This Is No Time to Bury Your Head in Your Business; Explore the Channels of Change. Thoughts from Fellow Jeffrey Valles.

As we begin to poke our heads out of our shelters, this is not a time to be a hedgehog. Nobody knows what will emerge in the short term, nor the long term really. We must not get caught up in the way things were and immediately return to the old day-to-day processes. To build an agile, successful strategy, we need to look beyond our business, beyond our industry, and discover what is working for other businesses that cater to any segment of the luxury market.

I am looking for three distinct channels of change.

Number one is how we will interact with our customers inside and outside the showroom. How will they gather at restaurants, events, and, most importantly, how will they shop? People will act the way they feel. They will take the path that makes them the most comfortable coupled with what individual governments legislate. My guess is that actions will be all over the board. Some seniors will feel they have survived the war; what can a virus do to me? Other Boomers will default to absolute safety. And I expect similar attitudes to manifest themselves in varying degrees in the younger generations. You and your team will have to watch, listen and carefully note each customer's preferences and react accordingly. It will be quite a dance.

The second path will be discovering the technologies now ready for prime time after being on the verge of going mainstream before the pandemic hit. Before Covid-19 shook things up they were either not applicable to your business, such as virtual conferencing platforms like Zoom, or they were still in development. Many of those still in development have improved into a viable tool for your business over the last three months. This might be using artificial intelligence to help in your payables department, changing to an AI phone receptionist, adding a robot or two to your warehouse or adding a virtual showroom tour to your website.

The real game changers will materialize from those companies that took their quarantine time to create a new way. It could be a new platform, a new process, or a killer new product. These can range from a time-saving tool to market game changers. These will be the most difficult to discover and, by far, have the opportunity to be the most impactful.

How do we find these game changers? Certainly not by sitting in your office and hoping a salesperson simply wanders in. You need to constantly question the internet, set up a regular time to call your DPHA colleagues. Visit, meet and converse with your non-product competitive local luxury showrooms. If you are a manufacturer, independent sales representative or a luxury showroom, learn what the other folks catering to the wealthy customers are doing.

Our initial instinct is to survive and that will lead us to dig into our business as fast and as deep as possible. We truly believe we learned it all in surviving and thriving after the Great Recession. “My customers are still the same.” “They still need what we deliver.” “They love what we do.” Are you sure? Should Henry Ford have bred a faster filly, the Wright brothers crafted a better bicycle or President Kennedy reached for an orbit instead of a moon landing?

We need to reach out to businesses in our immediate markets that cater to our target clientele. In the short term, you will witness a wide range of behaviors. All of which will both help prepare you for your customers’ new quirks and will likely introduce you to new business improving tools and practices.

If we work to set a strategy for success while not knowing what our target market needs, we will fall flat on our faces. The broader your exposure to your market, the more you will learn and the better prepared you will be to win the post-pandemic market share grab.

Your brand is a respected go-to for your targeted market segment. But things have changed, and your customers are looking to you for solutions to new issues. This is an opportunity to show how your brand brilliantly understands its clientele and is there to help them not only survive this mess but make them better.

A lot of companys manufacture products, represent products and distribute products. The superior companies are constantly searching for the next effective ideas, be it big or small. Ideas that make their brand better. Those ideas are out there, they simply need to be discovered.

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