Fielding Special Requests

The bike shop is busy in June. If you bring your bike in for a tune up, it will cost $39 and take a week.

A week!

What if someone says, "I have a bike trip coming up in three days, can you do it by then?"

At most bike shops, the answer is a shrug, followed by, "I'm sorry, we're swamped."

The problem with telling people to go away is that they go away. And the problem with treating all customers the same is that customers aren't the same. They're different and they demand to be treated (and are often willing to pay) differently.

So, why not smile and say, "Oh, wow, that's a rush. We can do it, but it's expensive. It'll cost you $90. I know that's a lot, but there you go."

Outcome: Maybe they'll still leave. But maybe they'll happily pay you for the privilege of doing business with you. Why should this be your choice, not theirs?

If you do tax accounting for mid-size businesses, why not offer a special last-minute service? A service in which you process shoeboxes filled with unsorted papers? A service that costs less but happens during your slow season?

There are two really good reasons to turn down special requests:

1. because you're marketing yourself as extremely busy and perfectly willing to turn down good work.

2. because you want to market yourself as someone who is a rigid artist, a stick in the mud or a crotchety perfectionist. This works great for pizza places.


Link

Group behavior

Guy #1 appears to be on his own - a guy dancing isn't all that special.
Guy #2 joins - but still not a special thing.
Guy #3 joins and very quickly (at about the one minute mark) they get attention, interest and then...
No - it's not amazing dancing. Consider the group (the rest of the crowd) and adoption behaviors. What was the point where it caught hold? It has been suggested that guy #3 is the key.

Pangea 3000

Coffee rules

When you're getting coffee from a store:

• Put the cover on so the drink hole is opposite the seem in the cup (paper cup)
• Don't use the extra sleeve

These rules will reduce dribble / splash / spill potential by greater than 70%; saving dry cleaning bills, stress, stupid stains that you wear all day and more.

I know what you're thinking - "No say". I respond with, "Say".

Also:

Put the cream in first - save a stick

Congressman's Kid won't cut it out - Onion

Congressman's Son Won't Shut The Hell Up During Hearing

Thumbprint find - Interesting

Rotten nasty crud - Even just a little...

Toxicodendron radicans (syn. Rhus toxicodendron, Rhus radicans); Poison ivy is a plant in the family Anacardiaceae. The name is sometimes spelled "Poison-ivy" in an attempt to indicate that the plant is not a true Ivy (Hedera). It is a woody vine that is well known for its ability to produce urushiol, a skin irritant that causes an itching rash for most people, technically known as urushiol-induced contact dermatitis.

Don't touch, rip out with your hands and then scratch your "howdoyodo. Don't mess. Spray Roundup or maybe sell your house and move away.

There you go.
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Augusta

The Masters happens this week. The venue (Augusta National) is beautiful on television, but in person it is shockingly gorgeous - shocking I say. It has more elevation changes than you can see on TV. The greens appear to be impossible top putt. The grounds are manicured to perfection. That much detailed grooming on a scale that large seems impossible. It must be fake - but no - it's just crazy perfect.

The top 125 - say what?

Peterson Dealerships made the Automotive News list of the top 125 Dealer Groups (#125). They sold 1,105 new vehicles and 1,110 used. They also sold 1,266 fleet units. Revenue was just over one hundred million.

The new / used ratio is a healthy 1-1. Well done. The fleet sales must have a story attached to make it interesting. Fleet is a thin-margin pain in the ass business - unless you have something clever going on. I'm sure the Petersons are good operators and since they made this list, they deserve to be pleased. Again - well done.

However...

2,200 retail units and 100m in revenue might seem like a lot, it just isn't - not for one of the top 125 "groups". These are strong single point numbers, but for one of the top 125 groups, I'm not so sure. How can these numbers earn a spot on the list?

A.) The list is hurting for submissions to be included

B.) Boch is missing, Prime is missing... Other than the tippity top, the list is irrelevant

C.) Things are really bad


The seasonally adjusted retail rate is below ten million new units. So maybe the Peterson's adjusted back to an eighteen million selling rate would throw up 2,000 new units. Still... I don't get it.

Nissan ad spoof

John McPherson cartoon in today's paper

Probably unfair, but still funny

General Electric - Go figure

The downgrade of General Electric from AAA to AA+ by Standard and Poor's was accompanied by a 13% share price bounce. This doesn't seem like a call for happiness, but wait...

Apparently, the good news is that the cut wasn't deeper. It appears that GE's new rating is still well above AA-, a level below which GE faces large cash calls.

