John owns a coffee and cake franchise in a new development area of Western Sydney. Six months pass and John is burning the cash that he had saved and borrowed to build the business. He has bought a reputable name in franchising, and he thoroughly believed that the brand alone would drive traffic into the shop. Another 6 months past, and the business is still losing money.
One day one of his loyal customers, a business advisor comes in to order his usual cappuccino and raisin toast, and sits down and starts to do some work on his notebook. As John brings this loyal customer his order, he starts up some small talk by enquiring “Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions David?” After some probing questions from David, John explained to him how his business has not made any money at all, how all of the marketing efforts were in all in vain.
HOW TO OWN YOUR LOCALITY
After listening and understanding the root of the problems that John was facing, David gave him some free advice “John, you need to own the area that you live in, and make this business the place where all the locals come and have coffee and cakes. This can only be achieved if you become disciplined and persistence in the marketing, get out in the community and promote your business. Also invest in marketing as if you are spending money but looking for a return in investment” David explained and then brought a file on his notebook to teach John the following principles.
Understand Who Your Customer Is: Defining your target customer reduces the risk of wasting money on poorly targeted marketing campaigns, and ensures that your business provides a system that serves the customer to his or her needs.
Just Have a Go: You do not know what is going to work until you have a go. Business owner’s fear of failure is what holds them back from achieving their potential; to break through you have to break with.
Set a Sales Target: A trained marksman plans the shot, and takes in all factors into consideration, and then aims at the target. A smart business owner, sets a sales target, and takes all factors into consideration such as past history, adjustments for seasonality and trends and major external events and will it have any impact on your business.
Set a Marketing Budget: Marketing your business takes time, patience and discipline, and the best way to ensure that you follow this mantra, is to set a marketing budget for your business. This budget will ensure that you set aside money for marketing activity, so that you can continually work on growing the business, as well as, ensuring that you do not send yourself broke.
The Principle of Multiple Touches: How many ways that you can engage an individual to enquire about your goods or services? The principle states that not one way will work on each individual, but one particular form of communication will eventually engage them into action.
JUST HAVE A GO!
John then started to apply these principles. After understanding that his target customer for cakes was receptionist organising cakes for birthday parties, he planned out a campaign where he visited the receptionist, personally gave then an order form and product brochure. A week after visiting them, he personally delivered a sample box of 6 slices of cake, for them to try and share with others. Instead of spending $2,500 on quarter page local paper advertisements that made no impact, he shifted this money into product brochures, and cake samples. Over a period of 4 months, his average sale increased from $6 to $13 because he was selling more cakes. John was now making a profit.
Author Resource:
Tony Gattari of Achievers Group is a business keynote speaker and guest speaker. His passionate enthusiastic style makes him ideal as your next sales speaker, marketing speaker or keynote speaker. Tony Gattari has worked with over 120 businesses. See http://www.achieversgroup.com.au for more info.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/rss.jpg "XML Feed For RSS")