Are You Targeting The Right Customer For Your Summer Promotion?

Now that’s the Million Dollar question, are you?

When you set out to run your summer promotion, did you perform your due diligence on which you were first going to target with this promotion, so that you can see if you have the right customer, for the right outcome?

When you run a general promotion like “Sizzling Summer Deals”, don’t think that everyone wants/needs it, especially if your message is not directed to any special wants/needs of the demographic that you are promoting.

Before you commit to any promotion, you need to first ask the question and get answers to: What want/need is this promotion going to fill for a specific client, how are you going to get the message of your product information to them, how are you going to track the success of the promotion to determine the R.O.I., what ways are you going to build into this promotion a sense of urgency to commit to the purchase and finally, have you built in enough top of mind awareness to your targeted prospect, so that you differentiate your promotion from that of your competitive set?

When you get some sense of the answers to these above questions, a more detailed and directed promotion can evolve, which will result in greater success and R.O.I. to your expenditure. If you can just break your one promotion into 3 different ways in which you are going to target different prospects, you can then start to determine which one of those three promotions where successfully taken by the prospect and by whom. Once you determine this, a greater emphasize can be placed on that promotion and the unsuccessful ones can be modified to once again track and find the “hook” that will make your “right customer”, produce the right outcome for your promotion.


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Stop Your NO’s, Start Your KNOWS!

If you say NO to something, ask yourself, “Why did I just say NO to that?”

Start with knowing why you said no before you actually say NO, because once you say NO, that NO may have far-reaching consequences. When you commit to something by saying NO to it, and then end up finding out that you could have done it, an opportunity for that action is lost forever. Make sure that each decision you make has been well thought out.

Life has a rippling effect. When you always say NO to someone, soon they will start asking someone else, because they really wanted a yes from you. But, if every answer you give is yes and you cannot follow through with that yes commitment, soon your word will not hold any credibility, negatively impacting your life, career and business.

Remember, committing to something too fast is also never the answer 100% of the time. Knowing why you say yes or NO to something is the only way to be successful in following through with your commitments.

Do you know why you are reading this? Because, you said YES to making a difference in your life, career, and increasing the success rate of your small and mid-sized business!


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Keep IT Simple

Your businesses is what is “IT”, with all of the information and bombardment of calls, e-mails, faxes, twitters, IM’s, texts and people, a business owner can feel overloaded and get misdirected and forget to keep an eye on what really matters to their success, THE BOTTOM LINE!

What’s the solution?

On no more than a couple of 8½x11-inch pieces of paper, have a “snapshot” of the top five to ten critical statistical metrics that determine your business unit’s success available with comparisons for your daily morning review. If you do not have this report, you cannot be proactive in management. With a daily statistical data sheet, you have the ability to spot trends, and thus, small corrections in the operations or sales can be initiated to neutralize the adverse effect of any negative component.

When you have daily statistical sheets that are simple, to the point, and full of the “most critical” metrics that you need, you can guide your business unit daily, which will lead to greater achievements of the business unit’s budget and stretch goals. Focus on managing your business unit today, so that today will be tomorrow and tomorrow will be your everything.


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It’s June 1st, How Are You Pacing On Your Year-End 2009 Goals?

Your 5/12 or 41.37% completed with the year, do your numbers tell you if you are going to make your 2009 year-end budget numbers today? If you had a twelve month pacing model in place for your business, you would have an accurate reading about this question.

A pacing model can help your business unit gauge if it is on pace to meet the goals set forth and gives a quick “YES or NO” to that pacing question throughout your goals’ time frame.

A pacing model is different than a forecasting model, since a pacing model takes your historical numbers to date plus what is pre-sold/reserved and compares that number to where you want to be at the end of your goal, which in turn can inform you if you are on pace to meet those goals in the allocated amount of time, with no variables included in its calculation (seasonality, pricing variations, external demand and supply situations, etc.).

Think of a pacing model as a macro model that tells you yes or no to the success of finishing your goal in the time allocated. By having a pacing model in place, you can determine if your current sales activity is enough today, to generate the numbers needed to make your year-end goals, even if you are less than 50% completed to that year-end. It is not just good enough to produce your numbers TODAY; you must also look forward and make sure that today’s numbers will match your goals tomorrow. By knowing if you are “on pace” or not to your year-end goals, management can make decisions TODAY if the marketing and pricing strategies in place now will be adequate to meet those goals, thus implement changes if they are not.

