The only thing we have to fear…

Failure is not fatal but failure to change might be – John Wooden

Somehow, somewhere, our basic programming got all screwed up.  While throughout life, change is inevitable — in business, in our economy, in our relationships with others  –  we are fundamentally hard-wired by human nature to resist it.

For example, last week I spoke with the president of a successful mausoleum builder.  He told me about how his company was losing business over the past two years and that they were seeing the dark clouds building up on the horizon for his company and the employees for whom he felt responsible.  His sales were being eaten away by competitors.  And some key buyers insisted on margins he could not sustain. In short, his business was coming to a critical juncture and he knew that one primary reason was his lackluster, forgettable marketing efforts.  He then said something that still bothers me today: “I know of your company’s reputation and that making a change to your firm would probably be the right thing to do, but I’m not sure I’m ready to switch strategies or bring in an agency at this time.”

While I’m not a psychologist, 25+ years in marketing has taught me that there are some primary causes for why business executives struggle with change. You can probably add another 10 causes yourself but here are my 5 “issue buckets” for resisting change.  See how many sound way too familiar.

5. The status quo is good enough…or “We’ve always done it this way and there’s no reason to change.” That’s not what one would call a rallying cry for success, yet it’s said day in and day out. Couple that with a poison called “being comfortable,” and you’ll unfortunately arrive at the intersection of “Irrelevance Blvd.” and “Vulnerable Ave.”  Status quo, you know, is Latin for ‘the mess we’re in’. – Ronald Reagan

4. Not seeing the Marketplace as it really is. Without any real-world customer and competitive research, the marketplace can be seen in a very skewed manner;  in essence, believing one’s own BS!  Any recommended, alternative approach to what is taking place is ridiculed and discounted.

3. Change costs money.   In a bad economy, logic might suggest that the best thing to do is hunker down, put your arms around the money you’ve got, hold tight and wait it out.  Only here’s the truth: more companies have saved themselves into bankruptcy than spent themselves there.

2. It worked before.  Past success often drives and validates current behaviors. Unfortunately, though, what got you here won’t necessarily get you there because too many other things have changed, so those old formulas will no longer work.

1. Fear.  Since it’s never known for sure what will happen when one makes changes, the fear of change merely leads to inertia. But the truth is, like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights, one is sure to encounter untold damage unless there’s movement. (I supposed I could have said that a shark that doesn’t continue to move forward drowns, but that’s just too many animal metaphors!)

One needs to trust that through taking action and moving out of one’s own comfort zone, there’s an opportunity to grow, evolve, and possibly transform into something much greater.  My vote is to do something. Anything.

If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.   – Wayne Dyer

You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight. – Jim Rohn

– by Rolf Gutknecht,  Agent of Change

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Don’t waste a perfectly good recession.

Alright, business hasn’t turned around as quickly as you’d like – or as quickly as anyone would like.  So families aren’t throwing their spending money at pre-need plans any more than you’re shelling out dollars to hire additional staff, add new locations or expand your advertising reach.

Instead, if you’re like most companies, you’re continuing to be as parsimonious with your spending and investing as good business judgment dictates, right?  That means you’re more focused on sales than on marketing, since marketing means spending money whereas sales means making money, right again?

Many businesses have grown their sales force while decimating their marketing departments.  They’ve turned from brand-building  to such “instant gratification” sales-based marketing strategies as direct response and SEO.  At the same time, they’re making price the deciding factor.

What could possibly be wrong with that?

So let me propose two basic flaws in that kind of approach.

First, the further away from image and brand marketing you move, the less the customer is predisposed to buy from you regardless of price, since your brand is no longer the top-of-mind preferred choice.  That means A) you have to wait until the customer is ready to buy and not a second before, and B) you are now set up for trading exclusively on price since your value proposition has taken a distant back seat…and there’s always a competitor who will come along with a cheaper product or service.

The second strategic flaw is that you’re now doing exactly what your competition is doing, hunkering down and playing the DR/sales/price game at precisely the time advertising rates are the most affordable they’ve ever been.  Today, you can negotiate the most advantageous ad programs and one-up your competition with strong visibility while they’re still virtually invisible.

The opposing argument might be that in this sucky economy consumers are more price-focused than brand focused. And yet…

Why is it that sales of Apple’s iPad, an absolutely non-necessary (but really great) product, are booming?  With each new iteration of the iPad, a $600 – $800 purchase, there are lines of anxious shoppers waiting outside the Apple Store.  Simply, Apple presents a fantastic value proposition in its advertising that has nothing to do with price.  The Apple brand and the iPad experience are king. Their strategy is so successful that in 2011, Apple sold more iPads in its last quarter than HP sold desktop computers all year!

How might you make pre-need planning a bigger value to your customers than it is right now? How might you predispose local families to call on you alone when suddenly at-need?  Boomers, in particular, are looking for value, not just price.  They don’t want to be sold to but would rather make decisions based on other issues that your brand can communicate.

The true job of advertising and marketing is to establish a consumer’s desire in advance of asking for the order. Without this first stage, building desire and brand equity, the selling process is exponentially more difficult. Any wonder why the sales cycle for most businesses has doubled or even tripled over the past few years as marketing budgets have been cut?

This is nothing new.  In fact, the business publisher McGraw Hill addressed this very issue in a brilliant ad that ran in the early 1960s.  In essence, the ad demonstrated that without marketing laying the foundation of understanding and desire prior to the sale, the barrier is significant.

So you’ve been given a gift, as it were, in the form of a recession.  From a marketing perspective, your competitors are asleep at the wheel, and you can afford marketing visibility as you never have before.  Here’s your chance to let them suffer the recession while you profit from it.  How will you handle the opportunity?

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