Becoming Humble by the 400 year observation

This blog discusses industry tech things but also sales, marketing, specification, hiring and dare I say "personal development". That is not to say that I'm the one to really develop anyone however on average I read about 20 books a year on a wide variety of topics. From Friedrich Nietzshe and Jordan Peterson to Robert Herjavec from Shark Tank.

From all the reading, I sometimes develop my own ideas or analogies which I think may help others. Some may be common sense but just put in a way to firm up the context to make the info more useful.

For this blog I'd like to discuss how to become humble by the 400 year observation of yourself. I'll explain below but before I start let me me mention why its important to be humble. Put simply, if you are humble and know your own weaknesses, only then will you be able to grow and take in new information. So to truly be wise, a person must not only obtain knowledge and life experience but they must understand their limitations.

 

 Imagine, if you will, you were able to travel back in time 400 years and found yourself living in those times. Imagine the old things you'd think or superstitions you'd hold. We are a product of our environment and influenced from a baby by our parents, friends, tv, school, and society as a whole. This means that you most likely would not have the same mind had you been borne 400 years ago. What would you tell the 400 year old you? Would you laugh at yourself or somehow view yourself as inferior with delusions and superstitions? Certainly the 400 old self that was subject to living in those times would not only be different but wouldn't they also be closed minded on some topics or possibly think you were odd or too advanced in ways that may not assimilate to that time period? But on many topics, the 400 year old you would be wrong. The old you's inability to see the future or the advancements would mean that its simply beyond their knowledge.

Now imagine you could go forward in time 400 years. What would you experience with the 400 future you? Would you be 200 years old? Would you have a mix of AI such as a robotic arm or memory interface? Who knows. But... Would the future you tell you things to blow your mind and also point out ways that you were wrong? Could it be some ideas that you posses now are simply wrong? You cannot see it because in the context of your position, the shared view of how you interpret your religion may simply be different. If you argue that these are static and do not change I'd refer you to look at the 400 year old you and argue differently.

What is it that I'm trying to say??
Its simple, I have ideas on things but maybe I'm wrong and maybe you are right. I don't mean on things such as what day it is and I need not give a specific instance. But if... you open your mind to others and listen and try to learn from everyone you meet and give respect to others even if you disagree you'll find harmony and happiness in doing so. It doesn't mean to blindly follow others or even to be a flake. It just means that keeping an open mind while holding your own opinions is not only nice... its wise.

The next point to the above is the idea of context. As humans we think in boxes. What that means is that when someone is talking we filter out everything they are saying with the context of our own understanding and put relevance to that topic into a particular box. When two people are debating a topic it is very frequent that from the context that they are both talking they are both correct. We are conditioned as humans to not be able to understand two truths that conflict. So our brains simply shut off all the data that the other person is delivering because it doesn't fit into our box or into our context. If one person is arguing a point as it pertains to say "the local level" and its benefit and another person is arguing a point that pertains to "a societal level" and the argument is based upon whose point is correct they could argue at length. Have you ever watched two people go back and forth over a topic and never agree?

The real key is to not speak with the sole intention of telling someone anything but to use your words to first understand. Asking questions such as "so what you're saying is" and repeating their words to give them a chance to correct you. If you do enough digging you'll be sure to understand them fully. Once you fully understand and agree with what they are saying then you can start to explain how you think and why. If the person is resistant you can ask them "Explain what it is that you think I am saying". If the person cannot repeat back to you what you are saying then you may be able to get them on the same page by explaining "Although I understand you do not agree with me, I only want you to know what I was saying". If the person refuses to leave their box and discuss in a civil and respectful way then just remember the old verse: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

I hope that you have found this post useful and if so please leave me a comment below. Humbly yours.... Mark 

Feeling humble yet? Below are a list of biases that humans possess. Mind blowing...

