There's Goodness In The Badness

Housing starts are up. (What? Someone in this country is being paid to build an actual house? Someone tell CNN!) Pending home sales up 2.1% from February to March. Unemployment slide slower than expected. Retail sales better than both 3rd and 4th quarter projection. Consumer confidence – perhaps the most important of the indices – plateaued in March from a 6 month freefall.

Sure, you’re used to me doing April Fool’s jokes, but this time I’m leaving that predictable hilarity to others. (“Contrarian” being my continued advice to you.) This is good news for real, though the perceptions remain “bad”.

People are paralyzed, polarized, or both by “bad” news (it also sells media, opinions, and short-term dependency.) Yet people are magnetically attracted to good news, and right now, “good news” is the attractive contrarian approach more than ever.

You can change one perception into the other, because as an entrepreneur, you’re in charge of both.

In other good news, the Hudson family returned with all the ligaments we had before our ski trip. (click to read last editorial if you missed it.) If the ski vacation business mirrors America even slightly, then more people are staying home (important to note contractors), saving more, and being more sensible. This is certainly not a bad outcome, even though skiing vendors say post-boom business is off 30%. Considering the escalated prices paid for dinners, they’re making more money off of less food. Complaints were few, because regulars told me they enjoyed their trip more due to less crowding. Take two marketing notes there.

Yet the whole buying public seems to be in a holding pattern of collective schizophrenia: “Capitalism is good; gluttony is bad.”

A fine line of perception divides them. Hard to spend your way out of a recession when – to a large degree – the inability to save enough for a “proper” down payment triggered it. (Feel free to disagree openly in your comments; I’m not running for office.) Regardless, most buyers aren’t inclined to plunk down for the unnecessary when they might need supplies during the apocalypse. “Showy overbuying” is definitely out. Makes you feel good to be a supplier of required services doesn’t it?

So, what perception isn’t selling now? Okay, cars, namely American ones. The perception is that this is due to a “quality” issue. Sure, the US Auto Industry has its woes, but quantifiable quality is not among them. To wit: since its inception in 1990, Lexus has won the world-acclaimed “JD Power Customer Satisfaction Index” (the top “Oscar” of automobiledom). Until this year. It was won by the very American Buick. The most “unreliable” car on the list? Suzuki, which last time I checked was Japanese.

However, the perception (important word for salespeople and marketers) among the public is that the average unreliable Buick is driven by a 112 year old female who needs a periscope to see above the steering wheel. Sorry if that’s NOT you, but that IS the perception. (I owned a turbocharged Buick Grand National, loved it, but every time I drove it I had the irresistible urge to shop for dentures.) Likewise, we think, “If Japanese, then reliable.”

Both are factually incorrect; perceptionally intact.

So, perceptions are running the asylum, and you and I are inmates.

What perceptions are in the market now? The general perception is that contracting is down (as an industry). Yet the #1 reason our clients miss a paid coaching call: “We’ve been too busy.” They’re having record months, amassing customers from quieted competitors because services are in high - and potentially increasing - demand.

That’s one perception you can drive a stake in. Good riddance. I’ve written so often about not becoming a silent statistic to your customer base that I’ve chosen to only give the shorthand list here –

1) Thank you cards 2) Scripted Thank you calls 3) Scripted Follow up surveys/referral generators 4) Newsletters 5) Maintenance Agreement bumps 6) Radius Mailings 7) Google and YOUR own website “Rankings” (no one is taking this seriously enough; thus a leadership role awaits you)

Then there’s the public perception (not your customers) that contractors are messy, unprofessional, and on the edge of trustability. Whatever, I don’t make the opinions. Your job is to obliterate that perception about you.

As an entrepreneur, you’re the Chief Perception Officer out there. For the last several months, we’ve urged clients to resist the dour attitude, find the good news, focus upon finding more. Become the “anti-contractor” image. He’s quiet; you’re loud. He’s amateur; you’re professional. He forgets his customers; you tattoo your logo into their frontal cortex. His ‘fleet’ looks like extras from a crash film; yours like a showroom. And on it goes.

So if the “norm” is to gripe and become a long-term repellant, then the “contrarian” becomes a relevant long-term attractant. You’re an entrepreneur, this is what you do.

In his February 24th State of the Union Address, Barack Obama publicly declared that “The future of our economy relies on the imagination of our Entrepreneurs.” Regardless of your political convictions, those 12 words are about business, and the perception of your role in it. Curl up with the complainers or gather gold with the gainers.

Benjamin Franklin – our nation’s first millionaire by the way – persevered through adversity, always seeking the “good in the bad”. He said, “Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain… and most fools do.” He followed that up with, “All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.”

Get moving.