Do You Know Where Your Customers Are?

It’s ten A.M.; do you know where your customers are?

Very few businesses today—if they ever could—can afford to exist as if they have no competition.

Yet many businesses seem to operate under the premise that customers seldom shop around. The successful entrepreneur takes nothing for granted.

Every too often my family and I get pizza from a local pizza place.  Without meaning to we have become regulars equipped with “the usual” order with slight adaptation. Whether ordering from home –glossy mailer menu within reach– or in the shop– with menus plastering each surface and glaring from the board–I usually know what we want so I seldom look at their menu.

When I want variety, I look not to the menu but to somewhere else.

“The kids aren’t eating tonight?” The familiar voice joked. Tonight’s order was noticeably smaller; I hadn’t realized they noticed. “We wanted Hawaiian pizza tonight,” I explained. “We got it from somewhere else.”

After glancing at the menu he made a split-second decision. “Next time you come in, I’ll make it for you; extra-large for 9.99.”

“Ok, thanks,” I agreed.

After I got home I looked at the menu. They don’t sell Hawaiian pizza.

To keep my business they are willing to give me what I’m looking for. I don’t know what it would take for me to notice what other things they sell; I just know their current strategy of weekly mailings isn’t working.

What is working are on-the-spot deals and spontaneous offerings.

Empower your team to make decisions; your team’s customer service skills could be the answer to where your customers are.

For the past sixteen—almost seventeen years—Toys R Us and I have had a relationship.  Our relationship has grown as my family has gotten larger: Toys R Us and I have seen more of one another over the years than I have seen many of my own family members.  My children and I celebrate birthdays, milestones, good days, etc…with Toys R Us and sometimes with Toys R Us.com.  When it comes to toys, I think first of Toys R Us.

Or, I did.

As I have matured and my children began celebrating more and  more milestones, I began celebrating special moments less with presents and more with things that meant more—or lasted longer. So I spent less money and ideally my children and I got back more.

Still, today there are some rewards that are best appreciated with a good old-fashioned toy; well, a new, shiny, tricked-out version of an old-fashioned toy.

Yesterday after looking for a new wrestler from Wal-Mart, my littlest and I decided to go to Toys R Us: we go to Wal-Mart for price and to Toys R Us for selection. I have made this trip many times. I drive to Toys R Us on automatic. I look for cars, pedestrians, and that’s about it. So I turned right into the crowded parking lot, barely noting—as I often do—the smaller shops in the strip. Over the years the strip has grown into more of a lifestyle plaza with a bakery/café; an exercise club; a furniture store; an electronics store; a bar; a place to get minor car repairs; a fast food restaurant; a beauty supply store; and  Toys R Us. In some ways the plaza tells a story.

The plaza has something for most people, but something seems out of place. A few of the stores have been located there for years—many of them I have never been in. It doesn’t seem to matter. Though I barely notice, the stores change from time to time. Not changing from Spring to Summer colors, not changing to celebrate one holiday and then the next. No, changing from one business to another.

Toys R Us seemed immune to change. But are any of us?

Behind the tinted windows and bright decals, Toys R Us has remained the same for almost two decades. Though what goes on the aisles changes, the layout of the store has remained the same. Sometimes the building feels too small to contain the crowds of people. Lately it has felt too large: like there were more aisles than customers.

Sliding in to a spot I look at the store: something feels different. My little one hops out of the car and we walk towards the store. We are directly in front of it before we notice: the sign is not there. The large Toys R Us sign—admittedly faded—is no longer plastered on top of the brown cedar looking rooftop. Not only that, but all traces of the giant toy store including the plastic decals, flyers, and shopping carts are gone: there is no trace.  Overnight, it seems, Toys R Us has vanished.

When we got home I looked at the website. Toys R Us.com still lists Toys R Us, Catonsville, MD as one of the closest locations to my house. It is as if the store disappeared so quickly that Toys R Us doesn’t even know it is gone. I called another local store and the representative said they had been gone for “a few weeks.”

It is a new day and my son is hopeful we will go to another Toys R Us for his prize. I’m not so sure. I can’t help feeling a bit betrayed.  A letter, email or phone call announcing the closure would have been nice. After all, Toys R Us has mailed, emailed, and called me with sales’ ads, surveys, and coupons for years.  They know where to find me.  That there are no signs announcing their new location, or their demise, is also troubling.  I don’t know where to find them.  If it is so easy to erase a giant, what is to happen to the entrepreneur?

Something went wrong.  Well, a few things went wrong. Businesses close every day—when yours does, consider how you leave your customers.  The day your door closes will you leave as if you were never there?  Will you leave an empty place or will you leave an impact?

As an entrepreneur you are in a unique position to not only make an impact every day but to be remembered by that impact.

Leave how you live: make an impact every day.

By day I am a mild-mannered (well, not mild), outspoken motivated mom, writer, professor, friend and sister.

By night I am a superhero—at least in my dreams.

In my dreams seeing in color is the least that I can do. I can fly; I can move objects with my mind; and I can move through objects.  I can also read minds, zap things, sing; I am for all intents and purposes pretty amazing. My super powers come as no surprise to me when I dream: I know what I can do.  And because I know myself so well, I know what I can’t do.

I can’t ask for help.

At points in my dreams when I most need help, I cannot physically ask for it. My words become hard rocks stuck deep within my chest. They are impassable, immovable. The struggle to get them out is always worse than the situation I need help for. Everything in my dreams seems to stop as I struggle with this new nemesis: me.

In life it was often challenging for me to ask for help. That didn’t mean I did not need or want it; just that I could not always ask for it. I often rushed from project to project; task to task; location to location and while I would benefit from a hand, for some reason it was harder to ask for one than to rush about making things happen—on my own.

I felt no particular satisfaction from doing everything on my own. I did not sit up at night congratulating myself on a job well done—alone; or pat my back because of the way I singlehandedly solved this or that: I was too tired for accolades of that sort anyway. I also would not have seen the value in it. If I am a member of a team, I recognize successes as those of the team.

I often wondered why those around me didn’t offer help; why it seemed logical to them that I would run from task to task and not need help. I have learned that the fault was mine: If I made something appear effortless, it looked effortless. If I seemed happy doing everything, others thought I was happy to do everything and were likely even happy for me to do everything. If I did not ask for help, people thought I did not need or want help.

While not intentional, I was becoming a super hero. It would only be a matter of time before—like all good heroes—I met my match.

Luckily, I was sleeping when I met mine. She was bold, sassy, beautiful, but unlike me—quite capable of asking for help.

If you need help—ask for it. There are no awards for doing everything by yourself.  Quite honestly, success feels much better when you can spread the rewards around evenly. When you can say “good job” to all of the members of your team—and mean it—you are all heroes.