While methods may change, principles don't

The times, they are a-changin' in this week's 2 Per-Specht-ives Podcast. Father and son duo David and Joshua Specht share their thoughts on how technology has changed the business world. While it evolves almost daily, they dive into how the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the use of technology to conduct day-to-day business. Your generational lesson: Technological advances have changed core elements of a business — marketing, customer service, and sales to name a few — but the main tenets of those elements remain the same. Your Gen. X Advice: Many people have avoided technological changes, so there's still a need for people to engage with customers and clients in a face-to-face way. It's about doing it in an efficient, effective way. Your Gen. Z Advice: While technology makes doing business easier and quicker, there's a drawback to using technology to conduct your business — it can make your people lazy, or give a way for the customer to avoid doing business with you. The COVID-19 pandemic opened up the business world to be able to engage with the public digitally. Video meetings are viable because it allows users to see each other. To market to your customer, then you need to think about Facebook Live video because it catches the eye and appeals to people by instant gratification to see reactions in real time. So, the point of marketing is to gain a spotlight on whatever you're promoting...but technology has changed how you do it. Another area where technology has impacted businesses is customer service. The same rules apply when dealing with customers, but how you offer customer service is different. Chatting with a customer allows input, but the business keeps customers' emotions at bay while forming a well-thought-out answer. Technological advances have changed the method of how results are delivered in a business. For example, sales were done away from the office. But sales are based on relationships, and relationship-building has changed to where that can be built electronically. It still takes multiple touches, 7-14 in fact, for the customer to buy. But technology has compressed a timeline into days that would normally take weeks.