Name	Description
Ambiguity effect	The tendency to avoid options for which missing information makes the probability seem "unknown".
Anchoring or focalism	The tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor", on one trait or piece of information when making decisions (usually the first piece of information acquired on that subject)
Anthropocentric thinking	The tendency to use human analogies as a basis for reasoning about other, less familiar, biological phenomena.
Anthropomorphism or personification	The tendency to characterize animals, objects, and abstract concepts as possessing human-like traits, emotions, and intentions.
Attentional bias	The tendency of our perception to be affected by our recurring thoughts.
Automation bias	The tendency to depend excessively on automated systems which can lead to erroneous automated information overriding correct decisions.
Availability heuristic	The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater "availability" in memory, which can be influenced by how recent the memories are or how unusual or emotionally charged they may be.
Availability cascade	A self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or "repeat something long enough and it will become true").
Backfire effect	The reaction to disconfirming evidence by strengthening one's previous beliefs.cf. Continued influence effect.
Bandwagon effect	The tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd behavior.
Base rate fallacy or Base rate neglect	The tendency to ignore base rate information (generic, general information) and focus on specific information (information only pertaining to a certain case).
Belief bias	An effect where someone's evaluation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion.
Ben Franklin effect	A person who has performed a favor for someone is more likely to do another favor for that person than they would be if they had received a favor from that person.
Berkson's paradox	The tendency to misinterpret statistical experiments involving conditional probabilities.
Bias blind spot	The tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people, or to be able to identify more cognitive biases in others than in oneself.
Cheerleader effect	The tendency for people to appear more attractive in a group than in isolation.
Choice-supportive bias	The tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were.
Clustering illusion	The tendency to overestimate the importance of small runs, streaks, or clusters in large samples of random data (that is, seeing phantom patterns).
Confirmation bias	The tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.
Congruence bias	The tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, instead of testing possible alternative hypotheses.
Conjunction fallacy	The tendency to assume that specific conditions are more probable than general ones.
Conservatism (belief revision)	The tendency to revise one's belief insufficiently when presented with new evidence.
Continued influence effect	The tendency to believe previously learned misinformation even after it has been corrected. Misinformation can still influence inferences one generates after a correction has occurred. cf. Backfire effect
Contrast effect	The enhancement or reduction of a certain stimulus' perception when compared with a recently observed, contrasting object.
Courtesy bias	The tendency to give an opinion that is more socially correct than one's true opinion, so as to avoid offending anyone.
Curse of knowledge	When better-informed people find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed people.
Declinism	The belief that a society or institution is tending towards decline. Particularly, it is the predisposition to view the past favourably (rosy retrospection) and future negatively.
Decoy effect	Preferences for either option A or B change in favor of option B when option C is presented, which is similar to option B but in no way better.
Denomination effect	The tendency to spend more money when it is denominated in small amounts (e.g., coins) rather than large amounts (e.g., bills).
Disposition effect	The tendency to sell an asset that has accumulated in value and resist selling an asset that has declined in value.
Distinction bias	The tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.
Dunning–Kruger effect	The tendency for unskilled individuals to overestimate their own ability and the tendency for experts to underestimate their own ability.
Duration neglect	The neglect of the duration of an episode in determining its value
Empathy gap	The tendency to underestimate the influence or strength of feelings, in either oneself or others.
Endowment effect	The tendency for people to demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it.
Exaggerated expectation	Based on the estimates, real-world evidence turns out to be less extreme than our expectations (conditionally inverse of the conservatism bias).
Experimenter's or expectation bias	The tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations.
Focusing effect	The tendency to place too much importance on one aspect of an event.
Forer effect or Barnum effect	The observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. This effect can provide a partial explanation for the widespread acceptance of some beliefs and practices, such as astrology, fortune telling, graphology, and some types of personality tests.
Framing effect	Drawing different conclusions from the same information, depending on how that information is presented
Frequency illusion	The illusion in which a word, a name, or other thing that has recently come to one's attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards (not to be confused with the recency illusion or selection bias). This illusion may explain some examples of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, when someone repeatedly notices a newly learned word or phrase shortly after learning it.
Functional fixedness	Limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used.
Gambler's fallacy	The tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged. The fallacy arises from an erroneous conceptualization of the law of large numbers. For example, "I've flipped heads with this coin five times consecutively, so the chance of tails coming out on the sixth flip is much greater than heads."
Hard–easy effect	Based on a specific level of task difficulty, the confidence in judgments is too conservative and not extreme enough
Hindsight bias	Sometimes called the "I-knew-it-all-along" effect, the tendency to see past events as being predictable[48] at the time those events happened.
Hostile attribution bias	The "hostile attribution bias" is the tendency to interpret others' behaviors as having hostile intent, even when the behavior is ambiguous or benign.
Hot-hand fallacy	The "hot-hand fallacy" (also known as the "hot hand phenomenon" or "hot hand") is the fallacious belief that a person who has experienced success with a random event has a greater chance of further success in additional attempts.
Hyperbolic discounting	Discounting is the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs. Hyperbolic discounting leads to choices that are inconsistent over time – people make choices today that their future selves would prefer not to have made, despite using the same reasoning.Also known as current moment bias, present-bias, and related to Dynamic inconsistency.
Identifiable victim effect	The tendency to respond more strongly to a single identified person at risk than to a large group of people at risk.
Illusion of control	The tendency to overestimate one's degree of influence over other external events.
Illusion of validity	Belief that our judgments are accurate, especially when available information is consistent or inter-correlated.
