AC Lockyer
New member
Hey Y'all,
Many of you don’t know this but aside from me having a horticulture degree I also went to school to become a preacher. I have a heart for serving and leading people and have seen everything I do through that light. Because of that background in PREACHING I am always looking for and observing things around me for creating those great pulpit analogies.
One concept that I often struggle with teaching my clients is that many of us are not our own target customer. We as business owners sell services that we ourselves wouldn’t or couldn’t purchase ourselves.
Another concept and or principal is the rule of commodities. Once great products in the market place were at one time stand alone products and as time went on competitors enter the picture and that great product gets replicated and mass distributed and the price gets drove down. That is called the evolution of a product to a commodity. Once a product is a commodity it has knock off products, similar products flying under new brands, direct competitors, cheaper versions and products brought to market in mass volume.
Consumers will then start to purchase that product based on looking at it as a commodity. Then it is all about price. Products like gas, corn, rice, pens, etc start to be driven less by brand and more by cost.
An example of this is Coke a Cola. Once the only cola soft drink others entered the market place creating competition. Pepsi, Royal Crown and others started to tap Coke's market share. Then the next wave of discount colas started hitting the market and even eventually generic or store brand colas started chipping away at Coke's market share. Cola soft drinks had become a commodity.
Still with all of this market place competition some still bought Coke. Coke is still one of the 100 biggest brands and wealthiest companies in the world. You can NEVER buy a 2 liter of Coke for .68 cents like you can Sam's Cola. But still consumers worldwide buy Coke over and over.
That is because they buy based on preference! They prefer COKE.
Now let's focus in on the season at hand. How many Christmas Tree stands are in your town? As many as last year? As many as 10 years ago?
Discount stores have gotten into the Tree Biz. Home Depot, Lowes, Publix, Wal-Mart and many more have perfectly good Christmas Trees of all types, heights and sizes for you to pick. Just grab the height and type you want, pull of the tag and go into the store and pay for it. After all once it is home and away from comparison standing next to all of the other trees, decorated and lit up it is a fine tree none the less.
Now take the orgs selling trees, the church's, the Boy Scouts, the VFW. Many will buy their tree there for more because they feel their money is going to a good cause. They settle often for inferior service and quality because they feel they are doing good in the community by their purchase.
Now my Wife. She is a TEXAS gal and she won’t have any artificial tree in our house if she has any say. (Of which she has all the say) We must go out the day after Thanksgiving to our favorite tree lot with the Frosty the Snow Man sign that has been in the same place year after year. She will give 20 minutes of thought as to what variety of tree we are going to buy this year. She will march up and down the aisles looking at and begging opinions that really matter none too he from me, my son and our daughter. She will talk some young man into parading up and down those isles as her personal tree boy, pulling out trees and fussing over them like a girl’s hair before prom. Once she has one that may be the right height, right type, right girth and has NO BALD SPOTS she will have her personal tree boy pull it out of the tent into "BETTER" light so she can walk around it to see if it is the "right" tree. Sometimes after doing this dance three or four times she will finally after 45 minutes to one hour settle on a tree. Then it must be wrapped in a stocking, tied to the car and in our best National Lampoons moment approved by all who she can get to look at the behemoth strapped to our car.
Now you might say my wife is a PITA customer and the tree lots cringe when she walks on the lot but to the contrary. My wife will spend $125.00 year after year on a live Christmas Tree that we could have picked up from the grocery store for $25.00. She doesn’t buy her Christmas Trees by the commodity principal she buys by preference. She knows what she likes and she has no issue paying for the same tree at a better service experience. She will tell you in her cute TEXAS accent that she PREFERS to buy her Christmas Tree this way.
Now look at your company. Who are you selling to? The people who buy trees from Wal-Mart of the people who pay 4 to 5 times as much for the same tree at a full service stand? If you truly grasp this one concept you will work half as much in 2012 for three times the money!
Are you going to be a preference or a commodity?
