Customer Service | Business Bulldog

May
12

You Already Own Magic Bullets

Category: Being the Boss, Creating the Culture, Customer Service, Making Money Tags: development, magic bullets, making money, success, training Leave a Comment

Magic Bullets are already in your gun

Many Business Bulldog readers know that I like to build on what already works. I was asked by a franchisee recently what “magic bullet” I was going to provide that would increase his sales by double digits. I responded that any magic bullets would already be in his “gun”. What is the “magic bullet”? Let’s break it down into the parts.

When you say you want to grow your business, I have to ask “Why?”.

No, I am not making fun of you or trying to make a joke. I have reasons for every question. If you want to grow your business because you are ready for it, then I am ready to take you to the next level. If you are trying to survive and cover your costs, we are going to go in another direction.

Covering costs and surviving is a trying time for a business owner. Bad decisions are made when you are desperate. I want to see why you aren’t more profitable and what is working well. Both are needed to plot a path to growth. But, it is growth without adding any more to your costs or structure. No need to go further in debt to build a business. There are things you can do to grow without changing your budget.

The first “magic bullet” is to look backwards. Were you successful when you started and then things leveled off or sink?

Enthusiasm is a great tool as long as you can maintain it. My new book, which should be for sale later this year, has a whole chapter on this kind of enthusiasm. Customers want to be part of something exciting. They feed off your passion for your new store and want to help you grow it. What happens after the newness wears off, though, is that the energy dies and so does your growth. Can you bring it back? Yes. Do you have the same level of energy that you started with? No. The way to bring the energy back to to share the responsibility and make your team as enthusiastic as you were. That way, you can have a room full of people who can show that you are still building a great business.

How do you get your team to be enthusiastic?

Stop pushing it. You are a great demotivater. Your stress bleeds onto everyone you come near. It’s like sneezing. No one wants to be near someone sneezing. So, stop pushing them to look, act, and sound a certain way. Let them be creative and they will impress you. This will only work if you trust them. That means that you have to trust yourself. Did you hire the right people for the right reasons? I bet you did. Let them show you what they can do to be passionate about your business. This is the number one reason why people stay happy at work. They are contributing and they make a small part of the business theirs by adding their personality.

Where do I go for new customers?

Finding new customers when you have been in business for a while is tough to see from inside your store. I am stunned by the number of business owners who follow paths and never step off them. You know the paths you follow. I bet you haven’t thought of it but, you are a creature of many habits and that is why finding new customers seems ridiculously tough. Get out! Yes, I mean it. Leave your store and go down one block from your store and ask someone if they know where to find your business. No, do NOT tell them you are the owner. No, do not give them clues as to where your business is located. Just ask where you can find a good deli, salon, dry cleaners, or whatever industry you are in. When they can’t tell you or they have a different place in mind than yours, you now know how well you have been marketing.

Tell me your story. Every business has a story…or should.

I don’t care that you are “The Best Deli in Town!” Every deli can be the best deli in town. What is your story? What makes you different? Why would I go there and spend money? That is what I want to know. If you can’t tell me a good story about your store, I can’t see you. You want a magic bullet? Here it is. I will go out of my way to visit a place that can spin a tale of wanting to serve me.

Ask for the sale and invite them back.

Is that too simple? Yes, I guess it is. But, it is the number one reason your sales fell. You and your team stopped asking for the sale and really asking for the customers to return. I worked with a haircare business that was rampant with employees who could not ask for the sale or invite customers back with any kind of drive. They have some great marketing, but they too will sink like a rock once the next salon moves in next door. As an owner, your job is to get the customer into the store. Your next job is to make sure your employees ask for the sale. When that doesn’t happen, you have random people walking through your store thinking about buying products online. Train and keep training and make your team know that anything less than asking for the sale means you are fired.

Inviting back the customer is under the same directive as asking for the sale. If you don’t do it, you are fired. I won’t keep someone on staff that doesn’t want to do their job. They are time wasters and need to go as fast as you can get them out the door. You are in business to sell and get customer back soon. Don’t let the excuses get in the way of your success.

There are more “magic bullets” but starting with these will get you on the right path. My question is: What do you need to change the direction your company is headed in? Send me a note at CEO@BusinessBulldog.com and let me know.

Bob Griffin
Chief-Bulldog-in-Charge

May
26

By Bob Griffin

What’s It Worth?

Category: Being the Boss, Customer Service, Making Money, Saving Money, Training Leave a Comment

I had a great question from a friend who is also a franchise consultant. He asked how we know when something is worth adding to the services or products sold. Up until he asked the question, I had mentally worked the ROI and figured out if adding another product or service was a profitable move or not. As a consultant, I need to have data to show whether something is worth the cost. That is where we need to work some math into the equation.

