ATLANTA, GA - My brother Eric's weblog, Freightdawg, is one of the best known logistics blogs in America. This week, Eric wrote a great post called "Retail Economy: It's War Out There!" which claimed that ...
Retail sales for the 2007 Holiday season were the lowest in 5 years according to TNS Retail Forward, with fourth quarter growth year over year only 3.4%. Unfortunately, the parcel carriers are feeling the pinch too. When retail suffers, parcel suffers. That makes for a major dogfight between FedEx, DHL and UPS for domestic business ...
Eric's piece continued:
My brother (Harry) runs a successful executive search firm that specializes in finding and hiring e-commerce gurus for the online retail market. I'll have to ask him whether he asks any supply chain related questions of his candidates. In today's economy, knowing how the goods get to the consumer is critical to online marketing strategy. It's not all about drop shipping any more.
He's right about that. So, do I ask logistics questions? Sometimes.
At the risk of oversimplifying, online marketing is broken down into three areas:
- Prospect attraction
- Prospect conversion, and
- Customer retention
If the client needs someone to attract or convert prospects (though SEO, PPC, email, affiliate marketing, online merchandising, web design, usability, etc) -- then NO, I don't ask logistics questions. But with respect to customer retention, fulfillment makes an enormous difference in how customers perceive a brand. Nothing will make a customer tell ten friends you suck more than breaking your promises to that customer.
So for retention-based interviews, I will always ask a candidate this two part question ...
- What three words best describe your company's brand?
- How would you improve your company's supply chain to better deliver these three attributes? Be specific.
OK readers, what are your thoughts? I'd love to hear from Sam Decker and Kevin Hillstrom on this. I know my question is broad -- but at least it lets me know that a candidate can think holistically about a company's operating model before I move on to other interview topics.
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