I like to spend my mornings getting up pretty early, reading some blog posts and having some coffee. This morning, the last one for 2009, I came across a well penned post by Tim Grace, from Apartments.com, titled, The Customer Is Not Always Right, that is worthy of sharing, for a couple of reasons.
The gist of the post was that many times, even though customers participated in surveys and responded favorably to certain products, the actual product launch results differed, sometimes greatly.
My comment to Tim's post was this
The gist of the post was that many times, even though customers participated in surveys and responded favorably to certain products, the actual product launch results differed, sometimes greatly.
My comment to Tim's post was this
You have penned a well thought out post here. I have never put much stock in surveys, albeit I have never worked on the level you have. However, I don't think folks really know what they want when asked.A different way, is to test market things, and if you get to charge more money, then it works. Push your tests a bit further to attempt to figure out the width of this segment market you have discovered.
The problem with that approach is it requires a tolerance for failure. Business leaders talk about the value of failure, however not many folks get raises or promotions from failures. In a small business that you run yourself, you get to fail as many times as you have capital to cover it.
It is the last paragraph though that most hits home, and actually a single sentence of the paragraph; In a small business that you run yourself, you get to fail as many times as you have capital to cover it.
I think the statement holds true for most any size business or apartment operator. There are tremendous pressures to Lower Operating Expenses in the wake of Declining Revenue, so the pressure is on to Not Make Mistakes, To Not Fail Faster, because there is no money to fail, or make those mistakes.
But We Need New Ideas
Just last week, from two different partners came a similar message, We need something new, Can we get to Page One Google for this City too, and of course the answer to both of those questions are yes we will and yes we can, because to sustain the lead, we must.
We, like others just need to do more with less, and be ever so careful that the Fear of Failure doesn't completely overshadow creativity