Often, the question comes in a bigger form such as when I get referenced as some to answer whether or not to buy a business, not specifically whether or not to add a product to an existing business. Working backwards from the cost of time & effort back to the actual cost of the business is a fun way to gauge if a person is serious about being an owner. Owning a restaurant is the number one business type that I am asked about. I get the “I love the food, so it will be fun to work there” kind of answer. I let them know that pizza, for example, can provide a good return on your investment, but cleaning the dumpster area behind the restaurant every week gets old fast. Or, that working with hourly employees who see the job as a means to a paycheck and nothing else can be a challenge. Hourly employees can work hourly at most any restaurant.

The best part of determining the real cost of buying restaurant is when you tell them that you a tied to the business 7 days a week. If the manager quits or you are short staffed, you fill in. There is no other way to make it work. You can’t over staff or you lose profits and you can’t run the restaurant with too few employees because they are not going to put up with working harder. Remember, they want a paycheck, not to make you proud of them for their dedication. There’s a look in a person’s eyes when they realize the “sunshine and rainbows” story the sales guy told them isn’t reality.

Now, let’s talk about adding a product.

The data of the situation is what really matters. If a product is good it needs to have three things working in its favor.

It needs to have a built-in customer base.

It needs to fit in with what you are already known for selling.

It needs to sell fast and not take up too much space in the process.

These three points all come back around and need to have a positive answer to all three. Only meeting one or two of these points means you will lose money.

I have watched a lot (and I mean far too many) independent and franchise owners add a product to their sales floor in the pursuit of adding dollars to their bottom line when they end up losing money by not having a customer base to buy it. Or, customers want the product, but they don’t know you sell it. Or, they can find you and the product, but you lose because it takes up space from products that are you are know for and sits there longer than needed to turn a profit. You need to be known for having the product, have customers ready to buy it, and sell it fast without losing ground on the products that you know sell well.

I am not a risk taker. I will add a product when it meets the needs and passes my simple test. Before then, you are risking losing more than money. You lose your brand image when customers can’t tell what you are selling any more and they find another retailer to meet their needs.

The math comes down to the cost of the item plus the cost of the square footage needed to display the item times the time needed to make the sale.

Worth = (product cost + dollar cost to display in space square footage) * time needed to sell

If the product costs $100 and needs 1 square foot to display at a cost of $32 a square foot that equals $132 (in nice round numbers). The time needed to sell it is the kicker. For every month it takes for you to sell it, you need to add another $32. Leasing space is a drain on profits even for online businesses. Somewhere in the world there is warehouse of products that need space to sit before selling. If it sells faster than one month, cut the square footage cost by dividing it by the number of days in the month.

I like simple math. I am sure I am going to get comments about how the costs are a product of other factors. You are right. Employee costs, utilities, maintenance fees, and more all add to the cost structure. If you want a spreadsheet to add all those things in, we can work it into the equation. For a simple cost basis, we are limiting it to the basics needed to know if this product can replace space on a shelf or do we keep what we have there.

You can use this same “worthiness structure” for anything in your business. I often use it when I talk to micromanaging owners who can’t seem to get out of their stores. For them, the worth of their time inside the store versus finding a manager to replace them and getting out to find new customers looks like this:

Worth of bringing in one new customer = (average sale * the number of additional purchases over a year)

New manager payroll costs + training costs + time needed to get them up to speed / (the number of new customers brought in * worth of a new customer)

I could spend a lot of time doing math or I can take the pulse of the business and move on it. Use the quick math and enjoy the increase in profits. It’s worth your time!

Bob Griffin
Founder and CEO
Bgriffin@businessbulldog.com

LinkedIn Profile

Jan
31

By Bob Griffin

Embrace Your Fears

Category: Being the Boss, Creating the Culture, Customer Service, Making Money, Training 1 Comment

There are many motivating factors that have been thrown your way last year. The economy is one of the big ones. Whether or not your customers can keep buying from you made a huge impact on your business. The fear of the unknown is what held you back or moved you forward with the hope of getting ahead of your competition. Fear is a process, not just an emotion. When you learn to use it to your advantage, you will find more success in business and in your personal life.

Readers of this blog know that we have a specific philosophy that we follow to grow businesses. Having the right mindset to make changes happen is the key to all growth. Knowing that fearful situations is one thing that most people run from, we are going to make using fear an advantage and create small wins.

Let’s start with what scares you. Speaking in front of a crowd is still one of the top three fears in the world. When you are forced to speak to a large group of people, do you seize up or do you use the anxiety to give more energy to your speech? My bet is that most of you are using that energy to drive your words to connect with your audience. That anxiety, that fear of failure in front of a group of peers is a driving force. When you finish speaking and sit down you have a small win. The event happened, you did well, and now you can reap the rewards of having lead the conversation.

Now, let’s move from one fear to another. When you have to open your business for the day, do you have any idea how many customers you will have spend money with you? Of course not. There is a fear inside that no one will show up and you will be stuck with rent to pay, payroll to cover, and have stock sitting on shelves getting dusty. Do you open for business anyway? Yes you do. Small Win! Too simple? Not for all the people who give up on their business and walk away. It happens every day.

I mentioned earlier that embracing fear is a process. Let’s start on that now that you know you handle fear every day and survive.

