Ask and you shall receive + Testing: a story
In many postings before we talked about testing.
If carried out in the right way, testing is a low risk, low budget way to try new approaches, strategies and tactics for your business. It has the potential to make your company virtually "error proof" when you deploying a new initiative to the general marketplace (of course, you already tested it and you know what the result will be...)
We also had a posting last week about "Ask and you shall receive": if we don't make a request, we have very little chance to get what we want. Very basic, yet very powerful.
I have a little story for you about me: I am a very avid reader. I invest about 1,000$ per year in books at Amazon.com. I enjoy the convenience of ordering online and the nice discounts I get on any book.
Now, last week I went to a local Barnes and Noble brick and mortar bookseller to pick up a book that I needed that same day. I asked to speak with a manager of the store. I gave my story and I asked for what I wanted:
“Madame, you don’t know me, but I can tell you that I spend about 1,000$ per year on your competitor Amazon web site: would you be interested in working out a deal to get my business? Of course the deal would have to give me more than what I get today from Amazon: either in discount, convenience etc”. I showed her the book I just bought at her counter: 32$ - on Amazon I can have it for 18$ (again, I needed it the same day for a gift).
The woman very professionally said “No, we are not interested in working such deals”.
Great! I failed! My little “test” ended with a big, sounding, clear “NO!”.
So? Big deal… I keep buying on Amazon, even more satisfied about the deals they hand to me.
So, was it really a failure my test? Of course not: it costed me nothing, it provided me with more information and experience and avoided me in the future to regret no having done it. All in all, I come out ahead, big time.
Mau in
posted by Mau @ 8:52 PM
4 Comments:
Mau,
This is an incredible story. It proves that in the long run, there is nothing that Brick and Mortar bookseller can do to counteract the fact that their cost of sales is significantly higher than Amazon. Either that or they feel that their immediate access to books gives them such a fundamental advantage, that they don't need to strike such deals which will result in less profit (I doubt that they can afford such a luxury). The third possibility is that the manager frankly is a manager and not a 'true' business person who would bother to go through and estimate whether the 'deal' you were proposing was in fact a profitable one for her store. Regardless thanks for an interesting experiment.
Yiannisp,
thank you for your comment.
I can see how it can be difficult for Barnes & Nobles (B&N) to handle such a request without a system behind: if they give me a nice deal, what about the next customer that is purchasing 300$/year, or 700$/year... they would risk people to become unhappy...
So, mine was a provocative check on how they would react to such a proposal: they did react as a big company would, I guess. Until they do not see their sales too impacted, probably they will not act.
Financially speaking, their stock price in the last 5 year actually did outperform Amazon: true also that Amazon had a fantastic run-up during the internet glory days.
So... at the end I don't know who's going to win. What I know for sure is that Amazon is getting 1,000$/year from me that B&N is not anymore.
Mau in Austin
Good funda!!try you will get it...thanks
Vineet,
thank you for your comment.
Yeah, the downside was negligible (basically, no downside, apart from the brushing of my ego receiving a no), but the upside was interesting.
All in all, I gained experience :)
Mau in Italy
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