Illusory correlation	Inaccurately perceiving a relationship between two unrelated events.
Illusory truth effect	A tendency to believe that a statement is true if it is easier to process, or if it has been stated multiple times, regardless of its actual veracity. These are specific cases of truthiness.
Impact bias	The tendency to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.
Information bias	The tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.
Insensitivity to sample size	The tendency to under-expect variation in small samples.
Irrational escalation	The phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the decision was probably wrong. Also known as the sunk cost fallacy.
Law of the instrument	An over-reliance on a familiar tool or methods, ignoring or under-valuing alternative approaches. "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
Less-is-better effect	The tendency to prefer a smaller set to a larger set judged separately, but not jointly.
Look-elsewhere effect	An apparently statistically significant observation may have actually arisen by chance because of the size of the parameter space to be searched.
Loss aversion	The disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it. (see also Sunk cost effects and endowment effect).
Mere exposure effect	The tendency to express undue liking for things merely because of familiarity with them.
Money illusion	The tendency to concentrate on the nominal value (face value) of money rather than its value in terms of purchasing power.
Moral credential effect	The tendency of a track record of non-prejudice to increase subsequent prejudice.
Negativity bias or Negativity effect	Psychological phenomenon by which humans have a greater recall of unpleasant memories compared with positive memories. (see also actor-observer bias, group attribution error, positivity effect, and negativity effect).
Neglect of probability	The tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.
Normalcy bias	The refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster which has never happened before.
Observer-expectancy effect	When a researcher expects a given result and therefore unconsciously manipulates an experiment or misinterprets data in order to find it (see also subject-expectancy effect).
Omission bias	The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions).
Optimism bias	The tendency to be over-optimistic, overestimating favorable and pleasing outcomes (see also wishful thinking, valence effect, positive outcome bias).
Ostrich effect	Ignoring an obvious (negative) situation.
Outcome bias	The tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.
Overconfidence effect	Excessive confidence in one's own answers to questions. For example, for certain types of questions, answers that people rate as "99% certain" turn out to be wrong 40% of the time.
Pareidolia	A vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) is perceived as significant, e.g., seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing non-existent hidden messages on records played in reverse.
Pessimism bias	The tendency for some people, especially those suffering from depression, to overestimate the likelihood of negative things happening to them.
Planning fallacy	The tendency to underestimate task-completion times.
Post-purchase rationalization	The tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was good value.
Pro-innovation bias	The tendency to have an excessive optimism towards an invention or innovation's usefulness throughout society, while often failing to identify its limitations and weaknesses.
Projection bias	The tendency to overestimate how much our future selves share one's current preferences, thoughts and values, thus leading to sub-optimal choices.
Pseudocertainty effect	The tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.
Reactance	The urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do out of a need to resist a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice (see also Reverse psychology).
Reactive devaluation	Devaluing proposals only because they purportedly originated with an adversary.
Recency illusion	The illusion that a word or language usage is a recent innovation when it is in fact long-established (see also frequency illusion).
Regressive bias	A certain state of mind wherein high values and high likelihoods are overestimated while low values and low likelihoods are underestimated.
Restraint bias	The tendency to overestimate one's ability to show restraint in the face of temptation.
Rhyme as reason effect	Rhyming statements are perceived as more truthful. A famous example being used in the O.J Simpson trial with the defense's use of the phrase "If the gloves don't fit, then you must acquit."
Risk compensation / Peltzman effect	The tendency to take greater risks when perceived safety increases.
Selective perception	The tendency for expectations to affect perception.
Semmelweis reflex	The tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts a paradigm.
Sexual overperception bias / sexual underperception bias	The tendency to over-/underestimate sexual interest of another person in oneself.
Social comparison bias	The tendency, when making decisions, to favour potential candidates who don't compete with one's own particular strengths.
Social desirability bias	The tendency to over-report socially desirable characteristics or behaviours in oneself and under-report socially undesirable characteristics or behaviours.
Status quo bias	The tendency to like things to stay relatively the same (see also loss aversion, endowment effect, and system justification).
Stereotyping	Expecting a member of a group to have certain characteristics without having actual information about that individual.
Subadditivity effect	The tendency to judge probability of the whole to be less than the probabilities of the parts.
Subjective validation	Perception that something is true if a subject's belief demands it to be true. Also assigns perceived connections between coincidences.
Surrogation	Losing sight of the strategic construct that a measure is intended to represent, and subsequently acting as though the measure is the construct of interest.
Survivorship bias	Concentrating on the people or things that "survived" some process and inadvertently overlooking those that didn't because of their lack of visibility.
Time-saving bias	Underestimations of the time that could be saved (or lost) when increasing (or decreasing) from a relatively low speed and overestimations of the time that could be saved (or lost) when increasing (or decreasing) from a relatively high speed.
Third-person effect	Belief that mass communicated media messages have a greater effect on others than on themselves.
Triviality / Parkinson's Law of	The tendency to give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. Also known as bikeshedding, this bias explains why an organization may avoid specialized or complex subjects, such as the design of a nuclear reactor, and instead focus on something easy to grasp or rewarding to the average participant, such as the design of an adjacent bike shed.
Unit bias	The tendency to want to finish a given unit of a task or an item. Strong effects on the consumption of food in particular.
Weber–Fechner law	Difficulty in comparing small differences in large quantities.
Well travelled road effect	Underestimation of the duration taken to traverse oft-traveled routes and overestimation of the duration taken to traverse less familiar routes.
"Women are wonderful" effect	A tendency to associate more positive attributes with women than with men.
Zero-risk bias	Preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.
Zero-sum bias	A bias whereby a situation is incorrectly perceived to be like a zero-sum game (i.e., one person gains at the expense of another).

