Pickle in a Bag

So here I am in line at the book store, waiting to check out.  Oh sure most books I buy these days go right onto my tablet so I can read them anywhere, but once in a while there is a book I just want to own, to have in my personal library and today was one of those days.

So what do you do when standing in line at the book store because someone out front cannot seem to find her discount card?  You look left and you look right.  To the left is the Pickle in a Bag.  Think on this a second... a pickle in a bag.  One day someone was standing in line at a checkout and said "you know what people need when they are standing in line?  They need a Pickle in a Bag... for $1.49".  I am sure that person now lives in some grand estate somewhere where the weather never turns cold.  But here is was and right below it, "The Hot Pickle In a Bag".

I was also greeted by book marks, pocket flashlights, tiny "Dummies" books, NanoBots and a host of other items designed to liberate me from a few more dollars.  None of them appealed.  That is until I tendered my card for my book purchase, and right there...right below the card reader sat a box of Snickers Bars... with almonds....  JUMBO size.

After I reached the car and enjoyed my JUMBO Snickers bar with almonds, which indicated on the wrapper is was FOUR servings, I though about the buying opportunities presented me at the checkout.  I actually went back to the store and looked over the merchandise presented for my view while I was in line at the checkout.  I then counted everything that was within reach.  Fifty Five items.  Think about that a second.  Fifty Five items presented to me to make one more buying decision before I left the store.

I wonder how many times any of us in sales make one more buying opportunity while we have the buyers attention.  Maybe a sheet of paper with up-sale opportunities handed to them while we are filling out an order.  Maybe a leave behind, or something with the bill or thank you note.  But how many of us  have ever offered fifty five separate buying opportunities just when they are ready to make a purchase?  How much money have we all left on the table buy not exploring other opportunities to help their business?

Asking for a few more dollars can make a big difference in both the effectiveness of the campaign and your income.  It really is a win win.  Look back at the last 20 or 30 weeks and ask what would have happened to your income if you had just increased each order by $25.  It becomes significant quickly.

I am not saying that asking for an extra few bucks is a silver bullet in sales.  But it could be a Picke in a Bag!

I think I was Over Served!

This week I tried my best to solve some I.T. problems at the radio station.  That was mistake number one.  But a few hours after it all ended and a few hours before a managers meeting I found that my efforts were not wasted.

The problem was that we were running out of IP addresses on our network even though we had hundreds to spare.  (For us non technical types, this would be like the post office saying they are out of mail boxes even though you can see there are plenty left).  Upon looking more deeply into the system we found that there appeared to be two DHCP servers battling it out on the same network.

A DHCP server (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) is a program that runs on your network which assigns specific addresses to each piece of equipment attached to the networks so everything knows what everything else is.  That's how files go between computers, print files go to printers etc.. It is the director of the orchestra on your network and keeps the work humming.  BUT, put a SECOND DHCP server into the network and you have war.  One server is sending things one way and the other DHCP server is sending things other ways and before you know it nothing is working.

What the heck does this have to do with radio you ask?  Well this problem is not specific to Radio, it is a plague in every business.  Too many people trying to control the flow of work and nothing gets done.  For example, if my network has a problem and my document cannot get to the printer I get a message that says something like "I tried... see if you can figure out how to print this yourself!".  The same thing happens in organizations where there are more than one person assigning duties or allocating resources.

There are two causes for this.  The first is that multiple managers do not have a clear sense of who does what and second when someone in the chain decides to act outside of the chain of command, not knowing what someone is already doing for someone else.  When multiple people assign duties to one person without knowing everything they may already be doing you can overload the person to the point where they drive their car through the front door some morning to announce that they have quit.  Likewise when you don't know who is doing what you can end up with people who look busy, but are not really doing much of anything.  Still worse is that employee with time and grade who goes behind your back to tell people how things "really work around here".

When I could not figure out what was going on with the network, I finally pulled all of the cables and all of the switches and started over.  I found 12 connections that went nowhere.  I also found one connection that, through a number of switches came right back into the switch it originated in...thus causing the apparent duplication of the DHCP server rendering the network slow and unreliable.  In this afternoon's management meeting I am looking at our company to make sure that we are not servicing a bunch of dead ends, or we do not have more than one server serving up projects and duties to each member of staff.