What is the benefit in all this – surely it is easier to just keep business asusual?Well – here is a bit of background to why I go on about this stuff all the time!“

It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate anew order of thing

” – Machiavelli, The PrinceIn 1999, Levine, Locke, Searls and Weinberger released a book called “TheCluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual”.One of the very first sections of this was the following:“If you only have time for one clue this year, this is the one to get…We are not seats nor eyeballs nor end users nor consumers, we are humanbeings and our reach exceeds your grasp. Deal with it.”To me, the entire content of Cluetrain was a rally cry. In part a voice from thestreet and in part a stern warning from within industry.I opened a musical instrument retail business the very same year Cluetrainwas published; the principles of my customer relationships were aligned asclosely as possible to the Cluetrain theses.I quickly created a community driven website where interaction was theprimary element. It was less about my business selling and more about thecustomers and my staff having in-depth conversations – coming up withsolutions together about how to fit-out a school hall with music equipment or how to ensure the Army bands had the gear they needed when travelling

abroad.When people considered purchasing a guitar, the discussion was less aboutprice and more about how it would fit into the rest of their lives.Customers reported that they didn’t feel ‘sold’ to. Loyalty was incredible. Wegrew from nothing to one of the largest southern retailers in 24 months.The shop was very full, as were our email inboxes and forums. We hadthousands of customers who literally would never shop elsewhere.Our net profit was higher than almost every other UK retailer – largelybecause we didn’t need to compete on price – we competed on service.Extreme service.The online aspect was something virtually unheard of in the music industryaround then. I set about learning how to code websites and built a resourcethat allowed people to access and purchase millions of items at the click of abutton.Competitors had absolutely no idea what the secret sauce was because theywere not able to see the hundreds of thousands of micro-interactions andconversations happening between staff, customers and suppliers.Other retailers wrote vitriolic letters to the trade magazines claiming that the‘internet’ was ‘the enemy’ and hundreds of them got into debate about ‘how tostop this online threat’.I was centrally placed as one of these ‘new media rebels’ and even fuelled thefire by extolling the virtues of online in all trade publications whenever possible. Right in their faces.Brilliant.We were able to be completely disruptive and for a while we pretty much hadthe online market to ourselves.After I had won the ‘Best UK Salesperson’ award in 2002 I was voted to bethe Chairman of the entire UK Retail Industry Committee.I wrote a short book called ‘Survival Guide for the 21st Century Retailer’.It was a set of insights for other shop owners – a lightweight guide for retailerswho wanted a peak into the future of the industry. Actually, it was the firstCommunication Ideal volume in many ways. I analogised that the train wasleaving the station and companies had a chance to jump on or watch it go by(with all their customers on board).Even though it was published (by the Music Industries Association) andretailed (at a whopping £4.99), the main engagement came unsurprisingly