Stirton.net » Relationships

Shifting into Gear Post 2

stirton — Thu, 19 May 2011 07:20:03 +0000

Pattyn saw a big opening. Because most auto manufacturers’ Websites were little more than electronic brochures, GM had an opportunity to use the Web to learn how to sell to a new kind of customer — folks who can make themselves highly educated about their purchase and who realize that they now don’t have to endure much time in a showroom.

This, of course, creates a nasty Catch-22. “The better the job the manufacturer does in supplying information online, the less need there is for the customer to visit the showroom,” says Chris Denove, consulting operations director at J.D. Power and Associates. “But manufacturers want the customers to go to a place where somebody is there to help them make the sale.”

Peter Ellis, the former car dealer who founded Irvine, Calif.-based Auto-By-Tel, adds that once you get people in the showroom, “you can sell them other products they don’t want — cars with other equipment or a different color. It’s a great way of moving inventory.”

Ellis feels GM BuyPower is doomed from the start. Not only does it alter a decades-old strategy for rotating inventory, but the online effort is not reaching non-GM buyers. “They’re not creating new business. They’re simply recycling their customers in a new medium,” he says. Adds Boston Consulting Group’s Khaykin: “The only way GM BuyPower would work is if the consumer already decided to buy a GM car.”

Pattyn dismisses such skepticism and talks repeatedly about GM’s strategy of meeting the needs of the new, empowered customers — using the Internet to give them information that will help them see that her corporation’s cars are the best buy. “We see consumers have a preference to do more and more of their shopping online, to the point where they have a less time-consuming interaction at the dealership,” Pattyn says. “Bottom line: Customers will reward manufacturers who come to market in different ways.”

Ellis sees no evidence that the GM strategy is working. He wields facts gleaned from the 20,000 to 25,000 vehicles Auto-By-Tel sells each month. Toyota and Honda, for instance, respectively account for 8 percent and 7 percent of the nation’s market share for automobiles, but they each represent 12 percent of Auto-By-Tel’s sales. By contrast, GM, which sells 31 percent of the nation’s cars, makes up 19 percent of Auto-By-Tel’s business. Does this simply mean that Internet shoppers favor imports? Ellis responds that Chrysler claims a 16 percent market share nationwide but accounts for 18.5 percent of his company’s sales.

Shifting into Gear Post 1

stirton — Thu, 12 May 2011 06:49:06 +0000

Ann Pattyn doesn’t look much like a revolutionary. She’s 5-foot-1, dressed in a pink shirt, beige slacks, and a dark blazer — and relentlessly chipper. She arrived at General Motors in 1974 as a management intern and spent most of her career in sales and marketing. Pattyn has both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology, as well as an M.B.A. from Stanford University.

She had been responsible for a host of changes to GM’s West Coast sales operation. When she was dispatched to California (the nation’s largest and most trendsetting auto market) in 1993, GM was losing sales ground to imports. Among her contributions was the introduction of so-called Value Pricing, a system intended to cut down on consumer-salesperson haggling and competition among dealerships. It’s similar to the pricing arrangement that has been such a success for the Saturn line: The price on the car carries a lower dealer margin — say 11 percent versus 17 percent — and customers are expected not to haggle over it. Most times, customers are happy to avoid the pricing tussle.

She also made the move of putting literature in showrooms that contained price comparisons with other manufacturers’ vehicles. GM purchased the data from the Westboro, Mass.-based Automotive Information Center, which surveys competitive pricing, and it broke a taboo of automotive retailing: Never say too much about the other guys. Her efforts paid off. GM’s retail sales rose nearly 20 percent in one year, improving market share in the state to 22 percent.

Then she got the call from Zarrella.

Her first move was to assemble a six-person team: an operations-technical person, a finance person, a field marketing person to work with dealers, an advertising person, and a PR person. The group outsourced the technology development and site hosting to Electronic Data Systems, formerly a GM subsidiary. San Francisco-based Catalyst Resources designed the site.

