Do you live up to your advertising?
Every day, drycleaners, like many other companies, spend millions of dollars
promoting their businesses.
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But advertising only makes promises about your service. Whether or not your
service actually lives up to that promise depends on employees who succeed or
fail at living up to customers’ expectations.
I remember several years ago, when I first came to the Golomb Group, an
entrepreneurial businessman from California called me wanting to promote a drop
store he’d opened a year or so earlier. His main plant maintained a good volume and he
saw no need to market that location (but that’s another story).
He wanted me to give him a sure-fire way to increase his sales at this drop
store and, of course, to fulfill the plan for him. I told him the easiest and
cheapest way to do this was to select one of our stock postcards, make a
generous offer, and let us mail them, on a monthly basis, to his best
prospects. Simple enough, and something we’ve successfully done for hundreds of drycleaners across the United States.
Now this particular businessman owned a wide variety of businesses in the area
of California where he lived. He spent most of his time riding in the back of
his chauffeur-driven Mercedes-Benz. From there he ran his varied business
interests, save for face-to-face business meetings and the occasional visit to
one of his businesses.
Sounds like fun, but not what I would consider the ideal way to manage any kind
of service business, especially a drycleaning operation.
He wanted my expert advice on every aspect of the mailing program.
First, on selecting the target market. I proposed prospects with “average to above-average income living within a 1½-mile radius of the drop store.
He liked this idea except “why not target only the really affluent people, who make $150,000+ a year, and
whose homes are worth a million dollars or more?”
I explained that he was eliminating the middle- to upper-middle class clients,
who sometimes are more frequent customers than the very rich. While he
appreciated my advice, he was sure his way was smarter.
He wanted my best opinion as to what his offer should be to attract these
affluent prospects.
I explained that the stronger the offer, the better the draw would be. I
suggested, 25 percent off all drycleaning brought in with the postcard.
He laughingly agreed that 25 percent off would indeed be a nice offer to
prospective customers, however, that would be an expensive proposition on his
part and “we could probably attract just as many customers with an offer of 10 percent
off.”
His next question was: “How can we be sure none of my regular customers get this offer?”
To which I replied: “I think we want to be sure that all of your regular customers do get this offer.”
After all, Stan Golomb’s original philosophy, when he founded this company, was that there are three
ways to increase your sales.
One, get new customers, which is difficult and expensive.
Two, get your regular customers to use you more frequently.
And three, get your regular customers to bring in larger orders.
Two of these three ways to increase your sales are from your regular customers.
Why would you not want to market to them?
Even though he “respected my opinion,” or so he said, he was, after all, a successful businessman, in his own right,
and opted in favor of leaving his regular customers out of the marketing mix.
At this point, he was calling me every other day, first thing in the morning: 8
a.m. my time: 6 a.m. California time. By then, he was already “at work,” riding in the back of his Mercedes. He wanted to know when the cards were being
printed? Then, when were they being mailed? And, naturally, why hadn’t they been delivered, yet?
Finally, the cards were delivered. The resulting increase in sales was barely a
blip on his radar. He was upset, to say the least, and wanted answers, from me,
as to why, after all of this careful planning and my “expert advice,” would the results be so dismal.
I pointed out that, while I had given my best advice, that was not exactly the
course he had elected to follow.
I reminded him that he chose to target only highly affluent prospects, thereby
eliminating some very good potential upper-middle-class people; that he reduced
the offer to an amount that produced very little incentive; and, that he
bypassed those most likely to respond — his regular customers.
He agreed “to give me one last chance” to prove that this whole concept of advertising and marketing wasn’t just some hocus-pocus scam to relieve him of his hard-earned money.
We planned another mailing, offering 25 percent off to all customers and
prospects with incomes over $50,000.
A couple of weeks later the cards were delivered and we all sat anxiously
awaiting the response. He in the back of his Mercedes and me in my office.
To everyone’s amazement, the response was pathetic. Very few people responded, including
regular customers, and the sales increase was hardly worth the effort.
By this time he was calling me at 8 a.m. on a daily basis. If I was such a “marketing guru” why wasn’t his cash register ringing!
I was stumped. I had already gone down my list of prerequisites: Do you do
quality work? Do you give fast, friendly service? Is your store open at
convenient times for the traffic flow? Is your store easily accessible from
both directions? He had answered all of these in the affirmative.
What was the problem? And “why didn’t I have the answer?”
As fate would have it, a couple of weeks later his store manager, and primary
counterperson, was ill and the businessman brought in his niece to cover for
her.
The niece began to hear horror stories from the few die-hard customers who still
frequented this location. The manager was rude to everyone: the other
employees; the customers; basically anyone who dared to cross the threshold of
this store. And since this businessman seldom even visited the store himself,
he was totally unaware of the real problem.
Most people might conclude, from here, that the manager was the problem for this
store’s inability to bolster sales. The manager wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was this particular businessman’s lack of communication, both with his customers and especially with his
employees. It’s every businessperson’s responsibility to not only know how their customers are being treated, but to
direct the customer care plan.
Without a functioning customer care plan, all the advertising in the world won’t save your business.
