Leadership, online trends focus of PPG MVP keynote speaker

Speaker, consultant, entrepreneur and author Scott Klososky kicked off the PPG MVP North America Business Solutions fall conference in Orlando Sept. 20 by taking a close look at leadership and online trends that will affect collision repairers.

Klososky, a self-described part businessman and part Geek- technology guy, told the audience of 250 repairers and PPG employees, "I have spent my entire career looking ahead and I can tell you what is coming in technology and how it will be used."

The world operates at a faster pace and business owners need to be innovative and react to trends before the competition does or suffer the consequences. He cited several high-profile businesses that failed to do that and paid the price in lost business.

His examples included:

Corporate leaders at Blockbuster should have seen what Netflix was dong and acquired the company before it changed the way people rent videos, much to the detriment of Blockbuster.
In three years newcomer Skype will have as much international phone traffic, which it offers over the Internet for free, as AT&T, which charges for the service. How can AT&T sustain its pay-to-use business model when a fast-growing competitor offers the same service for free?
The No. 1 music retailer in the world is iTunes and Apple, a remarkable transformation by a computer company. "How did music companies not see this coming and get into it themselves," he asked. "Sony had the Walkman long before Apple had iTunes, so they could have done what Apple did."

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Klososky said visionary leadership is the difference between successful companies that innovate and adapt and those that struggle or go out of business. Visionary leaders must be able to make good technology decisions, have the ability to accurately predict future trends and have the ability to enhance organizational culture.

"Low-beam leaders focus on monthly results, execution, ignore trends, avoid change and don't invest properly in the future," he said. "High-beam leaders are visionary, willing to experiment, and do trend and predictive analysis."

He lamented the fact that the average tenure of a CEO today is four years compared to 12 years four years ago. He said too many are managing only to address the next quarterly profit statement.

"Too many CEOs today come into the company, work to get the stock price up, cash in their stock options and retire," he said. "That is a troubling trend."

Trends often are shaped by technology, and he predicted that small and mid-sized companies will abandon their servers in favor of cloud computing (renting off-site computer services) because they will get better computing power for less money. "If you have servers, stop it and go to cloud computing."

He also said that textbooks, especially college textbooks, will migrate to iPads because it can be done efficiently and at a cost savings to users.

Leveraging social technologies
Klososky told the approximately 200 collision repairers to use social media sites to get their messages directly to consumers. Gen Xers and Gen Yers look online for service providers because they want to see what others are saying about them. If they see good things, they will trust your business and are likely to use it, he said. If they see bad things they won't trust or use your business.

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"If you don't know what your online reputation is, you need to find out and work to actively manage it," he said. "With electronic word of mouth 5,000 people can see what was said about your business, and the information will be searchable under your name for years."

He cited several companies – United Airlines, FTD and Taco Bell – that were slow to react to criticism on social media sites and paid the price in lost business. He praised Pepsi for its quick reaction to pull an online ad that offended people before it caused an avalanche of bad publicity for the company.

He said repairers can practice a three-step process to manage their online reputation:

Build a listening campaign of any online mention of your name, your product name, your executives' names and your competitors.
Develop an engagement policy that defines how you will engage bloggers who criticize your company.
Measure your online reputation so you know if it positive or negative

He also cautioned repairers not to dismiss the power of online user ratings.

"All things online will eventually be rated online," he said, citing websites that now rate doctors, teachers and lawyers. "If you don't take action on this you will not be a visionary leader."