“Spirited debate” is Pattyn’s polite way of describing the run-ins her team had when she proposed such innovations as publishing comparison prices on the site. “In printed form, it didn’t generate much internal discussion. It did when we put it on the Internet,” she says. But such battles had to be won or lost quickly.

“Speed to market is extremely important. You’re not going to be precisely sure you’re onto what will work, but you have to get to market first and let the customer decide,” she says. “It’s different from the traditional business model, in which you evaluate all the eventualities. You don’t have time. You have to develop a commitment of first to market, first to learn. It’s much more aggressive.”

Should I Send my Shy Child to Camp

stirton — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 05:34:08 +0000

My 9-year-old daughter is very shy around people other than family and close friends. She would like to go to a camp this summer. Do you think this is a good idea for her?
The difference between extroverts and shy or introverted children is how they approach new situations. For example, an extrovert would test the water in a swimming pool by jumping off of a diving board. Introverts wade in to get their toes wet and then come back out to think about the experience. Both types get wet; the difference is the method.

Your daughter can have a positive experience at camp if you help her “get her feet wet” before she goes.

Check the information provided by the camp for a schedule of all of the events planned. If necessary, call the camp and request a daily schedule. Make a list of each activity. If an activity is unfamiliar to your daughter, write a well-known term beside it. For example:

Crafts (Art class)
Canoeing (Boating)
Campfire chats (Time to talk and sing)

Review the list with your daughter. Discuss what will likely happen during each event. Encourage her to talk about times when she has had a similar experience. The key is for her to connect the camping activities to a prior experience. This builds confidence.

Some activities may be new to your daughter. Plan some practice experiences to help her prepare. For example:

Assemble a tent in the backyard and allow her to play in it and, if possible, sleep overnight.
Go for a hike in a local park. Take a backpack with water and a snack.
Plan a meal together in which the food is prepared outside on a grill or fire.

Work together on the list of items to pack. Allow your daughter to have input about the clothing that she feels most comfortable wearing for outdoor activities. Include items that will make her feel more secure. For my first camping experience, my mother sent a can of insect repellent because she knew I was afraid of bugs. I kept it by my bed for the entire week!

Should I Play Hard to Get

stirton — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 17:14:29 +0000

My boyfriend of two years keeps hedging on making a commitment. The more I pressure Jim to discuss getting married, the more he keeps his distance. My friends all tell me to back off and play hard to get, but I hate mind games. I feel miserable and anxious about our future, and I can’t concentrate on my work or anything else except Jim. When I push him to talk, we just bring each other down even more. I feel like I’m falling apart.

Your pain is a signal that you need to make a change. There is no point in continuing the same pattern of behavior: The harder you pursue Jim, the further he runs. If you take steps to break this cycle, perhaps Jim will feel freer to acknowledge the part within himself that wants intimacy and commitment-even if he fears it.

You’re right to reject the phony, manipulative games that your friends-and some recent best-sellers-have encouraged. And I understand that you want to be totally yourself with Jim. But presenting yourself as “falling apart” won’t help you access the part of you that remains strong and in control. Here’s where some pretending can be useful: By feigning hope or courage, for example, we can discover or enhance our capacity for feeling hopeful or acting courageously.

Pretending can also help us change unproductive and habitual ways of responding to others. Sometimes we can’t see what’s true or possible in a relationship until after we change our behavior.

So gather your strength and pretend for a little while. Set aside a period of time-say, two entire weeks-during which you’ll stop pursuing Jim and put your energy back into your own life. Go out with your friends, invest more in your work and other activities that don’t include Jim.

Don’t act cold and distant toward him; be as warm as ever when you see him, but don’t chase him or pressure him for closeness. A few weeks down the line, you can choose a calm time to ask him how he feels about you and whether he sees any future in the relationship. Be prepared for the truth; giving him some breathing room may prompt him to move closer, or it may help him admit that he is on his way out. If marriage is your goal, you may ultimately decide to take a bottom-line position (“Jim, if you can’t make up your mind about marriage within six months, I need to move on”). But now isn’t the time to push him for clarity or a commitment. Neither of you can do your best thinking when your relationship is so polarized and strained.

