The Best Business Advice You've Ever Received: RSPA INSPIRE Edition

By Jim Roddy, VP of Marketing, RSPA

One of my favorite articles posted recently on the Business Solutions website is What’s The Best Piece Of Business Advice You’ve Ever Received? Five channel executives weighed in with guidance that would benefit any business leader.

I shared that article and posed that same question to some of the channel execs I spent time with in late January at the RSPA (Retail Solutions Providers Association) INSPIRE Conference. Their intriguing responses — seven in total — are below:

Jim Stewart, President, Advanced Data Systems: I think that it is not just one piece of advice but an aggregate of all the people in the industry that I have had the privilege to speak with. I always say there is always someone out there that has been there and done that. Two things do stand out though. They are very simple. One of my lifelong friends that is a VP for a steel company once told me that you never know unless you ask. The other advice came from my dad. He said that you can make a few small mistakes in business but do not make the big one.

Kelly Funk, CEO, RSPA: The one that comes to mind most often for me stems from an experience I had nearly 20 years ago. I was an account manager at GE. One of my assigned accounts was requesting a report that came from a different part of our business. I responded with something along the lines of “I’ve put in the request from X Department and will get that to you when I receive it.” My boss at the time took me aside and coached me that the request came to me – that I was responsible for taking care of the request and ensuring our partner’s satisfaction. She talked about the importance of me representing the entire company and making it easy for our partner to see me as the one point of contact. She suggested in the future my response be more along the lines of, “We are working on that. I’ll have that for you soon — is there anything else I can be helping you with today?”

She helped me to better understand the partner’s perspective — that the request and response started and ended with me. All the mechanics to make it take place were not of interest to our partner — getting resolution/their needs met were. I liken it to Oz in the Wizard of Oz — there is much that takes place behind the scenes to get things done, but our partners/customers don’t need to see it. And as the face of the organization to that particular partner, they look to me to help them.

This approach actually later evolved into an initiative within our business unit that was called “One Front Door” — all needs for a particular partner came in through their one point of contact. This allowed for better prioritization and overall account handling and satisfaction.

Lynn Skurla Perkins, Owner, Skurla’s Business & Hospitality Systems: I know this sounds really basic (and maybe a little Pollyannaish), but I learned at a very young age that honesty is the best policy — and you should own up to your mistakes. In my very early career days, I made a serious mistake and shared some information that I shouldn’t have with another colleague (in fact there were three of us involved that did the same thing). Our boss found out about the leak. I wasn’t implicated directly, but I knew what I had done. I decided to go to my boss and confess — one of the scariest conversations I ever had.

Even though she was upset, she appreciated my honesty in owning up to what I had done, and she shared with me that coming forward and admitting my mistake was the honorable way to conduct myself throughout life. (And I can only imagine how she would have felt if she later found out I was involved, and I hadn’t confessed!)

I have taken this lesson with me throughout life. We use it in our office — if we make a mistake, we own up to the customer and let them know what happened. It goes a long way in building lasting relationships. Honesty is one of our team’s core values — even though we know this should be implied in everything we do, it is printed out and hung up at everyone’s desk.

Mike Seymour, COO, Postec: “Reasonable people equally informed seldom disagree.” I learned this truism while coaching youth baseball from a fellow coach. I often find that good business advice is also excellent “life advice.” Applying this advice in business settings reminds me that when employees, customers, or vendors disagree, that either I have not effectively shared what Postec is doing (and why) or I have not listened well to what they are wanting (and why). This frame of reference works especially well at home with spouses, children, and friends.

Dave McCarthy, Chairman and CFO, Dumac Business Systems: The one best piece of advice that sticks the most in my mind was from 1974. Dumac had opened a branch office in Utica, NY, in 1972 when the Sweda Dealer there (yes, I’m aging myself) went out of business. I ran the branch for four years until we sold it. My landlord was a 78-year old Scotsman who was called “Scotty” of course. He was a self-made, fairly wealthy businessman. He had immigrated from Scotland and had a natural Scottish burr. He would stop at the office occasionally to chat and check up on things. One time, I came around the corner in the early afternoon and Scotty was there turning off some lights. I just smiled, but he pointed a gnarly finger at me and said in a very Scottish accent, “Let me tell you something … if you keep your expenses down, you’ll always be in business.” I had to agree with that statement and that has popped into my mind many times over the years.

Mark Fraker, VP of Marketing, BlueStar: One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was from my father while growing up in a very small farming community in Michigan. My father told me numerous times, “God gave you two ears and one mouth. Use them proportionately.”

The other piece of advice that I have relied on throughout my business career was given to me by my mentor in my late 20s. He told me that when you are in negotiations, if you sit across the table from an honest and decent individual, you can negotiate a solid contract. If you sit across the table from a dishonest and conniving individual, you can still negotiate a solid contract. Both types of individuals are predictable, and you will be able to agree to a solid contract. But if you sit across the table from an individual that “flip-flops” back and forth on important issues, much like the just caught fish in the bottom of the boat, get up and walk away from the table. You will never be able to negotiate a solid contract with this type of individual. They are unpredictable.

Brad Holaway, President, Copperstate Restaurant Technologies: Here are some gems:

1. It’s much easier to get into something than get out. Choose wisely.

2. Success is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration.

3. Being the CEO is like gazing into the abyss and eating glass. It’s like gazing into the abyss because you have to make decisions without sufficient data, and it is like eating glass because the toughest problems end up on your desk because no one else was able to solve them. When things are going good, there is nothing more fun than being the CEO, but when they are going bad, there is nothing more excruciating. (I got this last piece of advice on YouTube from a recent interview with Elon Musk.)

INSPIRE 2015, the Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA) conference for thought leaders in retail technology, was held January 25-28, 2015, at the Grand Wailea Resort & Convention Center, Maui, HI. For more information, go to www.BSMinfo.com/go/InsideRSPA.