 

What a business can learn from an Eagle

In a previous article: "What a business can learn from an Octopus", I spoke about the intelligence of the Octopus and drew comparisons between the Octopus and niche manufacturers in North America.  I gave specific intelligent tactics that the Octopus use for survival and then compared that to tacts that a manufacturer could use in positioning their product or services.

Living here in Florida, its not uncommon to see a Sandhill Crane or a long legged Heron walk around as they hunt for worms or geckos. If you live near large trees or the water it is also normal to hear the squawk of a Hawk. But seeing a Bald Eagle is always a bit more rare. I think most people stop with awe when they see this beautiful bird glide through the air. Aside from being our National Bird, its simply a remarkable animal. But what tactics do the Bald Eagle use for their survival and how can we draw comparisons that can be learned in business?

(and before we begin, save any joke about Mark, the author, being bald and writing about the bald eagle until after you have read the article in its entirety, you get why at the end)

BE AN EAGLE 

RARE:

So we know that Eagles are rare and that its a federal crime to kill a Bald or Golden Eagle. Felony convictions face a maximum of $250,000 and misdemeanor convictions can face up to a $5,000 fine. In business, being unique and serving a specific niche is key to most small businesses's survival. If you are a custom manufacturer of components (for example) is it your lead time, your profiles or what specifically make you rare in your segment? Its important to be as rare as possibly but remember that if you are too rare that extinction could be a prediction. A little competition actually creates more overall awareness for a given product segment. And its the hard times that build the Eagle's character.  Its important to serve an industry where you know you're the Eagle rather than the pigeon or even worse a buzzard. A pigeon pecks at the ground for scraps, a buzzard feeds on the dead. Be an Eagle.

FEARLESS:

Eagles have amazing hunting strategy and can be cunning. Have you ever witnessed a video of an Eagle throwing a goat off a cliff as a killing tactic?  If your business is to survive and flourish you must have the courage to be different, to focus on creating value for your clients in every way you can. If you are a sales person you have to accept rejection and understand that  you will often get a "no" or face rejection. But what we all do is not life or death, so fear of rejection is silly albeit natural. When Eagles mate they lock talons and copulate while falling to the ground. Its called the spiral of death however, its shows that they love how they live, without fear. Even how Eagles learn to fly is done with a specific flare.  Momma Eagles gather an Eaglet on their back and soar high. When they glide to ground they do so gradually and gently so that the Eaglet gets the feeling for their wings as they drop to the ground.  Eaglets can be a metaphor for new hires, new ideas or new products. Its important to soar high but be there to catch your eaglets to make sure they don't fall to the ground and die. But flying is a must for growth and ultimate survival so if an Eaglet refuses to fly, the Eagle rips apart the nest and nudges them off the cliff.  The Eagle knows when the time is right and so should you. You must know when to launch your Eaglets when YOU feel the time is right no matter how much they cling to the nest. Remember, you've already let your Eaglets get a "feel" for their wings, you've already fed them, nurtured them and when its time for the world, rip apart the nest and nudge them off the cliff if they refuse to fly. And since Eaglets are born and bred to fly. Feel the pride when they soar.

