On the face of it — they aren’t alike.
What if I told you that auto auctions are not bounded by geography? Most of us think of auto auctions in terms of place. But what if you were thinking of an auction as a process, not a particular place. If you think of it that way, your decisions can change depending upon where your customers are.
Food trucks operate on a similar principle. Take the food to the people. The idea of people gathering for food truck events is relatively new. In my small town, for example, Food Truck Tuesday is a hybrid model. Established to create an event around the food trucks, it is held in a municipal park. Thus, it is both a place and a process. The location could change at any time because the process of making that decision isn’t dependent upon a place. Further, the particular food trucks that will be at any given location at any date and time, is malleable. Just as an auto auction can match buyers and sellers of all types of vehicles. The auction process goes on whether the cars are small economy cars or Bentleys.
The auto auction business and food trucks both turn a traditional model sideways and they are far from the only ones. If your business needs faster growth, better margins, happier employees and delighted customers, you’ve got to get out of your own model. It starts with your thinking.
The assumptions we have about our businesses are both helpful and deadly. We can't afford to be on automatic pilot. Click To Tweet
- What are you doing to make it easier for your customers to do business with you?
- What friction is in your process?
- How can you take your business to your customers?
- Is your technology helping or constraining?
- Are your processes making your life easier but annoying your customers?
If an auto auction company can hold a successful auction on an island, as Manheim did, then surely you can think of a way to be more mobile.
