Do You Have Business Tunnel Vision?

Move The Cash Fast

I think too much.  I can sometimes irritate my wife just a little bit.  We can travel somewhere and I will not stop noticing little things about people in business and the services the business models out in the world provide or skip.  I am constantly pointing out which ones could use some improvements.  I will usually make a quiet comment to her about what I notice.  We might walk into a travel gift shop and notice how every single isle, door, register and corner will have cameras pointed in all directions.  I do not buy anything in a shop like that.  I am not a thief and do not want to be treated like a potential one.  I know people do steal stuff.  It happens.  Business owners will never eliminate shrinkage.  The best thing an owner can do is accept it and get used to it.  Just learn how to budget the shrinkage and do some other subtle things to curb its frequency.  It is part of the cost of doing business.  Just make sure you add the cost of theft to your margins.  Then do not be stupid about making theft too easy to do.  I have been at the retail game for forty years.  Every fair paying customer who has purchased goods from my endeavors has already subsidized the thieves in my retail stores with their purchases.  However, I am not certainly going to make the good 97% of my patrons, the ones who do not steal stuff, feel like they have been paying for the theft nor will I work extra hard on making them feel like I assume they are the ones stealing.  My wife will hear about the cameras as we walk around.  I think too much about all of this stuff.

We might be sitting down to enjoy a short coffee break in a remote town when we travel.  The floors will be dirty and the corners of the shop might have several weeks of spider webs hanging near the windows.  My wife will hear about that.  We could be online doing some shopping for a gift we want to find for one of our daughters.  The site we may be cruising through might have a small glitch and keep returning us back to a page we do not want to see.  My wife will hear about it.  I will notice small scenarios where each business can work to make positive changes.  I might add some extra thoughts about how this same kind of stuff needs to be removed from my business models.  It is how I think.  Like I said, I think too much.  My mind carries some very serious tunnel visions about business procedures.  I have business tunnel vision.    

One of the most common errors I see in the business world is the desire of the business world to slow down how it serves its customers.  I do not think the business leaders actually try to slow down how they serve their customers.  However, business leaders do add procedures of data collection and cumbersome security steps at the sales counters that inadvertently add steps to the transaction that will slow down how they process each transaction.  This kind of business design is usually done without notice.  The desire to get the information is stronger than the desire to quickly serve the customer.  I have seen many business owners fail to recognize this little affliction.  They get so immersed into the desire to gather more relevant information that they do not notice how irritating it has become to the patrons of their business model.  What's more, they do not notice how invasive their efforts are being felt.  Business models who practice this kind of stuff justify why they need to practice this kind of stuff.  That is exactly why they have too many cameras in every nook and cranny of their business model.  They have become too wrapped up with managing their thieves.  They have become too wrapped up with the data of accounting.  They have become too wrapped up with the data collection of customers for future marketing plans.  Sometimes business owners become 'wrong-sided' with their business tunnel vision.  Do you have business tunnel vision?  I do.  My wife would agree.

Quick service is always a good thing to practice.  Any business who designs its working model to do the things that will slow down how it routinely takes care of its customers is a business destined to fail.  Any time a procedure is introduced that will bog down how quickly you care for your customers is a business that consciously decides to flirt with losing more customers.  Customers want to do their thing quickly.  Get very used to it.  Any procedure that is introduced that ignores this truth is a procedure arranged to ignore customer desires.  An owner cannot talk their way around this truth.  Face it and deal with it.  Do not ever bog down the processing methods you use to service your customers.  Never.  Just flat out refuse to do it.  It is an excellent habit to inject into your business model designs.  In fact, Google just reported how long people wait when they click on search engines looking for information.  Over 80% wait less than one second before they move on to the next page!  One second, people!  Customers want faster service.  Get directly in line with this customer desire.

