Had a call from a lady in distress.
Linda (not her real name) owns a fresh food cum delicatessen in a Melbourne suburb and is in trouble and asked if I could help.
Delving into her circumstances revealed a litany of woes.
Business had been going down for about 4 years. A major supermarket chain had opened almost next door and during the construction phase completely occupied their car park so her customers couldn’t park. As a result half her clientele walked away, never to return.
The shopping centre she’s in is dilapidated and badly in need of refurbishment. It’s a furnace in summer and an icebox in winter. Not exactly conducive when it comes to shoppers sitting down and having a coffee and cake in her store.
I asked her what she sold. All the usual groceries and fruit as well as some specialist items.
But was there anything she sold that people couldn’t get somewhere else? Were the prices any better? “No not really.” “So why would I come to you over the supermarket next door?”
And therein lies the first part of the problem. It is extremely hard for a small business to be everything to everyone. Linda had no “niche”. Something that she was known for that people wanted and couldn’t easily get somewhere else.
Second, she had no traffic to the store. While she’d spent a fair bit of money placing ads in the local paper, the walkers who deliver them, hadn’t. (A major problem by the way with a lot of local papers.) So the money was effectively wasted.
She has major staffing issues which meant she was working in the shop 12 hours a day, 6 and a half days a week. She had no time to work on the business, plan, strategize, market etc.
Linda was down to the last of her cash and was about to shut up shop rather than throwing more good money after bad. Sometimes you just have to call it quits and start again.
So if she were to start again, what would I recommend she do?
First of all, research your market.
Find out whether there’s a market for what you want to sell. If you sell a premium product, you’d better open in an area where people want and are used to paying a premium for specialist items. Yes, some people will travel if you make yourself a “destination”, but it takes time and a lot of advertising dollars to get that traffic. Far easier to co-locate yourself where people already are.
Second, never, ever, ever make the mistake that just because you have a wonderful product, unique recipe etc., people will beat a path to your door. They won’t!
One thing I can absolutely tell you as we continue to work with businesses ranging from small solo entrepreneurs to 8 figure enterprises doing $15 to $20 million in turnover with very healthy profit margins, is every business, no matter how big or small has to aggressively market itself. Unlike Kevin Costner who heard voices in the movie, “Field of Dreams”, if you build it, they will not come – unless you tell them about it and give them reasons to visit and buy.
Third, many a business falls in love with their own hype and start believing their own press. They think they’re wonderful, their product is wonderful and everyone should “automatically” know about it and come calling. Don’t fall into this trap.
Every business be it service, retail or manufacturing no matter how good they are at doing whatever it is they do, will die a quick, painful death if they can’t generate a steady stream of good quality clients.
You cannot afford to sit on your laurels. Just because you’re a big name and did well in the past, does not mean you’ll continue to do so. Competition is incredibly fierce with new players entering the game constantly.
So it’s only your ability to get your message out to your potential audience (prospects) as well as your current clients (to keep them in the fold), that will keep you viable, let alone grow.
All of which comes back to having a marketing “system” that constantly brings in prospects. Ad hoc doesn’t cut it. Marketing has to be constant. People have short memories and are fickle. If you expect them to remember you, they won’t.
We’ve spent the last 12 years learning from the best marketers in the world and helping our clients implement proven marketing systems using both on-line and traditional off-line strategies. Implementing our sales strategies took one of our clients from $3M to $11.5M in 3 short years.
This stuff works – if you follow our advice and implement it.
If you want to make 2012 your best year ever, talk to us about creating a "system" of marketing that creates an endless funnel of potential clients. Don’t leave it too late and end up like Linda.
Rashid.
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