As promised on Monday, here is quick re-cap of Peter Korecki’s presentation at our I’ll Buy That event last Thursday. Earlier in the week, I talked about “recession” being a state of mind. Peter, who is the president of Pierceys Building Supplies, would rather think of it as a re-strategizing period, or maybe a market-evaluation opportunity and definitely a staff re-programming exercise. Peter told us that if we get nothing else out of this time of crises we need to realize that “Everything is negotiable. Everything!”

Peter pointed out that nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the car business. He reminded us that only 12 months ago when you bought a new car, you paid for shipping, re-stocking and for the cost to clean the showroom since when you bought that car you messed up their lovely showroom display. Then there were whole slues of extras that have now become “standard” equipment. Satellite radio, undercoating, oil changes for life and On-Star have always been very profitable extras for the dealer unless you had the negotiation skills of trade union boss. Now they throw that stuff in right after “Hello!”

Armed with this insight, Peter has been working hard with his executive group to look at all their costs right across the organization. From their new truck purchase with the free undercoating to their waste removal, they have been able to improve the companies bottom line even without necessarily selling more building materials.

Peter had a number of other insightful strategies to share, but I’ll just leave you with a couple. The first was in any business, especially in retail, “Wear your colours.” His advice is, especially as the boss, you need to get down on the floor and lead by example. It starts with the uniform. If there is one, wear it proudly. If you’re not proud of it, don’t ask your staff to wear it.

Finally, Peter cited a famous case study that was recently re-reported in an April New Yorker that promotes the notion that a downturn like this is the last time you should be cutting back on your marketing activities. Whether a new website, new loyalty program or even a new cappuccino maker for your customers, this is the time to try and get new customers and keep existing ones happy.

More to come on Monday.

I've been in the marketing game for almost 25 years now and the most valuable thing I've learned is that I have a whole lot more to learn. I started off in sales and worked my way up (so I thought) to advertising. In hind sight, I realize that sales was the top! You can have sales without advertising, but advertising without sales is just useless art. When Trampoline Branding was formed, we set out with that firmly planted in our minds. Now more than ever we need to keep it very simple for consumers. Good thing, I'm a very simple guy!