Stopping and looking forward is the only way a good business person can guarantee that today’s efforts will lead to tomorrow’s goal achievement.

Do you have some sort of pacing model in place for your business unit? If not, you should, how else can you make sure you will be at the 100% to goal for year-end numbers, even though you still have 58.63% to go?


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Will You Spend A Penny Today, To Save A Dollar Tomorrow?

Do You Have A Preventative Maintenance Program Installed In Your Business Like A Hotel Does?

Preventative maintenance, or P.M., as we call it in the hotel industry, is a must to help lower your replacement costs and prevent possible operations and sales breakdowns that can affect your bottom line.

What do I mean by P.M.? Well, in the hotel business it means some of the following actions: scheduled coil cleaning of the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning units; bed mattress turning/rotating; cleaning/removing the sediment within the bottom of the hot water tanks; winterizing the exposed piping; caulking tub surrounds; shampooing the carpet, etc. The pattern of P.M. is this: tighten the screws, bolts, and belts; oil the lubricated moving parts; clean out areas that accumulate debris; and check on the status of the normal wear and tear of an item, so there is a proactive approach in maintaining its continued life cycle and use. Let’s say a hotel never did any P.M.s on its air conditioners and a very hot temperature index weekend occurs. The air conditioning units have not had adequate P.M. and may only be running at 30% capacity due to dirty filters and the Freon not being recharged.

Will the hotel get complaints? Will it have to refund money, lose future business, increase their utility bill, and have bad “word of mouth” created? The answer to everything is yes, but preventative maintenance could have helped to avoid and minimize these above situations.

Preventative maintenance is not limited to mechanical items only. Do a P.M. on your human resources and the complete business unit as well. When was the last time you went around and made sure that all of the correct Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Department of Labor, and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission posters were in the right place and current? When was the last time that you made sure your locked storage area was secure and functional? The old saying, “An ounce of prevention can give you a lifetime of protection” is correct when it comes to installing P.M. in your business unit. By performing P.M. within your business unit(s), you are showing a proactive management style that can lead to lower cost structures through your expenses and growth of your top and bottom lines.



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Use Amenity Selling To Increase Your Sales!

In the hotel industry, they talk about amenity selling because amenities can set a hotel apart from its competition’s price point, because a hotel’s core product (the bed and shower) functions the same as most everyone else’s. But, when you sell your core product with amenities wrapped around it, the opportunity for rate variation and “apples to oranges” comparison selling exists within the marketplace. Amenity selling is a perceived value, not concrete, that can lead to greater revenue opportunities from your client base.

For example, a majority of hotel customers can quickly compare room rates at one hotel to the room rates at another hotel, but a hotel’s customers’ estimation varies greatly on the dollar amount that they will pay for items like turn-down service, indoor pool, Wi-Fi, free breakfast, express check in/out, frequent stay clubs, tennis courts, theme decorations, amusement/water parks, ocean/beachfront views, twenty-four-hour restaurant, spa, golf course, casino, shopping outlets, location of the hotel, bars, etc. These are all examples of amenities that wrap around the core product (the bed and shower) that raise room rates and cause variation within the same product line and competitive set.

What about roadside assistance plans from the auto makers, another amenity? What about the fast food industry, have they not sold us on an amenity we call the drive thru? What about the emerging use of accepting debit cards as payment in businesses (flexible payment options) around someone’s core product line? What about the laundry detergent bottles that have a “no-mess bottle?” Just one more example in a long list of products that sell amenities around their core product line.

Look all around and you can see that most businesses have an amenity to sell in one form and fashion, but have you really put great thought into amenity selling for your marketing campaigns to increase your pricing points and acquire more customers? Probably not, but why? Examine your business unit’s amenities that are in place now, and what could be added, so that you could wrap them around your core product line to create rate variations within your marketplace and gain greater market share, thus growing your bottom line.


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Happy 2009, NOW WHAT?

First, stop making the first thought of your days in 2009, negative.

