'Stop the Stupid Stuff' In Your Business
We live in a world of change. Change is happening! Competition comes from all over the world, meaning many American companies are struggling.
Many decisions made contradict both good business sense and customer loyalty.
For most companies, marketing is usually about figuring out what you can do to convince current or potential customers to spend more money with them.
I'm suggesting that instead of thinking about what to do, figure out what to stop doing. In other words, stop doing the "stupid stuff."
Not doing the stupid stuff means finding out what prevents customers from spending money with you and making sure that that action or reaction never happens again.
Here's an example of what I call "stupid stuff." Some airlines now want to charge customers who want to speak to a live agent.
There are more subtle, but no less harmful and stupid things that companies need to stop doing.
Take the new Wheaties boxes for example. General Mills recently released Wheaties boxes featuring photos of U.S. Olympic champions.
“Choosing a Wheaties Champion has never been easy, especially when we have seen so many outstanding performances from so many championship participants. But it's just not possible to appreciate all the samples on a box of Wheaties.
They leave the USA for the first time Man who would win the Olympic all-around gymnastics championship in one of the sport's greatest comebacks? His comeback from a disastrous fall and a near-perfect performance on the high bar earned him near-universal recognition and defined the word “champion” for most of us.
But there was controversy. As many of you know, the South Korean gymnast claimed that a scoring error cost him the gold medal and has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. A court recently ruled that Hamm could keep his gold medal.
Even though the medal was disputed, it was not because of anything Hamm did or did not do. Still, General Mills decided to do the "safe" thing. But by being safe and leaving out Hamm, Wheaties is alienating the millions of customers who see him not as controversial, but as a hero, and losing customers in the process. Now that's "stupid stuff."
So start stopping! Stop saying “no” and start using the word “yes.” Stop charging for services that most of us consider free.
Find out what irritates, discourages, worries, or confuses your customers, and stop it.
