9. October 2011 by Bob Griffin.

I always enjoy working with new business owners.  They have a keen eye toward profits and a clear picture of where they want their business to go.  It is that fresh attitude and vitality that I thrive on and keeps me going.  I love the look of pure energy that they show.  It is what makes other people around them encourage them and also to be a little jealous of the path the owner is on.  Every book on leadership, entrepreneurship, and self improvement talks about that spark of life that the person who breaks away and runs toward the freedom of owning a business.  It is also what doesn’t last…at least not long enough.

There is a reason that a store sees huge boosts in sales and customer counts when a new owner takes over.  There is a reason that word of mouth marketing buzzes with the talk of a change to an old establishment and how much better it feels.  It is because of that spark.  And sparks flame out.  How do you keep that spark alive? 

At Business Bulldog we live a business philosophy of “Small Wins”.

A small win is when you can easily see a change for the better and nobody had to move too far from where they were.  Small wins change things gradually and are sustainable.  I have been in business consulting for far more years than I care to mention here and I can tell you that the guy who buys a business and turns it around fast can’t keep it that way for long.  Small changes every day make people notice a something is different (like when there is a new owner), but it is easy to keep going and build on.

Big changes are exhausting and cause chaos.

There are people reading this who can point to a store that they bought, gutted the place and the personnel, and made a million dollars.  Good for you.  I bet you can’t do it again. There is a reason why gutting and burning the old way a business was run is a bad idea and it falls on the reason you bought the business in the first place.

If the business was so wonderfully great that you were willing to put good money down to buy it, then why did you think that making big changes would be a good idea?  If was run so poorly that you had to break out the blow torch and start making charcoal, why didn’t you just lease a space down the street and put them out of their misery?  It was because there was a brand worth saving.

If you want to be the grand savior, you have to start by realizing that the reason you wanted to buy the place is the same reason customers spend money there.  Move too far away from that and you will fail.  I watch major companies struggle with leaders who want to make their mark when they take over and they run off customers and great staff.  how many companies can you name that had a change of leadership and when down in flames? Far too many.

No one likes change.

Small wins make huge differences.  I can tell you first hand that I have been the guy to shake things up as well as the guy who walks quietly into the room.  I have been stabbed and shot at for being the guy trying to make quick changes.  I like being the guy with the smile and the even temper.  I think it added ten years to my life to be the quiet guy with a simple plan.  People aren’t trying to kill me now.  Man, I wish I had learned that lesson sooner.

So, how does a new owner make small wins?  Find the reason that the business works in the first place and build on that.  I can tell you that there are really bad things going on at any business.  It is human nature for some employees to try to get away with whatever they can.  Even if it costs the business and their job.  I have no idea why they do it, but I can tell you there is someone working against you right now.  If you start to minimize the time that person has to do bad things, they will either work somewhere else because they can find the time to be bad or they will change with you.  Most people want to be recognized for being good.  So, recognize what is good about your new business.

Even if you have been the owner of your business for decades and want to see that new success, you can.  Find a way to have a small win and celebrate it.  I mean REALLY CELEBRATE IT!  Don’t go half way and expect your team to be hungry to show you more wins.  They will just think you have lost your mind and walk backwards away from you smiling and saying something reassuring until the reach the door.  Go BIG!

You can have rotten sales (it is one of the worst economic times in history) and still find a win.  It can be as simple as a customer compliment.

Find the customer who gave you good feedback and honor them.  Then, find the employee and make them king for the week.  There is no end to the new path that you can walk down if you are willing to celebrate small successes.

Tell me about your success and I will celebrate your business on this blog!!!  We have readers from 44 countries and I am sure you could use the free press.  Tell me about your small wins.

Email:  SmallWins@BusinessBulldog.com

Bob Griffin - CEO Business Bulldog

Twitter: @BusinessBulldog

LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=33704176&trk=tab_pro

Posted in Marketing, Customer Service, Creating the Culture, Being the Boss, Making Money | Print | 415 Comments »

16. January 2011 by Bob Griffin.

 **To my marketing friends - I like to make you think and push you to find better, newer ways to advertise. If this article bothers you, GOOD!  If that is all it did, you need a new job.  Start thinking creatively and find new and ORIGINAL ways to communicate with the customers.  Isn’t that why you got into marketing in the first place?? Operations can’t function without marketing but, it can’t function with bland marketing either.

I was looking through old pictures and ran across this one from last year of political ads that were jammed on the side of the road.  What a waste of time and money.  It looks horrible and it is trash.  I have never been a proponent of using these signs.  They are a weak way to grab attention at best and at worst, they are a blurry mess that drivers ignore.