How many times do you set your alarm clock and think, “I do not want to wake up that early,” or “How early do I have to get up?” But if this is the last thought in your mind before bedtime, that idea festers and plays over and over in your mind throughout the night. When you wake up, you hit that snooze button and say, “Surely it is not tomorrow already.” From now on this year, you need to set the alarm clock and say to yourself, “I cannot wait for tomorrow to come, so that I can make a difference in my life and career.” When that alarm clock sounds, jump out of bed and walk around for at least two minutes so you do not get back into bed. This will start off your day charging and thinking in your mind about all of the opportunities you have to make a difference.

Second, stop putting your concerns first.

What is the worst that could happen if you always say, “What do I get for me?” If you do, there will never be much of “me” in the end at work.

We are all connected to one another, and each of us relies on hundreds, if not thousands, of people daily to live the way we do at this very moment. How did you get to work? Did you drive? Think for a moment. How many people did it take to dig up the raw materials necessary to make your car? How many people did it take to assemble your car? How many people did it take to produce the gas/energy supply for your car? And how many people did it take to build the road that you drove on to get to work? The list goes on, but you can see the connection forming. Start to see that “me” should mean “us.” From that, when you look at any project or a task to complete at work, ask yourself instead, “What do we get for us?” first, and then you can start to move your success dial for “me.” WE WIN AS ONE in 2009!


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Your 2008-Year End Financial Statement’s, Statistical Review Checklist

Make sure that the following items below are contained in your statistical reports, including variances and percentage changes within those numbers, on the four major income statement components: top line (gross revenue); labor; controllable and non-controllable expenses, and bottom line (N.O.I. with Cash Flow), (all numbers are accumulated and may be partial quarters or years, but each are equal to one another in their respective time frames):

• Month to Date (MTD)
• Quarter to Date (QTD)
• Year to Date (YTD)
• Current Month (MTD) Year over last Year Month (Example: Oct. 08 to Oct. 07)
• Current Quarter (QTD) Year over last Year Quarter (Example: Q4 of 08 to Q4 of 07)
• Year (YTD) over last Year (Example: YTD-2008 to YTD-2007)
• Month over Month (Example: Oct. 08 to Sep. 08)
• Quarter over Quarter (Example: Q4 of 08 to Q3 of 08)
• MTD, QTD, and YTD to budget and stretch goals with remaining/declining balances to reach each of those goals
• Projected QTD and YTD numbers against budget and stretch goals
• Trailing three month average
• Trailing twelve month average
• Trailing eighteen month average
• Trailing three to five year average
• Annualized MTD and QTD numbers

Don’t forget, visually, graphs, charts, and color-coding all add to the accelerated ability to understand, pinpoint, and emphasize negative and positive trending within your statistical numbers. Another great tool is to set parameters around each line item, so an exception report can be generated and quickly identified when numbers exceed those boundaries.

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Stop The “What If’s, Of Why Your Business Numbers Are Down!

Instead, start taking responsibility for your own actions in all situations, even the ones that you cannot totally control.

If it happened to you, your actions, no matter how small a part that they played in the outcome, are still a part of the outcome; so take that portion of the responsibility without hesitation. Did you not market your business, thinking, if you built it, they would come? Did you not focus on client retention, when business was booming? Did you not sell value, instead of price when asking for the sale?

There are many factors as to why things happen the way they do. Some of your own actions account for it; some do not. No matter the “what ifs,” remember that sitting around and wondering about them will only displace your time and stop you from changing your situation. Stand out of the crowd, accept your situation, and stop questioning, “Why me?” and, “What if?” after you commit to an action of change to resolve the situation. Only then can you execute a plan to change within.

No matter what, you and you alone have the ability to change your situation. It may not be immediate, but change will happen with an executed plan from a person who has first accepted the reality that it is only their actions that can improve this situation. Taking responsibility for actions in your life is a big step to turn your situation into success.

The difference between success and non-success is in an individual’s ability to believe in themselves as their own element of change and the daily commitment of that individual with that knowledge of success to execute those changes.
So, are you going to take action today? Good, now finish reading and implement.


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Got Milk?

Good, Now Understand That Your Business is More Perishable than a Glass of Milk.

For Business Owners, this is a must to understand if they are going to generate the maximum revenue potential on a daily basis. Every night that one single widget in a particular business goes unsold, that widget has lost that day’s revenue, forever. It can never regenerate revenue for that given day again, so it becomes non-recoverable potential (left on the table) revenue.

