It's All About The Customer

With the holiday season now getting into full gear, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving weekend  and your lanes were full.  If they weren't, then you need to examine what your marketing programs are, who you are targeting and how you are communicating your offers.

There is, however; one other important element that many of us take for granted and that is our 

employees and their customer service skills. As more people come into the center, some for the first time since last holiday season, they will have a certain expectation of customer service level.

And you may be surprised that it is higher than it’s ever been. The reason is simply that your customers have been in other establishments where management has emphasized service, managing customer complaints and exceeding customer expectations.

So what have you done to prepare your employees for “the more traffic and selling season?”  "Hmm, not much", you’re saying?

OK, think about a few of these suggestions to give your employees:

·        Answer the phone by at least the third ring: “Hello and thanks for calling Happy Lanes, This is Fred, how may I help you today?

·        “Yes we have lanes available and if you will give me your name I will place you on our VIP list so when you come in, your lanes will be the next available.” Oh you can’t do this? Your existing customers who have been waiting will get angry?  Really? This happens to me every week. The airlines put me on their first class seating list and then when someone comes along with super platinum elite status, I get bumped back to coach!  Put up signs in the center and on your website to tell people to call before they are leaving their home to give their name to your “Customer Service representative,” so they can be put on your Premium VIP list.

·        Customers come to the service desk. What do you say first?  The answer is not “What size shoes do you need?  The answer is: "Hi I’m Fred and welcome to Happy Lanes. We’re going to do everything we can today to make sure that you have a great time today".  (Now reach across the desk and shake hands with the adults and wave to the kidlets. May I take a moment and tell you about our specials.  Yes it’s corny. Yes it’s unexpected.  But you know what?  Customers love this and it puts them in a nice mood.  During the course of this “meet and greet”, please find out if they have ever kept score before, if they feel like they need help with the scorer set up and if they need light weight house balls for their children? Don’t forget to tell them about the bumpers for the kids! And please, go down tot he lanes and find out how they are doing? You're not a desk person, you're the maitre'd.

·        “Oh I am so sorry that happened, let me see how I can fix that to your satisfaction right now”.  Invariably there will be a problem. The food will get delivered late, the kids might trip and fall, the scorers or lanes might develop a virus; and all sorts of things could happen.  Your response is to FIX THE CUSTOMER’S PROBLEM NOW. Don’t wait for the boss to fix it or the M.O.D. to fix it. You fix it. Fix it the way you would want it to be fixed and fix it fast. Research says that if you fix the customers problem immediately, there is a 95% chance they will come back. If you wait a day or two, there is less than a 25% chance they will come back.

·        DO you have a “quickie menu?”  You know: your 5 or 6 fastest moving items that your customer service representative can offer your guests as part of the  “meet and greet” process.  You will get more food orders than you can imagine right there.  Just be sure your operations and control systems are set up to handle that transaction and get it to the kitchen pronto!

 So while you are out promoting your center, your offers and your new leagues for January, don’t forget to delight your customers NOW. You’ll be glad you did

And one last thing:  ask for their names and emails. Offer them a chance to win $25 in FREE bowling and slip an entry card into their shoe rentals so they will fill it out. 

And a pencil too!!

Is Your Marketing Real?

The holiday season starts next week with the Thanksgiving holiday; actually it starts the Wednesday night before thanksgiving – the biggest drinking night of the year.

I hope you have a super special cosmic edition going on Wednesday night. The college kids will be back home, the high school kids will be out in full force and the one thing they have in common is: they are looking for something to do.

Your bowling center is a perfect fit…if you tell them what you have to offer. I hope you have planned this weekend out.

Beyond the holiday weekend, the Christmas break will be upon you with opportunities to market your center and bring new people in and invite old customers back.

Whether you open Christmas Day at 4pm, or not at all, is your choice. But many centers report excellent traffic after 4pm or 5pm. I won’t push you one way or the other. It is a religious holiday and you must do what your conscience tells you.

However, with the “traffic season” upon you, now is the time to make sure that your January short season [programs are up and ready to be sold in house to open play bowlers as well as league bowlers. 

From have a ball programs to 8 for 8 or 10 for 10 leagues to couples, company and premium leagues, your offerings should and MUST be available by this coming Friday morning.

