What made your grandfather’s business grow is not what will make yours grow.
By John Kimmel
“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence—it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” Peter Drucker’s wisdom sums up not only the market we face, but also the generational changes happening in our businesses every day. Our great-grandfathers lived in a time that was difficult, but simple: If you work hard and do the right things for your customers, you will be successful. That meant long hours and face-to-face visits, even when they no longer drove the delivery truck. Nowadays, it’s a little more complicated.
The Way People Shop Has Changed
Remember phone books? A couple of decades ago, being in the phone book wasn’t optional—that was how people found you. Once customers found you, they called you on the phone. If they turned out to be a wholesale lead, the next step was a face-to-face visit, often conducted by the business owner himself, and if needed, the customer was then referred directly to other customers of yours for a personal reference.
Today, both retail and wholesale consumers shop online. If they find you on Google, they visit your website. If they are still interested, they check you out on social media. If you have an ordering portal, they may even place their first order without having talked to a single person at your company. If they have more complex needs, they will likely send you a digital message asking for help, and they expect to be contacted not by the owner of the company, but rather by a professional salesperson.
The number of purchases (including wholesale orders) placed online is at over 25% and rising at a pace of over 4% per year. Some experts believe that by the end of 2030 we could see 50% of all purchases in the United States made online. As for the 75% of purchases still made offline today, petroleum marketers with trained professional salespeople are outperforming their peers in the marketplace better than two to one. In other words, trained salespeople sell more than double what their untrained counterparts do.
Hiring Has Changed
In your parent’s day, when they needed a new employee, they placed an ad in the newspaper and local applicants would stop by the office for an application, fill it out right there at your office and hand it to a member of your staff.
Today, the potential employee pool has expanded well beyond your local area, but it hasn’t gotten larger. Applicants from all over your state may see your ad on sites like Indeed and LinkedIn, but local job hunters may not, based on the search criteria they entered. Ads that used to attract attention no longer get seen online unless they contain the right keywords and phrases that connect with the searcher’s keywords. Also, short, to-the-point hiring ads are not effective anymore because your competitor’s ads are written by professionals who know how to write copy that attracts the correct personality type for the position. In addition, applications that used to be filled out in person are now auto-filled digitally and resumes are created using AI. Both things have made it more difficult to determine the true aptitude of the applicant.
Interviewing and onboarding has evolved as well. Ninety percent of employers hire for aptitude. They look at a resume, determine if the candidate has the right education, background and experience for the job, and then interview them face-to-face to verify that they really are who they claim to be on their resume. But aptitude is not why we usually fire people. Think about the last few people you had to fire. Did you fire them because they couldn’t do the work you hired them to do, or did you fire them because they lied, cheated, stole or violated some other core value your company holds dear? While ninety percent of our hiring decisions are based on aptitude, two-thirds of our firing decisions are based on culture. That means you need to find a way to screen them regarding your culture before you consider their aptitude.
Generational Differences Are Complicated
When I was born—I’m Generation X, so between 1965 and 1979—over 90% of people surveyed believed that getting married and having a family was “important” or “very Important” to have a meaningful life. Someone born in the tail end of Generation Y (1980-1994), who we call Millennials, entered a world where that number had dropped to just 28%. For Generation Z (1997-2012) the percentage will be even lower. That way of thinking has had a massive impact on employment: Single people without kids may have less financial pressure to work 40 hours at a minimum or to put in 60 hours a week as a normal number.
Currently, the average American worker spends less than 40 hours per week at work, and many desire to get that number down to 30 hours per week—and they want more time off to boot. Because younger workers can see not just how their hometown does work, but how the world handles work, they are emboldened to ask for fewer hours, higher pay and more time off.
There is another factor that has impacted communication between the generations: Children are no longer becoming like their parents. For centuries, or at least as far back as this data has been collected, there was a predictable pattern to getting older. Most youth had something of a rebellious streak, usually somewhere in their teens. They believed themselves more enlightened than their parents and therefore listened less to them and more to their youthful peers. As predictable as this phase was, just as predictable was their shift to thinking more like their parents when they reached their mid-20s.
By the time they reached their 40s, they acted nearly identical to the way their parents had at the same age. Starting with the Millennials, this change to being like their parents in their 20s didn’t happen. They didn’t change their behavior or their way of thinking. They didn’t become their parents. Those of us who study human behavior had never seen this before. What’s more, Generation Z does not seem to be changing either. This has created a massive communication gap between younger and older Americans, to the frustration of both.
One of my favorite quotes about work came from Jake Kimmel, my own father. He said, “When I was young, someone told me that if I worked hard, I would get ahead. Later, someone told me that if I worked smart, I would get ahead. I didn’t know who was right, so I did both.” For the last couple of minutes, we have been focused on working smart. Odds are, as a petroleum marketer, you already work hard. I hope this inspires you to look differently at your business, so that it will be growing and thriving when you decide to pass it on to your next generation.
John J. Kimmel is the author of Selling with Power. Kimmel provides custom solutions to increase the effectiveness and profitability of sales teams for petroleum marketers all over the United States. Visit www.johnjkimmel.com.
