Re-Inventing Your P/S Business to Win in a Time of Catastrophic Change

Welcome! This series of blog posts focuses on guiding you with concepts, practical strategies and tactics to create what we refer to as a “high fidelity business:” a business refocused on a new market position, offering predominately differentiated products and services in remarkable ways. In this industry, we're specifically addressing how to deliver a new, more relevant value proposition: creating remarkable backyard experiences.

Make this shift and you will begin seeing the immediate benefits of a stronger, more defensible competitive position. It will aid in securing existing customers, winning back lost or wavering ones and opening up the possibility of winning a larger share of the “right” kind of customers that drive revenues and profits.

I see ominous signs across our industry. Almost every business owner expresses frustration, disappointment and anger at the changes impacting their businesses and livelihood. Many are tired of the battles they face, day in and day out, of “big box” stores and Internet vendors poaching their long-standing customers, of manufacturers playing all sides of the market and the resulting declining sales, margins and profitability. Most business owners express worry about the prospects of their businesses and about how to face these challenges successfully.

The core challenge our industry faces is that we live in a period of change: new, compelling and wildly more convenient ways for shoppers to compare products, unparalleled smartphone access to information, apps to aid shopping, multitudes of new retail channels models vying for market share. Even more important is how customers are increasingly "showrooming," or comparing and switching brands and retailers (both online and off) more than ever before. Today's customers don’t view this cherry picking as disloyalty, but rather as being a “smart shopper."

All these things are not going to stop. In fact, the pace of this pillaging will only increase. These new retail channels most assuredly love the fact that you make your businesses and customers so easy to plunder. Until, that is, we collectively decide to stop and reverse the insanity. We can do this!

I believe these problems cannot be overcome with the same level of thinking that created them. Einstein put it succinctly: “To continue to do what you have always done and expect a better result is the true definition of insanity.” This is, however, precisely what most of the dealer community has been using as its strategy for the past decade in the face of dramatic challenges from the big box, Internet and the new “showrooming” consumer. The typical dealership’s strategy is weakening workplaces, destroying hard-won net worth and exposing us all to more of the same.

So let’s consider a better way forward. That brings me to what I call the “David Strategy” — the epic, but poorly-understood battle, and the ways that learning can transform business by changing the rules of the game to the advantage of backyard leisure professionals. We all know the story of David and Goliath: the massive bully warrior and the man-child shepherd with a stone and a sling. A truly divine, miraculous ending, where the good guys win.

However, that's not what really happened. When you learn what the real David Strategy was — and, more to the point, how to apply it to your business — it will transform your success. Your team gets to go home with the prize.

David’s victory over Goliath, and the resulting triumph of the Israelites over the Philistines, was a great biblical bedtime story, but it was not about a miracle: It was about an underdog using an unconventional strategy to make his opponents weaknesses his strengths, refusing any longer to play a game stacked in his adversary’s favour, to ultimately overcome a much more formidable foe. So let’s begin there.

A fairly common phrase in the business community is, “you cannot out-Wal-Mart Wal-Mart.” When you consider their scale versus the typical pool and hot tub dealer, this seems like sage advice. More specifically, it is precisely what David would counsel you to do, if you were able to have him over for ribs on the BBQ.

Goliath was, by all accounts, the greatest warrior of his time. He was seemingly unbeatable: 6 foot 11inches tall, battle hardened, encased in the best bronze armour of the time and backed by the formidable resources of the Philistine army. David, barely out of young adulthood, was a shepherd, but that did not mean he did not have strengths or smarts. He knew he could not win against Goliath if he played by his rules, so he chose to make his own, to employ a strategy that turned Goliath’s strengths into weaknesses. Goliath was slow moving, weighed down by massive armour, and he never imagined that David would not play his game. David had no armour, but he was able to move fast: He  spent his life protecting his flock from wolves and lions with only a slingshot, and he knew how accurate and deadly it could be. (Did you know a slingshot stone has the stopping power of a .45 caliber bullet?)

So let’s apply David’s strategy to the challenges the pool and hot tub dealer faces today. We will begin our journey by aiding you in understanding a clear, powerful and relevant strategy for pool and spa professionals to pursue in this new age in my next blog post, titled “Choose Your Corner (Battlefield). The blog will begin by exploring the diagram below, providing you with insights on how you can shift your business to what retail expert Doug Stephens refers to as a "High Fidelity #2 Business Strategy" in his excellent book, "Retail Revival."

Chooseyourcorner

Dennis Gray is the founder, along with one of the most experienced teams of innovative industry professionals, of Backyard Brands Inc., and former President of Biolab Inc.’s International Group of companies. Backyard Brands is focused on one mission: to develop differentiated and remarkable backyard water wellness products sold exclusively through backyard leisure professionals who have a passion for reinventing their businesses to compete more successfully in this new age. If you wish to explore two examples, please visit mineraluxe and Pristiva. Check out our “High Fidelity” approach with our dealers on backyard social responsibility here.

The David Strategy blog series will run every other Thursday on the AQUA site.

 

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