SNL annoys Hawaii

Apparently, this was a problem for those promoting tourism in Hawaii. Let's see how long the video stays up.

Publicity, PR & Story

Most PR firms do publicity, not PR.

Publicity is the act of getting ink. Publicity is getting unpaid media to pay attention, write you up, point to you, run a picture, make a commotion. Sometimes publicity is helpful, and good publicity is always good for your ego. But it's not PR.

PR is the strategic crafting of your story. It's the focused examination of your interactions and tactics and products and pricing that, when combined, determine what and how people talk about you.

Regis McKenna was great at PR. Yes, he got Steve Jobs and the Mac on the cover of more than 30 magazines in the year it launched. That was just publicity. The real insight was crafting the story of the Mac (and yes, the story of Steve Jobs).

If you send out a boring press release, your publicity effort will probably fail, but your PR already has.

A publicity firm will tell you stories of how they got a client ink. A PR firm will talk about storytelling and being remarkable and spreading the word. They might even suggest you don't bother getting ink or issuing press releases.

In my experience, a few people have a publicity problem, but almost everyone has a PR problem. You need to solve that one first. And you probably won't accomplish that if you hire a publicity firm and don't even give them the freedom and access they need to work with you on your story.

The difference between PR and publicity

Rainy Days and Confidence

Actually, most people could use a bit of a confidence boost these days. It's seems pretty easy to dismiss most moves as a bad idea. Not much works on paper - especially if you crank in low economic expectations.

We used to say, "Hey there, how are you?"

We would get, "Good... you?"

Now we we say, "Hey there, how are you?"

We get, "Hang'n in there", or maybe "Okay".

"Hang'n in there" is the new "Good".

This could be the classic definition of a "Rainy Day".

I Doth Protesteth

I've been a nice man thus far. Sure I've done a little complaining, but ultimately I've demonstrated my patience and level headed thinking by staying in the market. Hey - if you run away, you lose. Odds are that in few years, patience should be rewarded. If I was on the sidelines, I would surely be motivated to buy right now. It's gotta be true.

The S&P 500 dipped below 700 today. Are you kidding me? Who would toss in the towel now? Only a silly person. I said that 300 S&P points ago.

I make my official plea, and I do it in a LOUD BARKING FASHION (as if I were an angry animal of significant size) - you get it.

"ENOUGH ALREADY. GrrrRRR!"

There... That should do it.

Thanks

Go ahead... "Go there". It's okay to play hard

GM "goes there". It started a while back and it's open season now. This sort of jab was once seen as cloe to, if not over - the line. I think it's fine, fair and a positive sign for the econmomy. Ya - I do. Go out and make youyr case. Market your stuff. Try to grab share. Be competitive. Find a way to build it better. Create a sweeter value proprosition. It's okay... go ahead. Please.

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The Mac Craps out - but wait... You gotta love Apple

The PowerBook was behaving badly. It would just freeze or toss the spinning wheel of death an not let go. I guess that's essentially another type of freeze. Nast came more and more frequently until it finally failed to boot. I managed a backup (phew) and tried to reinstall Leopard, but it wouldn't boot. It would "KP" - Kernel Panic. Not good. I've had hard drives misbehave and then die completely. I feared this would happen again.

Apple (at the store) identified a few potential problems including hard drive, logic board, airport card... It sounded expensive. I thought about punting. Maybe I needed a new one - crap.

Nope, they have a program (as long as you haven't physically hurt your device - water etc) where they describe the behavior, send it to a tech center and they'll fix anything wrong. If it needs a drive or a board - they do it all for $310 with a 3-month warranty on everything. Why not, the parts are cheap - it's the labor. Stack the labor capacity, deliver the work to the labor efficiently, charge slightly more than the average repair and voila - sweetness.

I got it back in two days. New hard drive, new airport card, a gig of new ram and a hot rock massage. All better. Nice! Sweet!

Ahhh... let us learn something.

I use Windows and Mac computers for different things. Someday soon that will end. I'm pretty sure I could make due with an all Mac deal right now but unfortunately, I'd have to run Windows on the Mac (somewhat problematic).

You gotta love the whole Apple thing. You gotta.
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Oh GE GE GE GE Geez

At $10.95/share...

"The $1.24 dividend now delivers an 11% annual rate. They committed to paying the dividend (good thing). As long as that news doesn't change, getting paid to wait for a recovery by holding GE seems to be a splendid idea."

At $8.51/share...

The dividend gets cut by two thirds.

This should factor back to the cash position and the stock should gain something as a result, but at <$9 - big deal.

Just when I thought I was clever.