First of all, if there is one of these signs, there seems to be several more that creep in over time.  It’s like a virus.  I drive down the road and there is one or two.  By the morning, there are several more and none of them make me want to stop and buy anything. Is there some kind of sign gnome that no one told me about that grows ugly signs in the middle of the night on the side of the road?  We should start hunting these damnable gnomes. Or at the very least set traps and relocate them to Las Vegas.  They’d love sign-growing gnomes there.

It may be my age (early 40’s) but I can’t read most of the signs because the typeface is too small to read. They jam too many messages into that small space and I can’t read it as I meander down the road at a whopping 45 miles per hour.  Who are they selling to?  It must be the speed readers with good eyes.  They are BIG spenders from what I hear.  For average people it looks like a blurry mess at any speed over idle.  Since there are stacks of them lining the roads, I mostly ignore them.  If you’ve seen one sign, you’ve seen them all.

Has anyone thought about the fact that the signs are below the driver’s door?  Unless Wonder Woman traded her invisible jet for an invisible car she ain’t reading the sign.  For you, it is below the car’s window and can’t be read even when stopped.  If it is across the road, you aren’t even looking at it.  Believe it or not, the government figured this one out before marketing people.  Their signs are at eye level for most people or at least high enough that drivers can read them.  I don’t remember a Stop sign being inches from the ground.  Not sure that would work for traffic.  Put the signs up on higher stands and you are starting to get somewhere with your message.

Business owners, think about how you are talking to your customers when you spend marketing dollars.  I don’t have real numbers but I suspect there are more marketing people than lawyers…Yick!  Some want your money and are going to show you statistics that indicate they have the world’s best way to get customers.  Use your common sense and think like your customers.  Will customers be intrigued, interested, and stop in because of your marketing?  If not, don’t do it.  We talk a lot about simple ways to grow your business on Business Bulldog.  Speak volumes the right way and do something better than your competition.  As an example of the wrong way to do things, I have no idea who any of the people advertising in the picture claim to be.  They wanted me to vote for them.  I didn’t remember any of them when I did vote.  Blurry, bland marketing doesn’t work.

Just a thought, if those filthy gnomes grab me because I outed them, tell my family I love them.

Bob
BGriffin@BusinessBulldog.com

Posted in Marketing, Creating the Culture, Saving Money, Making Money | Print | 77 Comments »

6. November 2010 by Noel Guilford.

In the seventh season of Seinfeld, a very memorable character nicknamed the “Soup Nazi” was introduced.  This character was based on a real soup vendor out of New York that I actually had the pleasure of meeting. Notably portrayed as a business owner with a high quality product, and low quality service. For the record, while the low quality service displayed on television may be the product of a little embellishment, the high quality of the product is spot on. I’ve never had shrimp bisque so good but that’s beside the point.

What does this have to do with you and your business? Well, I’ll tell you. On the front lines of many service oriented industries you will find the “Coupon Nazi”. The Coupon Nazi as we will call them here is that front line representative that acts as a warden preventing customers from taking advantage of their company and its policies. They serve to make sure that no eleventh item makes it through any ten items or less isle, that no offer is taken after its expiration date or at the wrong location, and that each and every surcharge, add on, up sale, and hidden fee is applied and accounted for.

As a business owner I’m sure that you agree that policies and procedures are in place for a reason. In many cases this is true with the exception of customer conflict. For example, let’s say that a customer needing to perform vehicle maintenance decides to use an offer sent through the mail for 20% of their total cost. The customer is looking to spend roughly 800 dollars on various repairs and maintenance. The Coupon Nazi notices that the coupon expired several days prior and immediately notifies the customer that the coupon is expired. In some cases the customer is very apologetic and accepting of the policy. For the sake of argument let’s say that the customer is not so understanding and the inflexibility of the Coupon Nazi drives the customer away.  The Coupon Nazi’s victory just cost that business owner an immediate $640 dollars and any residual sales generated from repeat business over the lifetime of that customer. In addition they also have ensured that those sales, immediate and repeat, will go to one of your competitors. Looks like employee of the month material to me (note the sarcasm).

In the previous example it may seem easier to see the effects of our Coupon Nazi because the immediate sale is high. In an instance where the immediate sale is low you may have a higher number of customers who will leave and yet it is more difficult to see the effects because it takes longer for the consequences to add up. Consequently, Coupon Nazi’s are created by the short leashes of upper management. It is possible to identify and deter this behavior but policy change must start from top to bottom. Here are some general rules to go by:

1. If a policy is causing the loss of customers it may be time to evaluate the priority of that policy.
2. Never assume (especially openly to the customer) that customers are attempting to somehow manipulate your policies for their own gain. Is it ever true? Yes. Is it always true? No.
3. Policies should reflect customers buying and shopping habits not conflict with them.
4. Company policy should make your company and its employee’s competitive customer service experts not offensive “customer service napalm”.
5. Empower employees to go the extra mile in the name of customer service without the fear of punishment from management above them.

