The Digital Generation

Seth Godin wrote a blog the other day called “From Sixty to Zero” that talked about how to prepare your business for hitting the brakes in tough times. He asks, “how would you manage or market differently if you knew that you had to hit the brakes, and hard?” I thought this was a great question to apply to the promotional products industry.

Like every industry (except booze, taxes and funeral homes), ours is taking it in the shorts right now. We’ve all gotten used to throwing around worries about how much everything is changing and how much our business is being impacted. The question is: now that you KNOW things are going to change, what are YOU going to do about it?

I sense a major shift in our industry, and it’s going to impact all of us, either positively or negatively.

The Big Shift

Younger buyers are entering the workforce. Your reaction might be “duh,” but do you truly get how much these younger buyers are fixin’ (a good Texas word) to rock your world? The members of this new generation have a few characteristics that make them drastically different from the previous one, so we’d better sit up and take notice.

These newly minted buyers communicate very differently than prior generations. They text, they Facebook, they tweet, and it’s all as natural to them as breathing. They’re digital people. This generation would prefer to have a conversation over digital media than face-face. This will change our business processes and challenge us to change our tried-and-true methods. They will identify better, more innovative strategies for using technology to do things more efficiently and cost effectively. They will replace your “trusted” relationships—maybe not on day one, but as business practices inside company walls change, all the relationships you rely on will be up for grabs.

The Impact/My Predictions

Those who are the most adaptable (click here to examine your adaptability) will be the winners. Those who have an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude will be goners. I predict that between 30-40% of current distributorships will not be around in five years.

Rationale

- Business will continue to trend toward online processes instead of offline.
- Younger buyers don’t want to flip through catalogs, either paper or electronic (a la company stores).
- Younger buyers will be looking for social commerce applications to make their buying decisions.
- Personality and charm will get you the meeting—maybe even the order—but it won’t keep you in business with this buyer demographic.

The Question

You know the shift is coming, so what are you going to do about it? Are you going to sit there in denial and just hope you survive, or are you going to be proactive? I suggest the latter. Be a change agent. Don’t get sucked in to the mainstream thinking that plagues this industry and keeps it stuck in the ‘90s. There will definitely be winners and losers in this change. The winners will be the ones who anticipated the shift and identified strategies for speaking to the new generation. The losers will be the ones who did nothing.

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