Christmas Blessings,
AC
Many of you don’t know this but aside from me having a horticulture degree I also went to school to become a preacher. I have a heart for serving and leading people and have seen everything I do through that light. Because of that background in PREACHING I am always looking for and observing things around me for creating those great pulpit analogies.
One concept that I often struggle with teaching my clients is that many of us are not our own target customer. We as business owners sell services that we ourselves wouldn’t or couldn’t purchase ourselves.
Another concept and or principal is the rule of commodities. Once great products in the market place were at one time stand alone products and as time went on competitors enter the picture and that great product gets replicated and mass distributed and the price gets drove down. That is called the evolution of a product to a commodity. Once a product is a commodity it has knock off products, similar products flying under new brands, direct competitors, cheaper versions and products brought to market in mass volume.
Consumers will then start to purchase that product based on looking at it as a commodity. Then it is all about price. Products like gas, corn, rice, pens, etc start to be driven less by brand and more by cost.
An example of this is Coke a Cola. Once the only cola soft drink others entered the market place creating competition. Pepsi, Royal Crown and others started to tap Coke's market share. Then the next wave of discount colas started hitting the market and even eventually generic or store brand colas started chipping away at Coke's market share. Cola soft drinks had become a commodity.
Still with all of this market place competition some still bought Coke. Coke is still one of the 100 biggest brands and wealthiest companies in the world. You can NEVER buy a 2 liter of Coke for .68 cents like you can Sam's Cola. But still consumers worldwide buy Coke over and over.
That is because they buy based on preference! They prefer COKE.
Now let's focus in on the season at hand. How many Christmas Tree stands are in your town? As many as last year? As many as 10 years ago?
Discount stores have gotten into the Tree Biz. Home Depot, Lowes, Publix, Wal-Mart and many more have perfectly good Christmas Trees of all types, heights and sizes for you to pick. Just grab the height and type you want, pull of the tag and go into the store and pay for it. After all once it is home and away from comparison standing next to all of the other trees, decorated and lit up it is a fine tree none the less.
Now take the orgs selling trees, the church's, the Boy Scouts, the VFW. Many will buy their tree there for more because they feel their money is going to a good cause. They settle often for inferior service and quality because they feel they are doing good in the community by their purchase.
Now my Wife. She is a TEXAS gal and she won’t have any artificial tree in our house if she has any say. (Of which she has all the say) We must go out the day after Thanksgiving to our favorite tree lot with the Frosty the Snow Man sign that has been in the same place year after year. She will give 20 minutes of thought as to what variety of tree we are going to buy this year. She will march up and down the aisles looking at and begging opinions that really matter none too he from me, my son and our daughter. She will talk some young man into parading up and down those isles as her personal tree boy, pulling out trees and fussing over them like a girl’s hair before prom. Once she has one that may be the right height, right type, right girth and has NO BALD SPOTS she will have her personal tree boy pull it out of the tent into "BETTER" light so she can walk around it to see if it is the "right" tree. Sometimes after doing this dance three or four times she will finally after 45 minutes to one hour settle on a tree. Then it must be wrapped in a stocking, tied to the car and in our best National Lampoons moment approved by all who she can get to look at the behemoth strapped to our car.
Now you might say my wife is a PITA customer and the tree lots cringe when she walks on the lot but to the contrary. My wife will spend $125.00 year after year on a live Christmas Tree that we could have picked up from the grocery store for $25.00. She doesn’t buy her Christmas Trees by the commodity principal she buys by preference. She knows what she likes and she has no issue paying for the same tree at a better service experience. She will tell you in her cute TEXAS accent that she PREFERS to buy her Christmas Tree this way.
Now look at your company. Who are you selling to? The people who buy trees from Wal-Mart of the people who pay 4 to 5 times as much for the same tree at a full service stand? If you truly grasp this one concept you will work half as much in 2012 for three times the money!
Are you going to be a preference or a commodity?
Christmas Blessings,
AC
