Tag Archives: Business and Economy

November 1, 2019 · 4:13 pm

Local Flavor

This Foodie Friday I’m writing to you from a condo in Myrtle Beach. It’s a place I used to come to only once a year with my golf outing but now that I only live a couple of hours away I’m down here more often. I’d be lying if I said that Myrtle Beach is one of my favorite places to go. Honestly, except for the golf (and there is LOTS of that here), there really isn’t much about it to love. The beaches further north on the coast are way better – less crowded, prettier, and less touristy.

Photo by Gabriel Garcia Marengo

One thing my golf group learned about Myrtle Beach long ago was that there really isn’t a lot of great food here. Oh sure, damn near every chain restaurant has one (or more) iterations and there are local executions of generic food types that one can find anywhere: Italian, sushi, burgers, etc. There are, however, a handful (OK, a couple of handfuls) of places that do their damndest to capture the local flavor and that’s our topic today.

I wrote about Mr. Fish 10 years ago and I still visit when I’m here. His success at capturing the local seafood flavors of the Carolina Coast has enabled him to build a much larger place. There is a huge local supermarket here – Boulineau’s – that has a great kitchen serving local specialties and taking out the fried chicken to the beach is a local tradition.

I’m not going to run down all of the local places that do similar things but it’s instructive to any of us in business. Sure, the national chains are mobbed by tourists that love the notion of eating the same meal here as they can get at home. Those aren’t the loyal customer base though. Any business should be trying to be a local business even if the local outpost is one of many. I represent a national coffee franchise that insists that each local cafe be decorated in a local style, using photos of the town in which it’s located. That’s smart in my book.

People look for the local flavor. You can see it in the push to patronize local small businesses. How can your business be “small” and capture the local flavor even as you grow? Something to think about!

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October 30, 2019 · 12:42 pm

Something For Nothing

I went to one of the warehouse club stores yesterday to make some bulk purchases. If you’ve ever been in one of them – Costco, BJ’s, Sam’s Club, etc. – you know that one feature of walking around the place is that there are usually free samples. You can taste the latest and greatest in meats, cheeses, and frozen things to cook while you’re too busy to make something yourself. That got me thinking about the fact that you really don’t see a lot of sampling elsewhere.

I’m a fan of the free trial. It gets customers walking through your door and using your product. What I don’t particularly like are those “free” trials that require you to fork over your credit card. Free means without strings, right? In particular, if you’re a business that is built around what I think is the gold standard – recurring revenues – you ought to be spending a good chunk of your marketing dollars on free trials.

It’s relatively simple math, right? What’s the lifetime value of a customer? What does it cost you to offer up a free trial – a visit, a free month, whatever? What is the conversion rate of those freebies – how many of the trials become regular customers? Recurring revenues are predictable and generally pretty stable. I bet you’ve signed up for subscriptions of some sort and forgotten you’ve done so or don’t use them as often as you thought you would. For a business, that’s a customer without costs, and that’s a nice margin!

When I talk to people who are looking at franchise opportunities and who don’t have a particular brand or industry in mind, I usually talk to them about the businesses with recurring revenue models. Things like cleaning services. Not a sexy business, but very profitable and that, in part, is because of the recurring revenues. Same thing with spa businesses or some hair salons that feature memberships. Are those businesses that can offer a free trial? Maybe if you’re an out-of-the-box thinker. Giving a converted customer the ability to give away a free trial to a friend is another great way to expand your base at very little cost.

Here is the thing about free trials leading to recurring revenues. As with any business, you have to maintain a high level of customer service. After all, when someone’s credit card is getting dinged each month and your business appears on their statement, it’s an opportunity for them to reconsider.  If they walk away, no amount of free sampling will get them back most of the time. Everyone loves something for nothing. The opposite – nothing for something – is very much NOT true!

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October 23, 2019 · 11:18 am

Learning From Leads

Like many businesses, I purchase leads to drive revenue. Leads are everything in the business I’m in now and without them, you starve. When I went to our consultants’ convention last July, nearly every conversation I had with one of my peers eventually turned to the subject of where we were sourcing leads and how productive those sources were. As an aside I’m having Glengarry Glen Ross flashbacks as I’m writing this:

These are the new leads. These are the Glengarry leads. To you, these are gold; you do not get these. Because to give them to you would be throwing them away.

In any event, following the convention, I tried out a couple of new lead sources and one of them has proven to be quite good. The reason I’m writing about them today, however, isn’t so much the quality of their leads as it is the quality of their customer experience. They do some things that are instructive for any business that has customers (and find me one that doesn’t!). If you don’t think it’s important, remember that Oracle found that 86 percent of consumers will pay more for a better customer experience.

First, although they sell packages of a fixed number of leads, they let me put together my own package as a test case. They were flexible and focused on my needs rather than on “this is how we do things.”

Second, they are generous with “freebies.” Sometimes the leads are actually not real people – the phone number is bad and the email bounces. Sometimes someone is playing a prank on someone else by sending their information in without their knowledge. Not only have I never had an issue getting the company to refund a lead because of that but they will sometimes throw me an extra couple of leads because I had a less than optimal experience. Let’s face it – who doesn’t love something for nothing?

Third, they follow-up. I get asked regularly if I’m happy with what I’m getting and if they can improve my experience in any way. That’s big because I know they’re listening and that they care. Of course, it’s imperative that if the customer does come up with a suggestion that you communicate back to that customer how you’ve handled it (and just tossing it in a drawer isn’t acceptible!).

That leads to another thought. We should always go overboard when correcting mistakes. Yes, they happen, but if you’re transparent about it and more than makeup for the error, people can be quite forgiving and what was a negative can become a positive.

It’s really about being customer-centric and showing those customers some love, isn’t it?

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