Before trying this experiment, however, you need to do whatever you can to get a grip on your anxiety. Meditate, jog, set priorities at work, connect with friends and family-do what it takes to achieve a little more inner peace. None of us can navigate a relationship when caught in a storm of emotions. Focusing on your own goals will give you-and your relationship-the best chance of moving forward.

Wonder

stirton — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 06:42:55 +0000

Wonder is a tiny flame inside children that we fan or extinguish.

When a child pauses to stare at a butterfly, or an anthill, or to find a shape in the clouds, it’s a rare chance to wonder about how things work.

It is also a great opportunity for us as parents to escape our daily monotony and embrace a minimeditation. Sure we have dinner to prepare, bills to pay, people to appease and errands to run, but that makes these minimeditations all the more precious and restorative.

Breathe deeply, focus on that cloud, or the firefly, or the shiny beetle, and relish your brief chance to rest in the warmth of your child’s wonder.

My sense of wonder was restored when my son became fascinated by a dragonfly. Rather than recoil or rush off, we decided to observe this orange whirligig. We wound up watching “our” dragonfly daily. He always showed up at the same time, landing on the same branch at our fishpond’s edge. He’d patrol by flying great lazy figure-eight patterns, snagging pesky insects for lunch.

At 3 pm, he’d shift to another branch, apparently to take advantage of the late afternoon sun. He’d attack anything orange, except one yellowish orange female. They did an elaborate mating dance, and she laid eggs in our pond. We spent just minutes a day with our dragonfly, but the memories proved timeless. At summer’s end, we grieved his demise.

The next spring, my ever-hopeful son took up watch again. To my amazement, his vigil was rewarded. “Little Red One” (heir apparent to “Big Red One”) landed on the same branch, at the same time, patrolled our pond in the same manner, and often sat poised as if watching us watch him.

“Maybe Big Red One told him about us,” my son conjectured. Or maybe little dragonflies — like little children — have a sense of wonder, too.

Use Pheromones Spray as a Means of Attracting Women

stirton — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 10:26:45 +0000

Today, lots of men use pheromones as a means of attracting women. You likely have seen print and online advertisements stating that women will flock to you when you wear this inconspicuous scent. It’s tempting to be intrigued about whether this is real or only a marketing gimmick.

It is important that you understand this. While use of these products may cause women to flock to you, will you understand how to act? In reality, it is still necessary to have the social and seductive talents needed to influence women to begin with. Pheromones will be successful as long as you invest the time needed and are at your fullest potential already. If you want to avoid preparation, you won’t achieve very substantial goals, just as you won’t have lots of hot babes throwing themselves at you without working on the rest of your strategy and preconceived ideas about seduction, first.

All people desire a shortcut in life. You find an advertisement that promises to be the solution to any female woes simply by using this wondrous scent. It’s true that you’ll be noticed by more women when you go out, but your ability to engage them will not automatically get better.

If you are a male thinking of investing in pheromones to increase your ability to attract women, you absolutely ought to consider it if you typically approach females you are drawn to, if you don’t take rejection too personally, and if you have a fair amount of success with women anyway.

If you are still afraid to approach women and talk to them, and you don’t have much luck trying to seduce them even after you’ve invested in buying pheromones, you might want to invest some money in dating programs that specialize in helping your confidence and your beliefs about attracting women. A number of them are available online in both DVD and e-book format. You may be able to locate some instructional materials, also.

You ought to include pheromone sprays as just one element of your plan of attack. Stand in front of your mirror and question what kind of individual you wish to be.

Are you going to be someone who cuts corners and winds up with temporary results, or will you go the full route and construct a solid basis upon which to develop? In any event, pheromones help you achieve the optimum outcome.

For those who would like additional information on this topic, you may utilize this resource: Human Euphoria Pheromones