If you knew your time would be up in a year, I bet you would work much less if at all, but statistically speaking, we will not die next year. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics the average life expectancy of a new-born in the late 1990’s is 77 years for a male and 82 years for a female so working and building our asset base is part of our long term strategy.

So assuming we are the 80% of people who live to the new retirement age of 67 (Which may just change again before we reach 67) then the questions we must ask ourselves is how do we get the most out of our lives and what is our optimal work life balance?

There is no doubt that life in general is busier than in prior generations, my dad likes to remind me of that every time we speak. There are more “things” to buy, more mod-cons to assist us to be time efficient, although I am not convinced of that as an outcome and yet as a society we are claiming to be time poor.

We work more total hours, spread out over more days, and for many every day of the week is a working day. And yet the suicide rate is climbing steadily, again according to the ABS. Does this suggest that we work more and are less satisfied? Are the two linked?

Maybe the answer is individual.

Whatever your answer is, you may need to alter the amount of time you dedicate to the following areas of your life, to truly achieve your work/life balance.

Work/life Balance Wheel

Today’s post was found by Andrew Powell of Montreal Canada, sent to Dr Marc Dussault who then forwarded it on to me. It’s a great example of a promotional video for a Quick Service Retail operation.

Many of the business owners I meet and work with are frustrated with their sales and customer counts because they feel that they are doing everything they possibly can to ensure ‘EXCEPTIONAL CUSTOMER SERVICE’ not realizing that the product itself acts as a barrier to sales growth.

What does your business do to measure customer satisfaction of your product and does your business act on this feedback whether positive or negative?

One business has taken the measurement and action to a whole new level not shying away from the negative feedback, they have embraced the feedback and as an entire corporation of 9,000+ stores made the changes that their customers have demanded of them.

Any Fast Food Franchise or independent operator would be well served to create a video that tells ‘their story’ like this. Please enjoy!

Further information on this story can be found at pizzaturnaround.com

This is so true with quick service retailing.

We have all experienced the customer service representative that ignores us in favor of their computer or POS screen. Trying to make eye contact or just get a response from someone absorbed in data entry can be annoying.

But here’s the thing most retailers don’t realise.

Even if a customer doesn’t remember being ignored, they may (subconsciously) associate your business with an (unknown, but felt) sense of frustration, distance or lack of ‘connection’. Those feelings will build up unbeknownst to the client and they may eventually take their patronage elsewhere.

Customer Service With A Smile

The sad part of all of this is it all happens without conscious knowledge or intent. The client simply has no compelling reason to want or desire to return so he or she simply doesn’t.

That’s a killer for a retailer.

So what can you do to optimise the necessary POS data entry while offering outstanding customer service?

POS Customer service Tip #1:

Explain what you’re doing to the customer while you so it. That means as you’re typing, you say “I’m pulling up your account file to make sure our records are up-to-date” By doing that, the customer is INVOLVED in the process. Engaging the customer in the task CONNECTS you to him/her. As the information comes up, you can mention something like “Just to make sure, you’re still at 123 Main Street right?” You can then add a personal anecdote “I used to live near there, the dog park was great when I had my golden retriever…” Adding a personal anecdote builds rapport within the process that otherwise alienates the customer. Of course, if you’re really systemised, you’ll start to input your customer’s tastes and predispositions such as “ dog or cat owner, single, has children, tennis player, classic car enthusiast, etc. That will help you become more specific in your marketing campaigns.

POS Customer service Tip #2:

This customer service tip is obvious, but needs to be repeated – look up from the screen and make frequent eye contact with your customer. It may slow down your typing, but this is a key component to establishing rapport and a personal connection.

POS Customer service Tip #3:

A savvy customer service person will use the time the computer takes to load or perform a transaction to chat with the customer. This needs to be systemised within your sales process. The more natural it is, the better the outcome, but it does need to be part of the process as much as getting a credit card slip signature.

So there you have it, 3 simple customer service tips that can help you make a difference to your retail sales – especially the valuable repeat sales that are a must for any retailer to build a profitable business foundation for the future.

Your Customers Are Made of Money

I HAVE to break this to you, businesses cannot survive without customers. A business without customers is like a well without out water. Good customer service is the ground water that fills up your well. You’re high and dry without a reputation for taking care of your customers. Plus, the longer you keep customers, the wetter your well, because long term customers are more profitable. A 5% increase in customer retention can boost profit by 25% to 125%

Not digging the well analogy? Here is another way to think about it; your customers are money, gold to be exact, because they appreciate in value as time goes on. You may not think of customers as goods that can be bought or traded, but they’re assets to your company, just like stock investments or an office computer. They are them most vital part of your business’s economic machinery.