AMAZING VISION

Eagles pick the highest spot in a terrain and the keep a sharp eye out for their prey. They can spot prey the size of a rabbit from 2 miles away !  But as a human, its not eye site ,  mental vision is our key. To have mental vision, we must see far into the future of to predict the needs of our clients. We must develop the vision to see what colors will become the new market standards and see the way to developing the business for the market rather than scavenging for the business created by others. Although its impossible to always be the originator of every idea, if you make your business solely on the copying of others by duplicating other's designs , profiles or work you are modeling your business on a different animal (such as the pigeon or the vulture) rather than the Eagle. Its not impossible to create a business solely by copying others however eventually if your competitors find a way to protect their work you may find yourself unable to adapt to becoming an original when you've spent so much time bottom feeding. In other words, you could become extinct.Remember that pigeons peck and fuss about and vultures bottom feed. Eagles soar to new heights and find new prey. Eagles are game changers and pay no mind to pigeons. If your business is always nipping at the competition by price, you may want to ask yourself  why you do not believe your product or service is worth the market price and try to find how you can improve upon your quality, service or value proposition.

HIGH FLYERS

When a storm comes, Eagles use the air current by flying directly towards the storm and the wind lifts them like a rocket as they fly up above the clouds.  In business, downturns can happen, markets change, new competition arises. Instead of giving up, laying low or seeking shelter, why not face the challenge like the Eagle. Instead of hunkering down, fly up to get a 10,000 foot view and look for new opportunities that only an Eagle could see by climbing to that height. The office industry is an example of this. Many office furniture producers became Healthcare furniture producers as the office industry became more competitive in past years. When the storm settled and other Office furniture manufacturers came out from their shelters they noticed that the companies that were thriving the most were the ones that diversified in an intelligent way. These diversified companies are now strong in Office and Health Care.

ENDURE

At about the age of 30, Eagle's bodies begin to deteriorate due to their age.  It has been reported that some Eagles do something completely amazing when they get 30 years old, they retreat to a mountain top and over a 5 month period they rebuild. The eagle knocks its beak on the rocks, plucks out their talons and then all their feathers. When they emerge they are revitalized and can life up to another 30 plus years. Think humans can't do this? I'll never forget back in the 90s when I was visiting Indonesia. I witnessed an Indonesian woman become ill and her friend took her into a room and raked a coin down her back till it was covered in welts. When they emerged from the room, her back was completely red and you could see the raised skin. Although years prior, I lived in Malaysia for nearly a year my Malay / Indonesian was very limited but I do believe they used a word similar to "Kerokan" to describe the technique they were doing with the coin. I deduced that this simply created shock on the largest surface area organ of the body "the skin". And the back is the best place for this technique. Although I had never heard of this before, my mind is always open to learning from others and I could only reason that the damage done to the back is a way to hyper stimulate the immune system into hyper drive. Whether its a technique similar to acupuncture or whether its a placebo, the body's ability to heal itself is unquestioned.

So in reality, humans have the power of an eagle. But alas, Western society has taught us to drug up, take antibiotics and after all, aren't we supposed to live the life of a pigeon and not the Eagle? But we can be Eagles !

And since plucking the feathers out for the Eagle actually makes them stronger  and they are reborn, I decided a few years back to shave my head.  As mentioned, in the beginning of this post, to reserve your joke till the end. ... OK, so I noticed the feathers on top just weren't as thick as they once were and I began to feel less youthful just as I'm sure the Bald Eagle experiences when it turns 30.  So although I did not pull out my talons or bang my beak on rocks, I figured the least I could do would be to shave my feathers (hair) completely off and start anew. So thats how I prefer to see my bald head.  So, aren't you glad you waited before emailing me a joke on the irony of me writing about the bald eagle? Now you know, its not simply male pattern baldness..... but the evidence of someone who faces the reality of their age and takes the control to rejuvenate. (cue rolling eyes)

So won't you join me in becoming a bald eagle? Shave your head.....no?  Or at the least, fall in love with this beautiful animal and embrace its ways into your life and into your work. Be an Eagle.