A glass of milk has a longer shelf life than an unsold widget. If you do not drink all of the milk that you purchased today, you can at least put that milk back in the refrigerator and have some of it for tomorrow. You can repeat those above steps for at least a couple of weeks, so that you have the opportunity to receive the greatest consumption relationship to the money spent, for the value of that product. Not so for an unsold widget or for whatever product or industry that you work in. Once that day is gone, you can never sell or use that moment again for revenue generation or operational efficiency gain. With that being said, it means that every business is more perishable than a glass of milk. The business unit that you are involved in must make sure that it has a greater sense of urgency regarding this principle and acknowledge its perishable nature.

Let's say that you have eight hours to make the most money on any given day. After just one hour of that day, you have lost the opportunity of making the maximum revenue generation by 12.5%. Start thinking about how perishable your product really is, even if it has a shelf life of one hundred years. Every day that you do not maximize your revenue potential or gain greater operational efficiency; is a day that is lost forever.

Is your business running? You better go catch it and make the most money with it; it is not a glass of milk!


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Stop Thinking That You Are Equal To Everyone Else!

Stop thinking that you are equal to everyone else.

Start remembering this one simple fact: We are all equal in this world to everyone else on just one thing, no matter who we are or what we do: time.

Each of us has exactly twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and fifty-two weeks a year to make a difference. What we do with those precious moments, makes the difference between success and non-success of those goals and achievements that we want to obtain.

By knowing that you are not equal to others, except in your time constraints, you can focus on doing more with the one equal item to gain success over others.



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Script Your Dialogue For Greater Business Success

Scripted dialogues can benefit your business unit in the following ways: consistency; professionalism; assurance that the operational and sales talking points are covered; on-boarding, cross-training associates are effectively accomplished; and objective, clear, and non-derogatory answers that can be discussed to a broad-base spectrum that can be documented and used for legality protection.

Ever make a reservation at a hotel? The reservation screen is actually a fill-in-the-blank script that the hotel uses to capture its requested reservation information. In fact, there are parts within that reservation screen that will not let the reservation agent produce a confirmation number until the required information is completely filled in and correct. Ever call an 800 number for reservations? Ever get a wake-up call from a hotel? These are all examples of scripting within the hotel business.

Now, focus on your business unit and ask yourself, “What tasks can be scripted to help send my business unit into a proactive approach to talking with the customers and converting that captured time with them into a more qualified database for mining, better close ratios, lower miscommunication experiences, and higher profits?”

Once you identify those scripting opportunities, make sure that there is some sort of ongoing quality assurance program installed and corrective action responses in place to maintain all of the benefits that a “scripted company” can yield for itself.

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Managing Associate Performance For Your Small Business Success!

How do you manage associate performance? Just like you would manage driving a car. You need to know where you are at the start, where you want to be at the end, and a roadmap to help optimize the distance from point A to point B and receive some redirection in case you are off the path.

Managing associate performance can be in the form of written documentation for reporting the results, personal follow-up/open dialogue with that associate, constructive feedback, timely reviews, accurate assessments, direct and specific directional action tasks that have been accomplished, and what needs to be accomplished for future goal platforms.

Along with these items, you need assessment tools that determine upward mobility capabilities and strategic skills currently in place or underdeveloped ones needing attention, placement within current and ongoing organizational charts, open dialogue with direct supervisors, customer satisfaction scores (if applicable), and financial performance metrics (if applicable). By combining the information and resources above, you know where the associate is and where he wants to end up, so you are giving the associate a “roadmap” on how to get there, and he can now “drive” his own career achievement by daily, hands-on deliverance within the business unit’s success structure.

Each associate has a different want and need from a workplace environment, but by assisting each to accomplish his end results by managing his performance from the very first day of employment to the end, both the associate and business unit will see the most productive outcome. Only when a business unit focuses on managing associate performance through each associate as an individual part of the whole and manages career path/performance to those individualities; can the sum of all associates’ efforts be combined into one goal for the achievement of the entire organization.

Start managing associate performance and doing the reporting on it today, because we are all connected and dependent on one another. Your success depends on other associate’s within your business unit, and managing associate performance is one way to guide that success in the right direction. Remember, “We win as one!”

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