You pay hard-earned business capital to market to your customers, you essentially buy their patronage, one person at a time. Once bought, a customer will continue to generate your income, without much further advertising effort. On the flip side, customers who leave take with them every cent that you invested in marketing to them.

Customer retention is FREE MONEY! If you go the extra mile to keep customers, your marketing budget will go down, and your profits will go through the roof. You’ll have to ‘buy’ less new customers, and loyal customers generate some powerful word-of-mouth patronage.

Losing customers has the opposite effect, and can be truly devastating. And, you have no excuse for customers walking away from your business because of poor service, it’s the most controllable factor of your business. Technology can fail, accounts can pay late, but there is no reason to be rude or inattentive to a customer.

One way to gear up for fantastic customer service it to train employees to see each customer for how much they’re really worth. They may treat customers a bit differently if they imagined them as giant stacks of money or piles of gold. Each retained customer is (literally) money in the bank.

This question is almost impossible to answer, because technology is changing at such a rapid pace and the bad news for you if you were planning to predict the future trends; the velocity is increasing at an exponential rate.

Terms such as “Social media”, “Facebook”, “Blogging”, “iPhone Applications”, “Convergence technology” which didn’t exist 5 years ago are now commonplace. A bevy of so called “Social media experts” are only a click away should your business need assistance and/or advice in this realm.

What did we do without this technology, and do we really need it? Is it an indulgence?

Take the Domino’s Pizza iPhone Application for example:

It’s a Pizza store in your pocket!

Ordering pizza pastas desserts and sides for pick up or delivery has never been easier, and most of all it’s fun. Order it anywhere anytime. It’s that simple. No registering online first, just download the app and you’re ready to go. Whether you are using it for the first time or the hundredth time placing an order is easy.

It’s your choice. Hot pizzas, pastas and salads or extras such as drinks and desserts. Fancy a pizza? View your pizza selection easily with the turnstile function. Found one you like? Tap the pizza to choose. A different screen will show you more details about the pizza.

In this screen you have the choice to select the number of pizzas you want, as well as the options to change the pizza base sauce, crusts or toppings, don’t want tomato but would like olives instead, no problem!

Finished customizing tap add to order and you will be taken back to the main menu to continuing ordering or complete your order. Your order details will update at the bottom of the screen in the ‘my order’ icon and will show how many item’s you’ve ordered and what the price is so far.

Finished, did you get everything?

Once you’ve finished, placing your order is easy. Select place your order and you’ll be taken to the payment page. Will it be cash or credit? Once you’ve selected place your order now your order will be sent to store and an order confirmation page will appear.

Once your order’s been placed with the store, you can track your order using the pizza tracker. See exactly when your order is being made when it’s cooking when it’s ready for pick-up is or when it’s on its way to your door. Keep your iPhone handy, track it and enjoy it.

What’s next, and will you and your business be at the forefront of technology or scratching your head wondering what the phone number for your local pizza shop is?

This app is only available at Domino’s Pizza thru iTunes.
For more information visit www.dominos.com.au

Let me start at the beginning -

Recently, I attended a Boardroom Briefing by Dr Marc Dussault, the World’s #1 Exponential Strategist and I thought I just had to share one of more than 100 ideas he presented – with his permission of course!

Dr Marc is constantly finding new and innovative ways to help his clients grow their businesses – exponentially. What that means is increasing sales 100 to 200% in 12 to 24 months. The only way to do that is by thinking as he calls it – antimimeticisomorphically.

In the fast food, quick service retail business, a lot of people think marketing doesn’t apply to them because retail clients don’t want to give their personal contact details over the counter.

That’s not unlike a brothel.

All brothel clients are called John Smith. They want to keep their identity confidential.

Just like a fast food franchise client.

So what can you do? Sure the ‘coffee club’ buy 10, get 1 free card is popular, but not completely exponential. Sure you can match the reward to the client, but you can’t track the effectiveness of the campaign SCIENTIFICALLY.

What you need to start doing is capturing DEMOGRAPHIC details with a checklist and NUMBER the cards to TRACK them.

Imagine if you were able to identify:

• That your sales to mid career women were TWICE the sales to young male students?
• That the average repeat visit was 12.8 days. You could give people a coupon to come back within 3 days to INCREASE the frequency of visits – that could add 10% or more to your sales at a cost of PENNIES. The point here is to give the coupons ONLY to this clientele – NOT en masse. For most franchises, the mass approach is too costly and doesn’t work. One-off visitors are not interested – you need to TARGET your marketing.
• That your sales to one person is less than when 2 people come to the counter – you could offer a 2:1 to start getting people to come in groups – imagine having a 3:1 or 4:1 campaign? Again, this is not a campaign you offer to everyone, just the segmented clients that you have identified and track.