How to use dead stock or overstock to negotiate pricing with furniture buyers

In the company I work for, Dackor, occasionally the company has overstock /dead-stock of some items. I am sure that other suppliers also have this problem at times. In this article I'd like to give a strategy on how furniture manufacturers or component manufacturers can use Dackor's or other suppliers overstock or discounted items to increase margin or also to protect existing products.

First I'd like to explain what overstock is and why it occurs.

1. CANCELED PROJECTS: If a supplier of laminate has a project that cancels that does not mean that it is easy to find another project to use that specific color.
2. OFF COLOR: Sometimes in production, the color can appear in range by computer but visually the color may stand out as being too off from the target. So this is another case where overstock can occur.
3. CHANGING MARKETS: Finally there are cases where colors just simply stop selling so the company could end up having too much inventory for the demand.

OK, so now is the time to talk about how as a cabinet, furniture or component manufacturer you can use overstock which is discounted to protect their margins on their normal items.

SCENARIO: Lets imagine that when bidding out a large job using a good selling color we'll call "Top seller". The GC or buyer may say to you, "I'd like to go with your company but you need a tighter price". Now in some cases you'll stick to your price and loose the bid but in many cases you may find that you lower your price for certain GCs or buyers who pay well or who you have a long standing relationship with. But.... have you ever been in a situation where you have refused to lower your price and they stuck with you?

So the question is "When should I lower my price?"

STRATEGY: One strategy to use is to counter to a requested price reduction for a project with "OK, we can lower our price but we'll need to use an Overstock Color that we can obtain for less money". The buyer may counter with "No , we want to get a lower price but keep the "Top seller" as the spec.  What are they telling you when they say this? They are basically saying that price is not the most important thing but rather , they have a need and that need is that specific color.

In all negotiations its important to know where you stand. If your company has promoted that color, had many successful jobs done with that color then there is a lot of effort that has gone into the past to build up both your company's name and also the demand for a specific color you are putting on your product.

RESULT: What you may find is that when posed with the option "OK we can accept the different color at the lower price" this means that price truly was the most important factor for that project or client. However, "If the company counters with "Never-mind we will stick with the existing "Top Seller" and pay the price you quoted" it means that their request to have you lower your price was actually a bluff. They had their mind set on that color and also in using your company.

OBSERVATION: Its important to observe your past bidding habits. If there are some GCs or accounts that you find yourself lowering your price for even when selling your "Top Seller" or other standard colors then keep in mind that you would have lowered your price anyway. So if they do choose to go with the Overstock Item that costs less you may be able to recoup some of your losses in margin. So what we have just discussed here is how to use colors to negotiate.

SECURING LAMINATE: The key to the above is to understand your company well , your client well and also have good communication with your supplier of laminate. You need to make sure that your supplier of laminate is willing to hold their overstock for you till you can secure it for the project, you need to know what will happen should you need more laminate and finally you need make sure that a key person in your company is negotiating with your GC or buyer to explain the costs of making your product but its not necessary to give exact costs as often the laminate alone may not explain the discount, however keep in mind that these are based upon discounts you would have taken anyway.

MAINTAINING MARKET: Another thing to note is that by not discounting your "Top Seller" that you do not ruin the market price for this color or simply lower your price for no reason. You may find that if budget project start using that laminate and generally use the lowest bidder and the least expensive materials that in essence their projects will be less appealing. It doesn't take long before your good customers who are willing to pay a fair price for your product will see this "Top Seller" in budget applications and slowly move to other colors and possibly other suppliers who only focus on supplying their type of company.

SUMMARY: I hope that this post helps your company to discover a new way of using colors to protect or stabilize your margins. If you are a manager, bidder, or purchaser and you have questions about this please contact me. I am dedicated to not only marketing colors but in helping companies to become more successful and profitable.

How we stand in the way of our own success in sales

Some of my most popular posts in this blog have been based upon sales and marketing.  In this article I'd like to explain how some companies impede their sales by putting too many constrictions on their success.

THEORY OF CONDITIONAL SUCCESS
In life too many people place conditional limits on their success. An example would be to say something like "Whenever I get a promotion, I'm going to start coming in to work early" or "Whenever I sell all the dead stock of this ugly maple I'll bring in a new maple". With conditional success we put limits on succeeding and tie them to things that are completely unrelated or in some cases they are even conflicting to the success. As you can see above, it may be a good idea to start coming in early in order to get the promotion now. Or in the case of the dead stock, the fact that one item is not selling has no correlation over whether or not the new maple will or will not sell.