I watch many business models add procedures that slow down opportunities to provide quicker services to its consumers.  I see it happen in so many business models.  Those models do not truly recognize the power of good, efficient customer service.  I work for one of those models.  They are very supportive for the additions they insert and increase to their accounting tools.  They love to gather better information from the point of sale technology they currently use.  Unfortunately, with each step of additional input requirements they impose at the point of sale registers they inadvertently slow down each consumer transaction.  They desire the gathering steps of the accounting data more than they respect the protection to quickly serve the waiting customers at the sales register.  The leaders who make that kind of business decisions are not as much concerned about serving the customers quickly.  Those leaders are more concerned about gathering increased data to help the accounting office do a quicker, more effective job.  They accept the warped philosophy that better data at the expense of slowing down the consumer sales transactions is a good thing for the company.  Business leaders often times accept the common practice of wrong thinking.  In fact, many times I have justified wrong thinking in my own business models protecting my wrong thoughts with a list of justifiable reasons loaded with legitimate support.  Even then, wrong is still wrong.  I have done it.  

The process to complete each consumer sale should never get bogged down with more accounting steps required.  Develop a better more efficient system if more data is desired.  Do not constantly 'hit' that consumer each time they enter the check out line.  Once is enough.  To continue to bog customers down with every required step inserted into each required keystroke on every sales transaction is far too much to ask of the customers waiting in line.  Repeat customers see this foolishness.  Customers eventually become offended with these added steps required in the point of sale process.  It will stop a few of them from coming back.  Period.  That is one of the most stupid reasons to slow down volume.  I see this stupid stuff performed a lot.  I do not get it.  Apparently, neither do some business owners.

Every single time a business model decides to insert a new input requirement at the point of sale transaction that new procedure is destined to create a slower process for serving the consumers at the sales registers.  That kind of addition to business is plain stupidity.  Most accounting offices do not care about this kind of senselessness.  Make certain that your accounting office does not rule the roost on this subject.  This kind of disservice is one of the small ingredients inside the recipe for retail failure.  The accounting office will always deny this fact.  If you are the owner, the manager or the CEO, make sure you know where to sit on this particular argument.  Do not land smack dab in the middle of the accounting office perspective.  Instead, land where the clerks and customers live.  The clerks sit smack dab in front of the daily customers.  The truth is in the process.  In the end, the real accuracy of increased or decreased good service is evident to one side of this equation.  Who do you think sees this accuracy better, the main accounting office or the sales clerks and customers?  I tend to lean with the customers opinion.  The accounting office tends to ignore that view.  Get on the same side of this argument where the customers reside.  Wrong is wrong, right is right.  End of debate.  Move on.  Make certain your point of sale processing is the fastest you can provide.  It needs to be lightening quick.  The consumer is done and wants to move on.  They are running behind on their multiple task schedules.  Help them solve their delay.

I notice a lot of these silly things.  Leaders tend to excuse poor techniques for allowing bogged down customer service techniques and designs in their working models.  They actually introduce some wrong techniques by design.  What's more, we protect how we keep doing these terrible things to our customers.  We justify how our customers need to be more patient with our business processing desires.  We design our methods and we expect our customers to get in line and respect our poor business processing designs.  We determine our future, our fate within the confines of this kind of thinking.  Then when business goes sour we ask the silly questions, what went wrong?  We start to point our fingers at things that usually cannot be readily fixed.  We point fingers at the poor economy.  We point fingers at our untrained and careless sales employees.  We point fingers at the store manager who is given the art of directing his staff.  We point the fingers at the areas of costs that get out of line.  We demand that the manager cut down the use on his electric bill.  We demand that the manager trim out his staff overtime hours.  We demand that the manager lay off one of his part-time employees.  We do the stuff that seems obviously wrong with how our customers have slowly slipped away.  We do not truly work on improving how we increase the services we offer our customers.  Those kinds of efforts are usually the last ones on the list of our guided repairs.  Every model I have seen struggles with this kind of misguided business approach.  We get caught up in our business tunnel vision.  We get less consumer friendly and more accounting heavy.  It smacks too much of the act to perform too much business tunnel vision.  I am also prone to do these silly things.

