Dick Smith's Guide

One of Australia's home grown success stories is Dick Smith. In material I have collected over the years, I came across a number of articles dealing with the techniques that Dick used to achieve success with his chain of stores before he sold them to Woolworths. Dick broke his Rules for Success down into
A 4 Point Guide:

1. "Communicate Clearly" Most companies who have problems have generally failed to communicate effectively with their staff and most importantly, with their customers. Requests and directions are constantly misunderstood. Dick Smith claimed he was successful because he worked hard on reducing misunderstandings.
   
   Dick says, "When you are giving advice to someone, ask yourself... 'How are they misinterpreting what I'm saying?' In fact I tell them, 'This is probably the misunderstanding you are having, so don't have it!"



2. "Keep everything simple" In this ever increasingly complicated world, do everything possible to keep things simple. Dick's advice is, "I sell to people the way that I'd like to be sold to," and he found this was the best way.



3. "Get Up and Go" A major factor in success is to have enthusiasm. If people are not noticing how successful and hard-working you are, you might have to tell them. In the words of Dick Smith, "My attitude is to have a bit of get up and go. If you're not being recognised, work your guts out at being recognised. Tell people how good you are, because if you're going to wait on other people to recognise this fact, you will never get anywhere, and in fact you will have those forces against you."



4. "Copy the Success Of Others" An interesting statistic is that Franchised Businesses have a much higher success rate than all other forms of Business start-up. The reason is simple, you are combining proven systems and products with Self Employed Business People. You are quite simply, copying other success."
   
   Dick Smith gives the example of when he first went into Mail Order. "Next door to us was a saddlery company called John Charlton. They used to get great bags of Mail. I walked in and said, 'What is it, drugs or something?' and they said 'No. It's mail order. We make a fortune out of it.'
   
   So Dick asked them if they would mind showing him how to do mail order, and they were flattered. He used their same order form, just putting Dick Smith in the spot where Charlton's was and got going. It was and still is, very successful. The most important attribute for success, according to Dick Smith, is to "work your guts out and let people know."