WE ARE VEHICLES FOR THE DELIVERY OF DESIGN
Think of me or yourself as a vehicle to deliver a color or design. The market itself may or may not accept a new color or texture however the less restrictions we put on that discovery the better. Some restrictions can be things such as:

"I dont' like this color but its up to you". If you think of about it, your like or dislike of a color should never be forced on a client. Imagine if you sold cars at BMW and someone who liked blue cars came in and test drove a new 7 series and you commented "Its a nice car, too bad its blue". Taste in color is a personal opinion and its also about awareness. Because you are unaware of how to use a color in interior design yourself does not mean its impossible to make it look good. The consumer knows better what they want.

"I have too much inventory". The market itself does not care if you are carrying too much inventory of dead items. Imagine if you have too much dead stock of green or Sanibel maple and so you use this as an excuse not to bring in new items. The market itself may have demand for particular colors however the market itself has no care over how much dead inventory you or I have of non selling colors. Not bringing in new colors because of having too many old colors is a version of conditional success. Its like saying "I will start selling more new colors whenever I get rid of the old colors that are not selling" One has nothing to do with the other. I am not suggesting that you over extend yourself but its important to identify if we are in fact putting limitations on ourselves and then examine it.

THEORY OF FALSE CORRELATION
The theory of false correlation is where we draw conclusions based upon seemingly correlated facts however in truth there is no direct correlation. Imagine if you are a component producer who has been around since the 90s and most of your colors are HPL matches. I could show you a new Tafisa match and you could bring it into your stock and have no sales. You may say "This color doesnt sell" however thats a false conclusion because it could be a top 10 seller for me. A more accurate statement would be "I dont currently have many customers who use Tafisa board and most of my clients are refacers" That would be an accurate conclusion and therefore explain the poor sales results for that color. So by creating false correlations we operate business based upon false data and then make decisions based upon false data. Clarity and understanding of the market is key.

BAD POLLING RESULTS
Sometimes I have spoken to door producers and I've heard them say "Well I just put the door out on my counter display and we will see if the market likes it". Does this accurately depict their entire customer base or just the refacers who pick up the doors themselves personally? Its clearly a selected demographic of just their counter sales and not of their entire sales. Its quite possible that their cabinet customers who are decision makers may not pick up their doors personally and may have them delivered. So the sampling is skewed. Dont feel bad about poor polling though.... Whenever you watch or read the news listen to their poor poll results. They will draw conclusions about public schools based upon a poll they did in Manhattan. Not exactly a national sampling to draw any type of consensus.

POOR LIMITATION OF SUPPLIERS
Another thing I will commonly see is when a company may buy all their laminate from one company. When I ask them about this they say "Well we like so and so sales rep" or "Their freight costs less" or "We like to consolidate our suppliers". Although when we are the company exclusively supplying them it seems great but at what expense? The overall success of our customers is the most important factor and laminate should not be purchased the same way that you buy boxes. Each laminate supplier will have a list of top 10 sellers and the reality is that sticking to just one supplier can hurt your sales over all. There is definitely some merit in focusing on 2 or 3 suppliers to get purchasing power or to demand more service and to diversify however sticking to one supplier will only limit your growth except in rare circumstances.

LIMITATION OF SAMPLES
Another thing one can do to limit sales is to having too few sample chains. If you ever find that you do not have enough sample or literature and you are selected which interested buyers do or do not get samples then this can cause a severe limitation in sales. Its an example of a way we can stand in our own way to selling more.


PREMATURE DELETION OF COLORS FROM STOCK
Another example of how we can hurt ourselves is by premature deletion of colors from the stock line up. Imagine if a laminate, board or door company takes on a new color and it can take 6 months to a year to first create awareness by distribute the samples and then the market itself must be timed properly for that shade of color. Tastes change and imagine if a board company releases a color too soon, takes 6 months to get samples out, distributors dont take the color into their line and then the color is deleted before it becomes relative. Its difficult to do however the timing of colors is critical and that is to have the right color be released at the right time to create relevance. If a board company discontinues an item, under most cases this will kill the 3DL sales.


