Filter Information to Create Your Future

In a Marketing Daily posting, marketing strategist Johanna Skilling wrote that when she wants to know about local weather, she doesn’t look out her window. Instead she consults her iPad. Her point is that, with the abundance of information available online, it’s quicker to answer questions that way.
     When I apply this thinking to retailing, I draw a somewhat different conclusion than does Ms. Skilling: Online information retrieval can slow us down. The abundance of online information requires us to filter it rather than become immobilized by it. You’ve a limited amount of time, money, and energy. If you spend all your time gathering information, if you listen to anyone who has an idea for your retailing success, every bit of time, money, and especially energy will be sucked out of you. An overabundance of information is an energy vampire.
     An excellent information filter for retailers to use is the degree to which the information helps us create our futures. I’m more interested in what the weather will be later than what it is now. That information helps me prepare.
     When it comes to the weather and otherwise, don’t just predict your future. Create your future. Don’t trap yourself by waiting for the marketplace or the broader economy to force you into reacting. Instead, do your best job of predicting what the government, regulatory agencies, your retailing competition, and your shoppers are likely to do. Then consult your predictions to grab the initiative.
     To put this grand sounding philosophy into workable form, keep in mind the inevitability of resistance. Retailing requires human interactions, and a universal component of human interactions is resistance. For every retailer seller, there are buyers and regulators. Buyers fight back against feelings they’re relinquishing free will. Regulators want to feel important. They want their knowledge and influence to be acknowledged. When it isn’t, they push back against you even harder.
     Your ability as a retailer to change the weather is limited. With other marketplace forces, however, your potential influence is greater. Learn from the past.
     Don’t dwell on the past, though. That would discourage you, and successful retailers are optimistic. Creating your future does generate optimism. It’s a particular kind of optimism. It's not a belief that everything will turn out fine, no matter what. Instead it's a conviction that you are capable of using the strengths of your business to achieve high profitability.

For your profitability: Sell Well: What Really Moves Your Shoppers

Click below for more: 
Learn from the Past for the Future 
Create Your Future by Anticipating Resistance 
Play Up Your Potential