I’m a big fan of Jim Collins. If you haven’t read his books, I recommend buying them all. One of may favorite ideas that I gleaned from his books, as well as books by others, is the idea of “try a lot of things, and keep what works.”
As a small business your primary advantage over large companies is your agility. You don’t have 17 board members who have to agree to implement a new ad campaign. You don’t have to coordinate between 30 stores to unify your message. You have 1-3 stores, you know most of your employees by sight.
The problem is that as a small business you’re worried more about the cost of failure. “What if we try this, and it doesn’t work?” “What if we host an event and no one comes?”
The only sure way to fail is to not even try.
This is where another of Jim Collins ideas, from his recent book Great by Choice, will help: First fire bullets, then fire cannonballs.
Here’s what he means. Cannonballs are big and expensive compared to bullets. So if you’re trying to hit a target, it’s better to find the target by firing bullets at it, then when you’ve got it’s position, you fire the big guns.
For us in retail, you want to try something new, but you’re not sure if it’s going to work. Start out small and tweak.
[Click for some real world examples from me.]
I think of this as the House, MD method of solving problems. In case you’re not a fan of the television show House, MD allow me to explain. House is the modern day version of Sherlock Holmes. He’s arrogant, selfish, and would never be accused of being a great manager or role-model. He does, however, always solve the medical mystery. One thing you’ll notice, though, if you watch House is that he’s wrong most of the time. He’s right at the very end, but before that he’s wrong about 4 times (at least once before each commercial). He, and his team, will propose multiple theories, test them, reject most, then stumble on the correct theory. Each time they’re wrong, they learn something new about the problem. This is how you should approach your business as well (without the arrogance and ego).
If you are a fan, you might have said, “doesn’t House generally fire cannonballs at everything?” Sort of. He jumps from bullets to cannonballs a lot quicker than most, but he still fires bullets. Each show starts with his team proposing about 6 different theories. They’re rejected until only two remain. They devise a way to test these two and then proceed to treatment. Their version of “try a lot of things” is the theory phase. Tests are their bullets. Cannonballs treatment.
What does this mean for you? Let’s say you want to attract more customers. What can you do? Brainstorm. We could advertise, run a promotion, hand out coupons for “you and a friend”, etc. Pick a couple of these (those with the lowest cost) and try them (try a lot of things). Check your results. What’s working. Say something brings in a few new customers, but not as much as another. Tweak that one and try again (firing bullets). If it still under-performs, drop it. Focus on what works. Tweak what’s working and see if you can get an even bigger response.
You may also ask, “won’t you seem flighty or scattered if you keep trying lots of different things?” That’s reasonable. The key difference is tracking and “keeping what works.” If you just start and abandon projects before they’re done, yeah, you may be unfocused. If you try a bunch of things and then integrate those that work into your business, you’re just being successful.
So that idea you’ve been saving for when conditions are “perfect”, start implementing it today.
Joe Robles 