Whom Would You Call?

Triumph International is a German lingerie manufacturing business. They wanted to sell bras online. Who did they call to make that happen? Well, of course they called whom any of us would call in that situation. They called the 200-year-old national postal service of Singapore.

Just as Triumph International was changing their business to meet the changing demands of their marketplace, Singapore Post had also changed their business to stay relevant in a marketplace that had gone from letters, postcards, and stamps to e-communication and e-commerce.

We all have to remagnetize.

Your market is changing. You may think your market is evolving slowly, with plenty of time for you to make adjustments and small changes as you go along. But the chances are that your market is changing, or about to change, much more rapidly than you imagine. You'd better be prepared to move quickly on to your “next act.”

It's become almost a tired old cliché to say that everything from customers to technology to society and the entire world is constantly and rapidly changing. Sadly, many businesses will intellectually acknowledge that change but then go back to doing business like they've always done it, as if somehow they were operating in a vacuum in which either change wasn't taking place, or that the changes that were happening would affect everyone but them.

Some of us are old enough to remember playing with old-fashioned horseshoe-shaped magnets when we were kids. Sooner or later those magnets would lose their ability to attract metal objects. They would literally become demagnetized. You either had to throw the magnet away or find a way to remagnetize it. The simplest way to remagnetize was to rub a strong magnet repeatedly in one direction along the weak magnet.

Remagnetizing a business is anything but simple. No business escapes the need to change. We all face the danger of becoming irrelevant unless we stay one step ahead of changes like decreasing demand, shifts in customer wants and needs, or increased and sometimes unexpected competition.

The Opportunity of a Burning Platform

The phrase “burning platform” has become entrenched in popular business jargon these days. Generally it means any crisis situation that forces a business to either change or perish. The origin of the phrase is said to be in a story of an oil worker on a rig in the North Sea. The rig catches fire, and the worker is faced with either a fiery death or jumping from the burning platform into an icy sea. He jumps, the story goes, and is rescued by a boat.

I use burning platform to describe the increasingly common business reality that the demand for what you do, in the way you've always done it, is disappearing. It may be a slow erosion of demand or might be happening quickly, but it can happen to any of us and is, in fact, happening to most of us.

It's not being naive or unrealistically optimistic to suggest that the reasonable response to a burning platform is to find the next opportunity and go there. That's what Singapore Post has done, along with many others who took their next big step and are doing quite well, thank you. I believe that any business can learn practical, immediately usable lessons from their example.

We Print Checks. Now What?

For many years I had the privilege of doing work with Deluxe Corp. To this day they remain one of my favorite clients, and they are a great example of a company that has found opportunity in what many would call a burning platform.

For years, Deluxe did pretty much one thing: They printed checks for bank customers. If you use checks, chances are that you have Deluxe checks in your purse, back pocket, or desk drawer right now. Deluxe was, and still is, a great innovator in the check business, and they have developed great relationships with the banks and credit unions whose customers they serve.

While Deluxe still does quite well in the check business, there's no doubt that checks are, little by little, being replaced by debit cards and direct online payments. As this trend became more obvious, Deluxe had to determine what their next step would be.

Taking into consideration their core capabilities, the strengths of their people, and trends in the marketplace, Deluxe saw opportunity in expanding beyond just helping banks and credit unions grow and into helping a range of businesses grow by providing a range of services.

Today, Deluxe Corp. provides checks, forms, marketing solutions, accessories, and other products and services for small businesses and financial institutions.

This isn't rocket science. The lesson for you and for me is to take stock in yourself, your strengths, and your possibilities, and match those with a clear-headed assessment of the marketplace. It's no time for wishful thinking or clinging to any notion that “the market will always come to us” when all evidence is to the contrary. Instead of waiting for your traditional market to come to you, now may be the time to get in front of the new market reality and begin to attract that business.

Who Moved My Market?

A few years ago there was a very popular business book called Who Moved My Cheese? that dealt with how to effectively deal with change. Today the change that most of us have to deal with on an ever-increasing basis is “who moved my market?”

You can be the leader in your market, lose touch for what seems like the blink of an eye, and the next thing you know, you've become irrelevant, your magnetism is lost, and your customers are disappearing.

Let's look at two areas of business that are experiencing markets on the move. The first is the fast food or casual dining restaurant business. That used to be a market driven by speed (I want it fast) and taste (I want it good).

That market has moved.

Today customers of fast food and casual dining restaurants want, as reported by Money magazine, “customizable options, transparency, and fare that's healthier, more sustainable, and altogether superior compared to any cheap cookie-cutter fast food joint.” They are leaving icons like McDonald's and Subway in favor of what they consider to be smarter choices like Chipotle Mexican Grill and Panera Bread.

Subway is responding by taking actions such as dropping all artificial ingredients from their menu. Panera Bread saw the same shift and took out a full-page ad in USA Today with an open letter from Panera founder, Chairman, and CEO Ron Shaich, which opened with “Dear America.” In the letter Shaich promised that “no other company is moving as aggressively to offer clean food. We want to encourage suppliers and competitors to rethink the way that they do business, too. We want to set an example for the change our food system so desperately needs.”

I would suggest to you that your market has moved, is moving today, and will continue to move tomorrow. How? Where? That's what you have to find out. Every market is different.

My second example of a moving market is my business, which is the business of professionals who do consulting and speaking to business groups at corporate events and conventions. Somebody has moved my market.

Speaker magazine is a publication of the National Speakers Association. CEO Stacy Tetschner surveyed a group of seasoned professional speakers about recent changes in that market. Here are some of the changes they see as reported in Speaker magazine:

• Many groups no longer hire “traditional” speakers. They hire book experts, interesting people, entrepreneurs, bloggers, adventurers, athletes, and celebrities.
• TED Talks have changed how many planners are viewing and hiring speakers. Audiences prefer shorter presentations by people not normally thought of as being professional speakers.
• Audiences are savvier and more active in sharing their opinions about speakers. They are actively using social media and various rating systems. (There's that customer word of mouth!)
• There is a greater supply than demand, with price competitiveness and commoditization.
• The odds of being displaced by newer, hotter, hipper, and trendier speakers are higher than ever.

The market in my business hasn't just moved; for some of my colleagues it has virtually disappeared because of all the changes.

The position that you may have owned at one time in your market may have literally disappeared. Many businesses make the mistake of trying to convince the old market to come back, rather than reading the writing on the wall and changing to get ahead of where the market is going.

Movements in my market have driven some significant and fundamental changes in the way I do business and in how I define my value proposition. Quite frankly, I see the changes as an opportunity to differentiate. And even more frankly, what choice do I have? I either use moves in the market to create opportunity or I hang a “closed” sign on my door and find something else to do.

We Live in Interesting Times

In June 1966, Robert Kennedy gave a speech in which he said, “There is a Chinese curse which says, ‘May you live in interesting times.’ Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history.”

Some quick Internet research reveals that, in truth, that “Chinese curse” has no connection to China or Chinese culture whatsoever. It's also interesting these days to see a reference to “the creative energy of men.” I'm pretty sure there were women with creative energy around in 1966. But I digress.

Whatever business you are in, you most definitely live in interesting times. We are all our own version of Singapore Post, which faced a changing or disappearing market. We will either be able to transition successfully as our markets move and change, or we will find ourselves wondering where all the customers went.