More on how to manage newspaper companies in a recession.
Focus on your “core business.”
A few days ago, I said to the Philadelphia Inquirer’s David Sullivan that if everything fails in the U.S. newspaper industry, the final solution is not Carlos Slim, but EL CORTE INGLES.
This $20 billion company runs the largest Spanish Department Store (“THE ENGLISH CUT”) with more than 60 shops and more than 700 million visitors annually, and has a terrific management and sales team.
A few years ago, I met the Maverick head of its Human Resources Department and he told me the secret:
“As soon as we are going to open any store in any new city our first priority is to hire the best sales people.
“So we shop in the best stores and we hire the best sales people on the spot.”
Go to any EL CORTE INGLES and you will find that the secrets of this fabulous Spanish chain are:
1. Good quality products, not cheap, but at a fair price.
2. Total customer satisfaction guarantee. “If you don’t like it, return it. No questions asked.”
3. Great sales force reminiscent of the troupe from Nordstrom stores in the U.S.
4. A serious financial management that has made the chain a “de facto” big bank operation.
5. Focus on just the core of their business: pleasing customers.
What newspapers can learn from EL CORTE INGLES is this:
Keep the focus on your core business and make customers happy.
But what is the “core business” of our newspaper industry today?
Well, Jeff Jarvis would say that it’s “the conversation with your communities.”
That’s fine with me.
I would say, though, that newspaper companies are no longer just editorial operations to find, edit and deliver information, charging advertisers and readers, but “social institutions” to provide us with what Neil Postman called “understanding.”
Yes, “understanding” is our core business.
Not just plain talk.
Pure facts.
Old news.
Or commodity information.
But analysis.
Explanation.
“Understanding.”
For EL CORTE INGLES, it is “customer satisfaction.”
For newspapers it is selling “understanding.”
We are in the “understanding business.”
Again, as O Globo says:
In paper.
Online.
Full time.