Now you’re starting to think as Dr Marc says – EXPONENTIALLY.

There are countless ways of tracking clients -unfortunately, I can’t get into all these strategies in detail with you – that’s what Marc does, what I want to accomplish with this blog is get you to start CONSIDERING marketing more seriously to help you grow your business.

You can always get in touch with Marc – I highly recommend his products and services, in fact, we’re working together on products just for quick service businesses – more on that in a few blog posts… In those posts, we’ll cover strategies from end-to-end.

Stay tuned and if you haven’t registered to this blog by now, please do it now.

Just register on the right hand side —>

Now I understand that as a franchise, you have constraints and limitations, but what I’m suggesting is that you make suggestions like this to your franchisor – to create themes of napkins that reinforce YOUR message.

Of course if you are not a franchise, you have no constraints or limits and you can do whatever you want!

Exponential Marketing Idea

This strategy was sent to me by the World’s #1 Exponential Strategist, Dr Marc Dussault. He is constantly finding new and innovative ways to help his clients grow their businesses – exponentially. What that means is increasing sales 100 to 200% in 12 to 24 months. The only way to do that is by thinking as he calls it – antimimeticisomorphically.

As an Exponential Growth Strategist, Dr Marc is always thinking outside the square – like in this instance (where possible) you can have a sponsor actually PAY for your napkins for the benefit of being co-branded on your napkins! That means you have FREE napkins and a new ‘partner’ who adds value to your clients. If you are a health food oriented store, you could connect with your local gym, pilates or yoga studio.

If you’re more in the mainstream fast food, you can partner up with the local cinema or night club to announce new bands or events.

You get the idea – once you think exponentially, it’s hard to stop!

Contact us and get your competitive edge back. Customer service is the cornerstone of a successful quick service retail business. Without great staff, you’re fragile and vulnerable to a competitor who can quickly steal your clients. Don’t let that happen. Bullet-proof your business while you have more fun enjoying the process!

Exponential Marketing Case Study: Pizza Shop

This strategy comes from the World’s #1 Exponential Strategist, Dr Marc Dussault. He is constantly finding new and innovative ways to help his clients grow their businesses – exponentially. What that means is increasing sales 100 to 200% in 12 to 24 months. The only way to do that is by thinking as he calls it – antimimeticisomorphically.

Let me give you an example:

This is a classic strategy used over and over and over again – each time with remarkable success. It begs the question – if it’s so successful, why doesn’t everyone do it?

Great question, but that’s a topic for Dr Marc to answer – let’s get to the Pizza Shop Case Study shall we?

The strategy is a direct mail letter. In this instance it’s relatively short, but with a message that resonates like thunder. Keep reading!

On the front of the letter is a small bag of flour attached to it with a staple.

The letter starts with something like …

“Dear Neighbor, You must be asking yourself why I’ve attached a little tiny bag of flour to this letter? Here’s why:”

The letter goes on to talk about their ’secret flour’, the chemical structure of the flour, the high protein content, where they get their flour, and why they pay more for their flour than the competition does.

For this to work and NOT be a gimmick is to do an excellent job building the pizza dough and ingredients up, and play down the inferior ingredients your competition uses or pricing comparisons.

A great letter can talk about how your pizza is hand-made daily, in-house, while others farm it out to outside companies who mass produce a cheaper, lower-quality dough that shows up ready to bake.

A killer offer can include a guarantee: Something like “if it’s not the best you’ve ever eaten, we’ll refund your purchase price. In fact, when you stop by in the next two weeks, I’d like you to have our signature Caesar salad with your dinner (my treat).”

Of course the final kicker is a coupon at the bottom with the free Caesar salad and Focaccia bread offer that people can bring in – You MUST HAVE A CLEAR CALL TO ACTION, otherwise it’s an impotent marketing campaign.

This is brilliant – so the question is – WHAT DO YOU DO THAT IS SPECIAL AND UNIQUE?

What (TRUE) story can you tell that will capture the prospect’s imagination?

It has to be TRUE and CONSISTENT with what you do and who you are – otherwise it’s a gimmick and just won’t work.

Hmmm….

Interesting – you’re struggling to think of ways you stand out from the crowd…

Interesting – that’s EXACTLY why you don’t have more clients lining up to buy from you. Solve that problem and watch what happens!

Psst! If you are not a gifted in the art of copywriting, hire a professional – it’ll be worth the investment. If you don’t get the words, story and approach right, trust me, it won’t work.

Sounds like a lot of work doesn’t it? It is and it isn’t.

The first time you do it, it is, BECAUSE it’s the first time – then it gets easier. So just get started and let me know how you go. I’d love to share your success story with our readers!