Preserve the Core: Rebuilding or Getting Ahead

Sid Raisch is a business consulting expert through his business Horticultural Advantage. This past Clinic speaker has taken his 28 years experience and has created strategies and systems for improving every aspect of garden center operations, and helps industry suppliers improve their service to garden centers.

Are you going to spend the recovery rebuilding or getting ahead? If you need a good excuse to make changes in your business, the economic crisis will do. Someone who is now famous not long ago said "Don't waste a crisis", while referring to the opportunity to make sweeping political changes during a bad economy. Whether you agree with the politics of that individual the time to make changes to rebuild or get ahead is now. Rebuilding is always in fashion but getting ahead during a recession is reserved for those who have managed AND rebuilt their company while others are locked down or troubled. So if you're not in the position to get ahead now then get in a position to get ahead after the recovery and during the next economic downturn, which should be along in another 8-12 years as they generally occur.

How do you run lean and mean without eroding your brand? To stop brand erosion you must know what yours stands for to your customer in the first place. If your brand is not a highly differentiated best choice to them now (meaning competition is of little consequence to your business) then be concerned more with building a stronger brand than with preventing erosion of the one you have. If you are in the rare but enviable position of having a brand to defend this is your time to raise your flag all the way to the top of the flagpole with aggressive marketing. But while you do that also consider how the expectations of your customer might be changing and how your brand will stack up to those new expectations. In either case, get close to your customer and get to know them better than you know yourself.

How do you run lean and mean without losing or demoralizing experienced staff? Making people miserable in the name of saving money is not going to do anything but reduce their productivity. Focusing on the hope of the future provides necessary energy from the fire of inspiration. While our industry has not been proven to be recession proof, very many of our companies have proven to be recession resistant. If your company is not in that group then figure out why and make changes accordingly. There are great times ahead for those who identify their opportunities and take positive action toward those opportunities.

How do you run lean and mean without eroding damaging customer relationships? I hear and see way too much emphasis in our industry toward empathizing with the perceived needs of the new normal customer to buy less stuff for less money. The facts do not support those concepts as a recent McKinsey & Company study on brand defection shows. http://ow.ly/L3Vq What we do see is deeper segmenting of consumers based on their demographic (income) and psychographic values. Yes, some are defecting to lower cost/value providers or exiting the market for our products and services. But if you lower expectations for those you will only disappoint and cause separation of the majority of our customers who know why they want what they want from us. If you have customers who value your product the focus should be on reinforcing the value of the product or service rather than blindly or anecdotally assuming they want the same product for less.

How do you run lean and mean without eroding damaging vendor relationships? Too many buyers in our industry worry more about the relationship with their vendors than they do the fiscal health of their own companies. Changing that focus doesn't necessarily mean relationships will be damaged. Good communication on current and future expectations and continuing to do what you say you will are always necessary. I don't see the good people in our industry going outside of those boundaries and damaging relationships in any way that would disrupt their supply chain.