NOT ENOUGH SALES REPRESENTATION
Most component, laminate and furniture producers in this industry do not have enough sales representation. The problem with this is that it means that our sales become limited to a core group of customers or based upon existing demand. I often notice that if we have a duplicate to another film company or in many cases they have a duplicate to ours that suddenly our sales will grow. Logic would suggest that if I were the only one to have this color that I should get all the sales but its quite the contrary. The market movement of more people promoting colors creates a larger over all market. By not having enough sales representation we limit our sales to only the existing demand and no new fresh business is created or discovered.


CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the key for us all is to step out of the way of ourselves in order to let the market and the colors do the work. By eliminating conditional success, holding our opinions to ourselves, diversifying supply, distributing adequate samples and being patient and consistent we can better discover if a color has potential or not.

What a business can learn from the Octopus

When you think about life, humans or business we should all look at nature to see how animals have adapted for survival. One amazing animal is the Octopus.

The most obvious thing would be that Octopuses have 8 arms. Actually the arms are four sets of two. Aside from the arms,  the Octopus's intelligence and adaptability is what makes it truly a unique animal. Some site that the Octopus has been around for over 400 million years and it has developed quite intelligent tricks to enable its survival.

The Octopus can:

1. NICHE: Fit into small spaces just like a business can serve niche parts of a market.  Octopuses the size of your fist fit though the neck of a beer bottle and hide out from predators on the ocean floor. This flexibility enables it to get into tight areas free from harm.

Example for our Industry: Firstly with so much manufacturing that has gone to Asia simply making custom components is already considered somewhat a niche in the grand scheme of materials. A further niche could be a focus on complex parts that are thicker, sculputural panels, a focus on the closet industry or a focus on refacing. 

A. Focus complex Parts such as thicker parts. If a company was to focus on this niche it would require them to enhance their CAD abilities and also to invest into a press than would make these deeper parts. 

B. Sculptural Panels: If a company were to focus on this market they would have to invest into that specific tooling and also focus on building the rep or specification sales arms to succeed.

C. Closet Industry: If a company were to focus on this segment they would have to focus on bringing in 3D Laminates that matched the boards being most used in their market.

D. Refacing: If a company were focused this market they would need to develop match HPL backed thermofoils or possibly peel and stick backed product which companies like Dackor offer. 

The point is that it is very difficult to be all things to all people and so its easier to focus on a Niche for not only survival but also to become the best at that niche. If your company attempted to serve all the markets then you wouldnt have the right press for the thicker parts, or the right tooling for the sculptural panels or all the board matches for the Closet Industry or would never quite develop the match system for refacing. In essence you'd probably get a bit accomplished of all the goals but never be the master of one. This dispersing of time and capital makes you vulnerable to the predators of the ocean who are either more focused or have the resources to accomplish all tasks.

2. ADAPTABILITY: When facing adversity many Octopuses change color to conceal themselves in coral or in the sand. They change and adapt just like businesses must change and adapt with market conditions. In fact, Octopus have been known to change colors to mimick lionfish, sea snakes and eels. This means that the Octopus is intelligent enough to have self awareness in order to aspire to be a more dangerous predator when its life is put in danger; Amazing if you think about it. In waters near islands, Octopuses have been  known to grab two coconut shells that were bust in half and use them as shields to fend off its competitors of the sea.

Example for our Industry:

The first thing that comes to mind is the ability for a business to change with the times. Lets suppose that textures are becoming a trend and all your swatch books in the market have yesterday's colors however if you are adaptable you could quickly add the newest textures being offered to change the appearance of your swatch book offering to adapt to the image the market desire. 

3. INK: When attacked in open water the Octopus will deploy ink and then disappear to a safer hiding spot. I used to live in Japan for several years and developed a taste for Octopus at the Sushi bar but when the Octopus releases the ink in open water it makes the water taste bad and reduces the desire for larger predators to continue pursuit. 

Example for our Industry:

If you compare the example of the Octopus unleashing ink to make the water taste bad and hence think that the Octopus will taste bad imagine your company focusing on a niche industry while your competitors are spread out too thin. If you were focused on the reface market for example and all of your matches had complimentary HPL matches, you could process HPL back and even peel stick back then it would spoil the water for a would be competitor. A competitor would come in to eat your lunch only to taste the ink in the water and decide not to attack this market due the high barrier of entry you have created. I could apply this example to the Closet Industry, Sculptural Panels, or any other part of the market as well.

CONCLUSION:
I hope that as I've used the example of the Octopus that you feel inspired to continue on your current path or for some you may, in fact, rethink how you are currently going about things and hopefully this article may inspire in some way.