Move The Cash Fast

When a business model begins to go sour, consumer improvements are not always the ones at the top of the list.  I have noticed that.  Usually the items of improvement that go to the top of the list are items and procedures that relate to the nature of accounting items.  Usually the most dominate improvements we tend to perform are the ones we see on the mechanical side of the business process.  We do not often jump to the consumer side of that repair equation.  It is a common error in most business repair efforts to spend more time and energy on the improvements related to accounting than it is to improve consumer respect.  We tend to work first on the cost cutting stuff inside the math and accounting areas of our business models.  We do not usually jump to increase sales efforts and find better ways to attract and keep consumer respect.  Consumer desires are not usually on the top of our repair lists.  We generally go first to the accounting stuff when we go to repair how our model is showing signs of being broken.  The vital list of consumer desires is not usually where we look first.  We have tunnel vision in our business affairs.  Obviously, we think our accounting procedures are in need of repair when the numbers go sour.

The numbers go sour because our consumers do not spend like we need them to spend.  Our model is not where they are doing their spending.  We may have some terrible holes in our accounting ways, but the first thing we need to do is repair our consumer services.  We need to evaluate if our business model is providing a good value.  We need to discover how our business model rates with the consumers we have lost.  We need to find out why they do not patronize our model more often.  We need to make sure we are providing our customers with the best experience they can find in the category we manage.  This is always our first step to repair.  The accounting will take care of itself if the volume is repaired, returned and growing.  Period.  We need to teach our own selves how to get this kind of tunnel vision firmly placed inside the work we do to build our business models.  We need to constantly focus on improving our consumer satisfaction components at all times.  No skips, no excuses and no sweeping this kind of required work under the rug.  Take better care of the customers we attract.  That is where our tunnel vision should land.

Keep in mind, we tend to like the authors that write about the stuff we find agreeable.  We like the books that agree with our point of view.  If an owner and a manger of a particular business model agree that gathering more relevant consumer information at the point of sale registers is a good idea, that agreement will eventually become a reality.  Even if it is wrong to do.  They both agree.  That is all they need for them to do something very stupid.  They will even do it when a customer complains about how they do what they are doing.  I have seen this happen a lot in my business career.  I have watched many business leaders stick to their unwanted ways and describe how important that way is to the customer who is complaining.  I have listened to this silly perspective many times in my career.  I see it every single day.  I see many business models try to modify their consumer desires.  This is the kind of tunnel vision a business leader needs to remove from their daily practices.  It is killing their success quotients.  Do you have this kind of business tunnel vision?  Be honest.  Does your model slow down how it cares for the customers it serves?  How efficient is your model?  Be honest when you examine it.  Do not look to confirm how you feel.  Look, instead, to ratify your perspective.  Go examine this part of your business model with the strong idea to make some serious changes about how you process your customers more efficiently.  Get seriously placed with a lot of tunnel vision on this effort.  Streamline your consumer processing.  Remember, over 80% of your customers click to the next page in less than one second.  That is all of the time they are offering for you to do your job well.  Get faster.  Get tunnel visioned about this effort.

If your business model is not online, this subject still includes you.  Your sales counter is the very place where speed counts.  Get faster at processing those customers who have decided they are done shopping.  Get going.  Get tunnel visioned about this effort.  Go change how you process them through.  Speed it up.  Make it work faster than any of your competition.  Get lightening quick about it.  One snap and they should be done.  Figure it out.  They do not want to waste time when they are done shopping.  That is not where you want to slow them down and chit chat.  Get more creative in your business model and do the chit chatting somewhere else.  Get a couple of greeters to roam about inside the store to personalize with those who want that service inside the place where they are still shopping, not at the check out registers.  Provide that experience somewhere else.  Get tunnel visioned on this move.  Have a greeter stand next to the register to walk and talk, if necessary.  Just make sure your register clerks keep the lines moving.  Quickness is the key to success here.  I have seen, heard and met many grocery Moms who have changed retail stores because the lines move faster in one versus the other.  Period.  Get faster.  Get tunnel vision on this one.

Do not make the mistake to decide to provide a slow down party of improved customer chit chatting at the narrow neck of the bottle.  You can easily provide good customer chit chatting and improved consumer experiences somewhere else in the width of that bottle, just not in the narrow neck.  Speed the narrow neck up.  It will keep the rest of the bottle fresh and happier.  Get good at improving your business tunnel vision.  Clean the cob webs more often.

Until next time...