a comment