Last night I walked into my home office to find a stand-off of sorts. Or maybe a commiseration. Or it could have been just two creatures trying to co-exist. Either way, Zoomie, the robot dog that Santa brought my daughter for Christmas, and Clyde, our 9-year-old pound-puppie, were paired there for me to ponder.
First, a little backstory...
I had issue with Santa bringing Zoomie (which could be called schizophrenic...being that we all know who Santa is...) My daughter lives on a farm with all sorts of animals. Two of which are R.E.A.L. D.O.G.S. You know, the kind that are fuzzy, lick your hand, lay by your feet, like being pet, beg for your attention. Yet, Santa brought my daughter a plastic, electronic gizmo you "can train to sit, bark, shake." Seeing our faithful friend staring, meloncholy like, into the eyes of the new "dog" seemed so wrong. Right?!?!
Wanting to be the good Mom, I've resisted mocking the R2D2 canine and instead, sat down with my daughter in the kitchen to figure out to make it do "tricks." And guess what? I hate to say this, but ... it is kinda cool! No, it's not a dog, but it is a fun toy. And how amazing that a pretty cheap piece of plastic will "interact"! Before I knew it, I found myself saying "hey, wait, it's my turn!"
In an odd segway, this brought me to thinking about some "old-school" customers that come to our property management software. While they are a bit curious, they tend to be a bit unsure of how our new-fangled program is going to help them run their business any better than they have been doing for the last decade using a host of manual methods. I spend a little more time and care helping them understand that it's not like they were doing it "wrong" before, rather we are going to make life simpler for them. They've been working TOO HARD! Sort of like a robot dog. Sort of. It made me think of how all it really took for me to change my archaic thoughts about Santa's "dog" was to get my hands on it and play (and just think how much I would have saved all these years on vet bills and dog food...) Likewise, with some of my new customers, if I can get them to move beyond their tightly-held assumptions or patterns of how they do things, I can usually help them see how our "cool" tool will take their professional lives to a whole new level and offer them slick and powerful tools to streamline their day-to-day and make their already awesome business more efficient.
So, how do you teach an old dog new tricks in your business?
Janell is a member of Rentec Direct, a web-based property management software program designed to help streamline tenant screening and the day-to-day operations of landlords and property managers. You'll find many other useful articles like this on the Rentec Direct Blog.
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