Simple steps will help grow your business. Ignoring the issue is costing you!  Bulldog Rule #8 - Re-examine your business often.

Posted in Marketing, Customer Service, Creating the Culture, Training, Making Money | Print | 53 Comments »

28. August 2010 by Bob Griffin.

I was speaking with a class of management students this week at the University of Georgia.  My topic was on getting customers, but I veered off topic a little when we got to communication to customers and word-of-mouth marketing.  I mentioned that bad word of mouth marketing - the media saying bad things about you or your business - can actually help you if it is played well.  Since it was a group of students and Thursday is the unofficial start to the weekend, I was impressed when they sat up and took notice of my statement.

There are exact times and places when bad word-of-mouth marketing works when nothing else will.   Seems counter-intuitive, but it is true and we have real world examples of this to point to.  BP has been dragged through the mud (or mucky oil if you wish) with little hope of recovery.  When the oil platform exploded and people died, that was a low point for them.  When millions of gallons of oil washed up on shore killing wildlife and the economy of several states, that was another low point.  It seemed that there was no end to the bad news and the CEO, Tony Hayward, was not helping the situation…except he was.

When bad things happen (and bad things will always happen) you have two ways of handling it.  Fight it or deal with it.   The first part, fighting it, seems to be what Tony wanted to do and we can see how far that got him.  He was covering his company’s rump with as much actions as he could stand, but he was ill prepared to make much positive change since he really did not understand why everyone was upset with him.  He wanted things to “go back to normal” as fast as possible since the accidents did not impact him directly.  He was mad and all of the actions he showed indicated he wanted to fight back.  To the families who lost a loved one or the people who live and work by the Gulf coast, they wanted to fight too.  One man against a population who have been harmed is ugly.

So, when the cap was attached to the pipe and the oil stopped gushing out of the well, they fired old Tony.  Look back and you will see, the bad press for the most part stopped as well.  All of the bad word-of-mouth marketing ended when the target - Tony Hayward - left the scene.  BP and the Board of Directors were smart enough to see that they had a chance to let the bad press go when they let Tony go.  No face to the business means the press is unable to fight and the population has no target for tough words.  Did the problem go away? No, but the bad word-of-mouth marketing was carried away on Tony’s shoulders.  Now, any news is going to be compared with the bad news that Tony endured.

Timing is everything.  If they fired Tony before they capped the well, it would still be BP that was the bad guy.  With a built in bad guy, they waited and made the change when good news was available.  BP is a media savvy company.

I was going to add in examples of other industries and celebrities, but you get the idea.  Since bad things happen, you have a choice in what you can do.  Fighting is sometimes an option.  Tony Hayward thought so.  BP let him fight. Then, they let him go away with the bad press.  Will BP bounce back? Yes.  Exxon did and they did the same thing with the Captain Joe Hazelwood of the Exxon Valdez.  There are ways to let things work out without losing your business.  Are you ready for all of the kinds word-of-mouth marketing?

Posted in Marketing, Being the Boss, Saving Money, Making Money | Print | 89 Comments »

10. June 2010 by Bob Griffin.

It is always the execution that we stumble on.  Mostly because we get the right idea with the wrong delivery.  I was passing this sign and had to take the picture.  It seems innocuous, but add the word “IF” to the end of the message and you have a whole new meaning.  It would be our pleasure to serve you IF we wanted to or IF we were done with our smoke break.  Any time you do not make a good point, you lose credibility and putting a bland message out says a lot about who you are.

“It is our pleasure to serve you” is a better message, but what does it mean?  Why are you wasting prime space on your sign to make a throwaway statement?  Step up and sell me something.  Be funny or eye catching.  Be bad, strange, or thoughtful, but be something that people will remember.  This made me think they are not worth my time.  From the number of cars driving by that had passengers that didn’t even look at the sign, I am right in my analysis.

The message you send needs to be as thought out as any big advertising campaign.  If you are not making the effort to do something that will draw customers into your store to buy, you are wasting time, money, and effort. 

I saw a tiny doughnut store that was packed.  I mean they had people who were getting kind of personal they way they were crammed into the front of the store and everyone one of them was smiling and wanting to spend money.  The sign at the front of the store said, “Fresh Doughnuts! If we drop them twice we throw them away!”.  That is bad, but it was memorable.  It has been over twenty years since I visited that shop and I still talk about that sign and those doughnuts.  Did anyone really think they reused a doughnut that they dropped?  Maybe.  Did it keep some customers away?  Yes.   Why is that good?  The owners made it a point to target the customer base they wanted.  They wanted fun people who would put up with a tiny store and being packed in.  I bet you go somewhere that is not up to your standards as an owner, but keeps you coming back because of some bit of character the place created.

Never let your message be wasted on blah!

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