Step One: Know what scares you

I have spent time with some of the most powerful people in business. They know everything about themselves and use their strengths to keep their power in business. They also know what they are not good at or just dislike. They would never call it fear, but that is what it is. Donald Trump is a prime example of a guy who is terrified of not having millions and millions of dollars. Take the money away and he is a pushy guy with bad hair. The fear of being without money is what gives him the drive to make money. What scares you? Have you thought about it or do you just walk through your day without knowing what motivates you?

Step Two: Surround yourself with successful people

You have to look at the fact that you are not the big man on campus when you are surrounded with great people. Especially if you hire them to help you be successful. I recommend you hire as many successful people as you can. There is power source that comes from pushing past the fear of coming in second place to someone who works for you. Remember, they work for you. You pay these outstanding people and have seen something in you that makes them want to help you be better. It isn’t just a compliment, it’s a reward to be around great people. How many businesses fail because the leader won’t hire someone who could push them out of a job? It happens at every company. Fear holds people back.

Step Three: Be clear on your vision

Remember, we hate mission statements here at Business Bulldog but, we love vision statements. Visions statements tell the story of why you want to be successful. It draws a map of how you are going to get to your goals and paints a picture of what it will look like when you are there. How many bosses did this for you since you started working? Would it have taken a lot fear out of the job you were doing if you have a clear picture of how you fit in? Of course it would have and you would be the biggest fan of the company and that boss if he had. OK, so what are you going to do? Take the time to sit and think things through. Don’t just make a list of needed items and people for a project, goal, etc. Maps, timelines, and stories go hand-in-hand. It makes you have to think about how to explain why you want something rather than just dictating that it gets done.

When you start getting worried about things this year, start thinking about how you can use that fear and why you have it in the first place. Fear isn’t a bad thing, not facing your fear is.

Oct
25

By Bob Griffin

Micro-Manage This!

Category: Being the Boss, Creating the Culture, Customer Service, Saving Money 1 Comment

Mirco-Managing costs time and money. Pick your red flags to know your business health

I was speaking with the manager of a restaurant recently when I asked a simple question. Any reader of this site knows how much I love a good simple question. It aims the conversation directly where I need it to go in a way that I can follow up on after they give a “knee-jerk” response.

Very simply I asked, “Why do you think a business owner would ask the staff to do small, time-consuming things before they leave for the night when it doesn’t add customers or save money?”

The interviewee said “He’s a MICRO-MANAGER!” I smiled and told her she was wrong.

Micromanaging is one of those terms that people like to use when they have a boss that goes over-board on ensuring his business is run a specific way and in turn gets in the way of getting the job done.

Sometimes when an owner wants something random done, it isn’t for reasons of control…although it could be. I wouldn’t put it past a bad person to be a bad owner. Power in business is something that should be wielded to keep market-share, not hurt your own team. Micro-managers are a tough lot. It is an element of TRUST that they lack, so they fire off at the mouth and end up with a small, very low profit business. On the other hand, managing the random things keeps the important things in check. How can that be, Bob??? The answer lies in the nature of being an owner.

Most employees think that a business owner is a lazy SOB who hired someone else because he wants to free up his time for a good game of golf. The truth is far from that perspective. An owner has paperwork, costs, management, marketing, and his personal life all wrapped up into the business many people resent him for having. It is a 24 hour a day job that does not get a real break where he can toss the workload over to someone else to handle. So, with less time than he would like to have, he needs to find out how healthy the business is without living in the store. (These are the paragraphs that I get the most mail about. Someone wants to add something to the list or tell me a horror story about being an owner.) These are not micro-managers. This the nature of the job of being an owner.

If you are a real business owner and not a micro-manager, you want to know how your business is being run without having to spend 100% of your time inside the four walls of the business. If you want to stay in business, you can’t be there. You have to get out and get customers in. So, how do you run a good business without having to check on everything every day? You have small, time consuming tasks that you can check on to know whether the business is being run to your standards.

I used to check handles on every piece of equipment. If the handles weren’t clean, the restaurant wasn’t clean. If you don’t clean the one part of the equipment that everyone touches, you don’t know what clean is. If that one little check is wrong, I want more answers because there is more that they are neglecting. I will do a top to bottom check of all the daily duties, run an audit, and ask the staff questions about what they think their job is at the store.

Why go for something small and not just check the big things? Because things can “look” right and still be very wrong. I have seen faked deposit slips, fraudulent inventory counts, and people on the payroll who didn’t exist. If your business is bigger than one location, you need a red flag to let you know when you need to dig deeper. It keeps the paranoia in check and lets you in a few seconds know if you need to jump in and stop everything from falling apart.

So, what can you have your team do to ensure they are managing your business the way you want?

Bob Griffin – CEO
Questions@BusinessBulldog.com
Twitter: @BusinessBulldog

Oct
9

By Bob Griffin

Small Wins

Category: Being the Boss, Creating the Culture, Customer Service, Making Money, Marketing Leave a Comment

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

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