a 12 year old kid will never buy art from us
Got a story for ya Ags!
A long time ago when I was working at Circuit City as an Operations Manager I had days off during the week because I worked all weekend. Rachel, my wife, worked a normal job and the kids were in school with after school care so I’d get an occasional day off in the middle of the week.
I am not one to sit still so for years I drove around Houston. Hit the museums. Explored the antique stores on lower Westheimer. Wandered around parks. Read books. (ahem, there was no Internet in this fable kids. ‘cause I am old like that.) But I wasn’t just going to sit in an apartment and watch TV. Eventually I ran out of things to do so I decided since I liked Art to see if I could work at an art gallery on my two days off. Or at night after getting off work at my first job. Thus in short order I found a part-time job at an art gallery in the Galleria.
I had some sales experience from working at Structure (now Express for Men) in college and briefly out of college. And I had sold a few things at Circuit City although this wasn’t my primary job in Operations. I’d also worked with some of those travelling art auctions as muscle to load and unload the trucks occasionally while in college (hint – lots of fake bidders in the audience people). And for the record I still love the work of Yaacov Agam.
In my limited time working at the Art Gallery (they went out of business about six months later.) I found that our sales came from:
- Gallery openings – you have to get the buyers into the gallery. Make them feel special.
- The house list – “warm” calling past buyers/collectors and telling them about new art on the wall. Asking if we could set up an appointment with them, etc. Depending on the collector you might even load your car up with art and drive out there to show it.
- Weekend floor traffic. With enough traffic you could move some pieces. We rotated “ups” between the sales team. Mary gets the first one. Don the next. Ed the one after that. Repeat the cycle.
What didn’t work in sales was middle of the day on a Tuesday. This was dead time. You had to be at work, but you were doing your calls, dusting off the art, hanging or unhanging, packing or unpacking new work, etc. We still rotated the “ups” in theory but if it was your up and you were busy you might just say “hey Mary can you get that one.”
So this 12 year old kid walks into our art gallery shortly after I started working there in the middle of the day on a weekday. My coworkers completely ignored him. Glances were exchanged between us, or should I say I gave a quizzical look and was greeted with eye rolls and raised eyebrows. Think of how they portray a snobby gallery employee in the movies and you will know exactly what I was looking at.
Now, as for me, if you are in my place of business you will be treated with respect. I am sure I have made mistakes and done something wrong, but my intent is definitely to treat every client with respect. And if you spend enough time in sales you know not to judge a book by it’s cover. So I asked the young man if I could help. He was a quiet kid, but knew what he wanted. He was looking at a list $500 original film cell from an animated movie.
At the time in this gallery everything was really about double priced. So a $500 piece could be sold for $250 without talking to the gallery owner. More than that and you needed special permission. The kid busts out a small cell phone (This was the early 90s. Few had cell phones and even fewer had those tiny Nokia ones.) So he gets Dad on the phone. Hands it to me. We talk briefly and I sold my first piece of art for the gallery for $250.
He left very happy and I had my first sale. And my coworkers were dumbfounded. Because a 12 year old kid will never buy art from us. But he did. Thank you kid.
CREDITS: Thank you to flickr userpterjan for the Yaacov Agam Creative Commons photo.
You’re on a treadmill. You get off first. or I die. It’s really that simple.
“The first step before anyone else in the world believes it. Is you have to believe it.”
the race really is to the swift
It’s not like Microsoft didn’t foresee the changes ahead. With a staff of almost 90,000, the company has many of the tech world’s smartest minds on its payroll, and has incubated projects in a wide range of fields that later took off. Experiments like Courier (tablets), HailStorm/Passport (digital identity), and Windows Media Center (content in the cloud) show the company was ahead of the game in many areas — but then it either failed to bring those products to market, or didn’t execute.
“In this age, the race really is to the swift. You cannot afford to be an hour late or a dollar short,” says Laura DiDio, principal analyst at ITIC.
- (source)
When to Apply Business Advice
I emailed out to the company today’s quote of the day, something we do internally, with the three quotes below. But given how popular advice from 37 Signals is among some of my employees, I wanted to add some commentary (after the jump). And BTW, I definitely agree with these three quotes from Rework.
“You need less than you think…Do you really need six months or can you make something in two?” (pg. 53)
and
“No time is no excuse. The most common excuse people give: “There’s not enough time.” They claim they’d love to start a company, learn an instrument, market an invention, write a book, or whatever, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Come on. There’s always enough time if you spend it right.” (pg. 40)
and
“When you put off decisions, they pile up. And piles end up ignored, dealt with in haste, or thrown out. As a result, the individual problems in those piles stay unresolved. Whenever you can, swap ‘Let’s think about it’ with ‘Let’s decide on it.’ Commit to making decisions. Don’t wait for the perfect solution. Decide and move forward. You want to get into the rhythm of making choices. When you get into that flow of making decision after decision, you build momentum and boost morale…You can’t build on top of ‘We’ll decide later,’ but you can build on top of ‘Done.’ The problem comes when you postpone decisions in the hope that a perfect answer will come to you later. It won’t.” (pg. 77)
All from Jason Fried and David Hansson in the book Rework
COMMENTS: 37 Signals has been successful creating jobs for people and making a profit. They build tools for themselves and then share their applications with others. There is no question Basecamp is a success. The 37 Signals formula is to build products to the exact specifications of THEIR customers, it just so happens the customer is first and foremost THEM.
Our business model is different. We make products for OTHER people. This is a subtle but important distinction. Picture a male fashion designer who makes women’s clothes. He can appreciate them. He has a creative vision. But the clothes he designs will be worn by his female clientele. The male fashion designer’s success is when women purchase his designs built for the them. The male fashion designer is challenged to make a simple and beautiful product that works with the physical reality of his customers.
While I usually agree with the content of Rework, I find I do not always agree with the 37 Signals viewpoint. Yes, it works for them. Yes I agree with 90% of it. But just as critical is to know what advice is bad advice for a firm like ours. I think it is important that I plan for the company’s future. Thus I do not agree with statements such as this:
“Writing a plan makes you feel in control of things you can’t actually control…Why don’t we call plans what they really are: guesses. Start referring to your business plans as business guesses, your financial plans as financial guesses and your strategic plans as strategic guesses. Now you can stop worrying about them as much.” (pg. 19)
It is catchy. It makes for a good anti-establishment Purple Cow type of quote. But I suspect the employees at Schipul appreciate me applying that advice carefully. Does that advice relate to our particular situation? No. And I think the team at 37 is plenty of smart enough to tell people to apply their advice…well, if it applies!
Sometimes advice is populist, but there is a logical flaw. A company who follows the infamous “work smarter not harder” quickly falls to a company that believes “work smarter AND harder.” Working smarter-not-harder would only work if hard workers were dumb. But we get smarter through experience! So unfortunately, hard workers are typically also smarter than you. Oooops. But we don’t like to admit that. What we want to hear is that the 4 hour work week is a winner. I certainly wish the global economy worked that way!
I guess I am saying, use common sense and trust experience built upon DOING stuff.