OutOfRut

COACH SILBERKLEIT PULLS CLIENTS OUT OF THE RUT

Bicycle Dealer Showcase Magazine, July 1997

By Mark Evertz

A 12-hour day of selling, answering questions, solving problems and making everybody happy can lead to a big fat headache at the end of the day. Multiply that by six or seven days a week over 10 to 20 years and the headache can turn into a life sentence of routine for bicycle dealers.

Welcome to "The Rut."

Have you lost that lovin' feeling? A burst of energy and a flood of ideas await in the mind and body of David Silberkleit. That hand reaching down to pull you out of the rut you're in is the hand of a business coach who happens to be nuts about cycling. We are talking about a man who cycled from Hanoi to Saigon just for fun.

Silberkleit, 36, started Empower LLC four years ago in Stamford, Conn., with the mission of helping business owners realize their talents and buff up that bottom line. Silberkleit jumped into the family business as the marketing director of the franchise his grandfather, Louis, started with John Goldwater. If Louis Silberkleit and John Goldwater don't ring a bell, their legacy might. The pair created Archie Comic Publications, the home of Archie, Veronica and everyone's favorite dope, Jughead.

Making a fairly healthy salary and firing up the staff with his enthusiasm for eight years at Archie Comics left Silberkleit eager to take to the world on his own. The way Silberkleit tells it, he was seeking more variety, more of a challenge. Four years later, he got what he asked for. More than 30 clients later, running the gamut from dentists, to an independent music label president and on to the neighborhood independent bike dealer, Silberkleit appears to be putting his stamp on something: getting people stoked about their jobs again.

One such person was James Sener of Design In Action, who, according to Silberkleit, revolutionized the Girvin fork line and has his designs used by a variety of big names in the bike biz, including Cannondale.

"My job is to keep him in action and to keep his talent being used to the fullest," Silberkleit says of Sener.

This is done through a phone dialogue between coach and pupil that can range from talking through a bad day to launching design and marketing ideas at each other to see what sticks. Face-to-face visits also aren't uncommon with the coach. Silberkleit, like a Phil Jackson to Michael Jordan, looks at the big picture to make the star of the relationship "aware of his blind spots."

Bicycle shop owner Akira Sato of Evolution Bicycles in Stamford was a man in his late twenties, working his butt off, eating very little and coming home wiped out after putting heart and soul into the shop he bought in 1995. With Silberkleit's trips to the local deli, Sato ate better, had more energy for things like bike rides with his new coach and increased his sales 123 percent from August 1995 to August 1996. "The cyclist can rely on a coach for guidance," Sato says, "but the cyclist is responsible for performance. A coach tries to figure out how to get that performance. That's what David does."

HOW YOU ASK?

With a three-tiered process that starts with a business owner being willing to listen to somebody else for a change. "The first requirement is to make an investment in yourself," says Silberkleit. I call it 'being coachable.'" Next is to actively search for that blind spot. For Sato, that blind spot was charging too little for the top-to-bottom service and product he was giving customers. The final phase is to recognize and put into practice the philosophy of "customer as a lifelong relationship."

Silberkleit's biggest challenge is to convince his clients that more money isn't necessarily the answer to promoting your business. When Sato didn't want to part with $5,000 for a big sign for his store front, Silberkleit countered with a novel idea of putting a florescent yellow bike hanging outside the shop to catch the eyes of passersby. Evolution Bicycles is now known in the area as "that shop with the yellow bike," (OK, it's also known as that place with "A Passion for Cycling" and an owner who now has the energy to share that passion, but that's another story.)

The bike paint cost Sato $4.95-a savings of $4,995.05. Store design and promotion of Evolution Bicycles as the shop with a passion for cycling has converted the shop into "a landmark of the community." Silberkleit says.

The goal is to confront the issues of product, price and margins and to work around them. "There is a real concentration on margin and price, conversations on dating and a huge concentration on new product in the industry," Silberkleit surmises. "Those are certainly huge issues, but we can blow the lid off of those issues. My job is everything else and dating, price and margins."

For all of you dealers who take the off-season off, Silberkleit has something to say to you: Don't. "Many dealers don't look at the off-season as an opportunity to lay out, plan and design for a killer season," he says. "You can plan for success."

That observation is one that Sato remembers well. "Everybody says, 'I'll do that tomorrow, or later. What he (David) does is he gets you to do it now and points out the way to get it done. He teaches you how to solve problems."

That problem solving will run a client anywhere from $250 to $750 a month. For those who have a tough time parting with that kind of dough, first think of the possibility of increasing your sales by as much as 123 percent and be aware that motivational tapes are available for less. Silberkleit also has free newsletters available on the program. "I'm in the business for those 123-percent increases," he says. "I want to blow the lid off of what is stopping businesses from achieving their potential. Money can stop a lot of us."

Empower Coaching
33 Wallace Road
Stony Creek CT 06405

david@empowercoach.com
Phone: 203 488 9188