Essentials Magazine Essentials Spring 2019 | Page 25

BY ED RIGSBEE
W
alking to my car, I heard
loud music. This was not
exactly what I expected
in Grants Pass, Oregon, on a warm
Saturday July evening. I had just
returned from an exhilarating jet boat
excursion to Hellgate Canyon and
enjoyed a ranch-style dinner on the
Rogue River.
The music was getting louder and louder
as I approached the parking lot. It was com-
ing from across the street. It was an auto-
mobile dealership, Mock’s Ford, and it was
alive with action. There was a band playing,
with folks of all ages dancing to the music,
a barbecue filling the area with its popular
aroma, and yes, people were buying cars.
The excitement and activity drew me like a
magnet to metal.
In front of the sales office, a local radio
station, Cruisin’-FM, was conducting a
live-remote broadcast allowing all in atten-
dance to be involved. I located the dealer-
ship president, Don Carr, and during our
chat he told me that they had sold almost
as many cars so far that weekend as they
usually sell in a month. To top it off he said,
“We’re not giving these cars away.” Carr
created a weekend partnering alliance with
his community and won big.
How would you like to sell your prod-
ucts at that rate and still make a profit? You
might be saying, “That’s great for selling
cars, but what about me?” The answer is to
get involved with your community in a way
that serves people and creates high-level
exposure for your business. You’ll need to
be creative and develop some fun, helpful,
exciting community activities. Remember,
being unique is not an absolute necessity,
but it’s very helpful.
Creativity in Retail
Creativity has always been, and will
always be, the retailer’s call to battle.
Creativity is also one of the key ingredients
necessary to create value in the eyes of your
customers. The way the national big box
category busters (i.e., Wal-Mart, Circuit
City, and Office Depot) develop perceived
value is through selection and low price, not
necessarily service. If you are an indepen-
dent retailer and you’re trying to do battle
in their arena, they will clean your clock.
But creativity is not necessarily a word that
big boxes, at the local level, understand.
For years, Baby Boomers have been
the pig in the python in our economy. They
were heavy-duty consumers in the 1980s,
buying their first houses and filling them
up, buying luxury cars and all the outward
trappings of success. In the 1990s they trav-
eled and purchased RVs. Now, with most
of the Boomers having grandchildren, they
will buy almost anything if they perceive
it’s a good value. Also, determine what they
perceive as value-added in how you run
your business and give it to them — they’ll
reward you with profits through their loyal-
ty. Don’t forget about the X and Y Genera-
tions. While many were part of the dot com
bust, they still seem to spend freely.
Create a unique position for your
business in the minds of your customers,
and your competition in the marketplace
is greatly diminished. Remember though,
unique means one of a kind (not just a bit
different), and that’s what you must be if
you plan to survive and prosper throughout
this decade and beyond.
Earl Nightingale, co-founder of Night-
ingale-Conant Corp., the world’s largest
producer and distributor of audio and video
learning systems, continually offered this sug-
gestion for creativity: take a yellow pad each
morning and spend a quiet hour thinking
about the major challenges for the day. He
would go to work listing all ideas he could
think of — no matter how crazy, impossi-
ble, wacky or boring the idea might appear.
“Some ideas you’ll use and many you’ll toss
out,” he would say. The important thing is
to capture the ideas and act on the ones you
believe will assist you in achieving your goals.
So, how does all this creativity and
uniqueness talk help you to partner with
your community? You can’t just copy what
others have done and make it work for you,
but you can copy the process used but not
the results. Your community is uniquely dif-
ferent; your neighbors have special needs;
and you must use your creativity to find a
winning combination.
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