I read the news and it makes me sad for businesses today. It’s no news that we are in the midst of one of the worst economic crises ever, while working our way through one of the greatest periods of change ever. These two things are not unrelated. We are undergoing a revolution in commerce, logistics, and communications as disruptive as the Industrial Revolution.

Some gurus will self-assuredly tell you it is the “social media revolution.” That’s just one strong signal of the revolution that is occurring. In our book, “Waiting For Your Cat to Bark,” my brother Jeffrey and I explained his concept of the evolution of commerce. We wrote that in the history of sales and marketing, the need that drives this evolution is reducing friction in the customers’ buying process. As changes in technology, communications, and logistics become possible, market forces push businesses to evolve strategies that entice customers to buy.

So what is this revolution that we can all readily observe? Ubiquitous connectivity has brought us to the tipping point where the customer is now largely in control of their experience. Where that isn’t true yet, it’s only a matter of time till it is – no business will be exempt. From now on, customers will increasingly seek experiences that meet or exceed their expectations and let them buy the way they want to. Companies that don’t choose to be authentically customer-centric and learn to quickly communicate, iterate, and adapt to change will struggle.

Think about how much has changed in the last five years on the consumer side since the book was written.

Hey Retailers! Offline Is the New Online

For the past decade, people have been announcing and still waiting for the year of mobile. It never came because of the limitations of mobile technology. Enter smartphones (e.g., iPhones, Android) and now we are an “always connected” customer. Applications like RedLaser and ShopSavvy give consumers the ability to walk into stores, scan bar codes, read reviews for products, and find the best value either locally or online (logistics make the differences minor). If the ability to gather information before buying products online made customers harder to sell, what do you think having that information at their fingertips while in your store will do?

Still buying on a little phone isn’t easy, and most retailers’ mobile apps are no better than websites from 1995 to 1996, but just imagine when women who control the spending have their 7 inch iPad or similar device in their purse and the experience is far smoother. It’s coming!

The problem: Is your organization ready to handle this change?

Is Your Corporate Metabolism Sluggish Like the Economy?

Corporate metabolism is the term I use to describe the speed at which organizations can make decisions, adapt, and evolve. Things are progressing at a faster pace today than ever before, yet corporations struggle to empower themselves to change with them. An example of why Amazon was able to capture about 25 percent of the e-commerce transactions in the U.S. is how two hours after the death of Michael Jackson, it had reconfigured its MP3 store. That’s right; in two hours most companies couldn’t even coordinate a conference call, yet Amazon reconfigured the home page of one of its most important businesses. At any given time, Amazon has almost 200 tests running on its website and it was among the first to leverage social commerce effectively by harnessing the power of ratings and reviews. Jeff Bezos proclaimed early on that advertising as we know it was dead and that he was better off investing his millions in advertising budget into building a better experience. He understands the dynamic forces that are driving commerce. Does your organization? Can your organization keep up?

This is not exclusively a retail issue. It’s hard to imagine the number of companies that were innovators in a technology that were able to capture a significant portion of the marketplace because of their first mover advantage, who then lost that “startup” edge. What happened is that their corporate metabolism slows and then they struggle to grow. If you need a cautionary tale, think about why Yahoo failed versus the speedy and agile Google. Will Skype be the next poster child for a slow corporate metabolism killing a company?

The Management Bureaucracy Must Evolve

Think about the typical command and control corporate bureaucracy that exists in most companies. All those layers of management were best suited for the Industrial Revolution’s factory model of doing business. For over a century that worked fine, but that model is ill-suited to today’s environment.

Change is the one business concept you can count on. Whenever you’re feeling comfortable, fat, and happy there is somebody who will eat your lunch and they’ll do it quickly and inexpensively. How quickly you handle change depends on how much your employees are empowered to make decisions and how fast you can shift your entire organization. You can leverage technology that helps speed up your organization and that gives you the flexibility to test, target, and personalize across channels the experience the way customers want it. If you haven’t made significant changes yet, you better find ways to change and speed your corporate self up rapidly.

Technology, logistics, and communications are coming at us faster than a meteor. Remember that it was a meteor that killed the dinosaurs but allowed mammals (smaller, speedier, and adaptable) to survive. I hope dear reader that you’re not a dinosaur.

Advertising guru, Roy Williams likes to say “Advertising only accelerates the inevitable” today I would add that “Social media only accelerates the inevitable.”

The point is simple, if you have a good business, with strong values, a great product/service, that takes good care of employees and customers, advertising will help amplify your great story and your results.

If you have a lousy product, treat customers and employees without respect, with advertising you’ll soon be out of business (although some airlines and banks have consistently managed to defy this rule).

Used to be if you had a lousy business you could fool some people in to buying from you and word of mouth would eventually catch up with you as the expression went one person who would then tell twelve… But that was another day. Today one person Tweets, updates their status, creates a YouTube video, post a review or blogs and thousands if not millions might see it.

It’s All About Me, The Customer

Peter Drucker said the “The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”

Notice the focus on the customer, not the product or service. The point of your business should be to fill needs and create value for your customers. Too many companies still practice accidental marketing. They hope that social media marketing is their magic blue pill to great results.

An Apple a Day Keeps the Social Away

You don’t have to be social, but you do need to provide value for your customers. Apple is not a social company, it is not open to having a dialogue with everyone, nor does it need to. As long as they continue to fill needs and bring value to customers. Some die-hard social media “experts” will argue with me, but you can’t argue with Apple’s results. Being social is not part of their corporate metabolism and it doesn’t look like they need to change that anytime soon. But you are also not Apple.

The Social Values

The social media revolution though does signify certain cultural and societal values shifting. We expect a business to have respect for the customer, create good products/services (or we’ll review them negatively), have good customer service, and we expect some level of transparency and authenticity from the organization.

Being social is about values, beliefs and attitudes. Values and attitudes you have or don’t or would like to have. Keep in mind if you don’t have them changing attitudes and beliefs can be difficult, un-natural and you will resist it. As much as change is a constant, as humans we seek to keep the status quo.

You can’t fake social. Just because you post some YouTube videos, put up a fan page, start a blog or twitter account, does not mean you are “social.” If you are not prepared to walk the talk and align your values don’t believe the tactics will bring results.

Do not believe the tactics can replace the strategy. However, if you are prepared for real change starting down this path to social commerce can be transformative.

You can always put lipstick on a pig, but at the end of the day you still have a pig, although possibly a pretty pig.