So without naming what leagues/short season programs to run – here’s a 12 POINT CHECKLIST of questions that you should review to see if they pass the criteria to unveil them

1.   Who are you trying to target?

2.   Is this what your target wants and have you found this out by speaking to existing customers, new customers, a survey on line or do YOU just think it’s a good idea? You may be king of the jungle at your center, but if the target market has never given you any indication of the likelihood of buying “your idea,” you’re a dead duck. Even AFLAC can’t help you!!

3.   What are the goals?

4.   What do you want them to do and when?

5.   How will you measure its success?

6.   How long before you will throw your hands in the air and say it’s not working and move to something else?

7.   How will you promote it? C’mon in center selling is Ok, but there’s at least 6 other ways that you can make it happen.  Emailing campaign, incentives to employees, outside selling, traditional media, Facebook campaign, You Tube videos, etc.  What do you think would happen if you did it all? 

8.   How much time and money are you prepared to spend on it? (Oh, you hadn't planned to spend ANY money? Well, you might as well get a magic lamp and start rubbing!)

9.   Who gets the final say on what you will roll out? Hint: let the people who are closest to the customer decide and that includes snack bar people, bar tenders, desk people, mechanics and maintenance people. YES, them!!

10.     Who will champion EACH cause?   Establish teams and team leaders even if you only have three employees.

11.     Who believes in it enough to make it happen and work on it as “their project?”

12.     If this program, does take off, what is your next step for this short season program?

But if you do it the same old way, “put a flyer on the settee or control desk”, you’ll get the same old results and then you will call me to say the industry is going to hell in a hand basket and I will, of course, respectfully disagree.

Do Your Homework First Before You Roll It Out.  It’s Cheaper To Spend Some Time On This Process Than Just Roll It Out.

Here’s another 7 POINT CHECKLIST for your fliers:

1.   Always put the benefit in the headline and no the headline is not “happy lanes new mixed league” “Here’s How To Get Out Of The House, Break Away From Boredom And Do Something Fun And Different With Friends.”  Now that’s a benefit!!

2.   Benefits in the copy; heres what you’ll get (emotions, emotions)

3.   Photos of people bowling

4.   Testimonials of people who had a good time at your center

5.   Guarantees (“after the 1^st week, if you have no fun, we will give you your money back 100% guaranteed.)”  Just set up your 10 week league as an 11 week league or state that the first week is FREE.

6.   Action; what do you want me to do? Should I call? Should I email should I text? What do you want me to do and by when?

7.   Your name on the bottom with a logo and map, preferably in the lower left corner

If you follow this tried and true guideline, you may be surprised at the results.

Very happily surprised. :)

But What Do You Want Them To Remember?

I watch, and sometimes read your email posts and facebook posts as you promote your cosmic bowling nights, your short season leagues, your 8 for 8 leagues, your Bowling 2.0, your company parties, your fundraisers and your birthday parties.  

And just when I thought I had seen all of your programs, you bombard me with information about seasonal holiday parties, Thanksgiving, Christmas week and New Year’s Eve, not to mention Monday Night Football in your sports bar along with every weekend football {Go Pack! Go Badgers!} 

Now over the course of probably a month, I received many emails from you about your promotions and special offers…but what do I remember? At best, I will remember two or three of the offers. At worst, I will remember none of them.  

But more importantly, I will have no definitive idea of what you stand for, what is the meaning of your brand and why I should pay attention to what you say.  In fact that is the very reason why you need to use a multimedia and layered approach to promote both specific individual offers as well as promoting these offers within your BMU, “brand messaging unit.”  This is one unit of branding embedded with a specific offer that supports your brand,

So what to do? 

Pick one thing you want your customers to remember about you.  Maybe it’s: “Happy Lanes – Home of the Best Birthday Parties” or “Happy Lanes - We Make Short Season Leagues Fun” or “Happy Lanes – We Make weekends Fun.” Or…well you get the idea. Or at least I hope you do. 

Better to pick one thing to be proud of rather than trying to be all things to all people and thus ending up nothing to anyone. Use your new found brand identity and carry it under or over or around your center name.  

Preach about it inside of the center; use it as an intro statement in your PA announcements: add it to your hello speech when you answer the phone.  {“Thank You for Calling Happy Lanes, Home of the Best Birthday Parties, This is Fred, How May I Help You Today?} Do not abandon or be derelict in executing this approach.  It will build your business if you treat it gently. And if you build credibility for the position with testimonials, great stories and picture support, you will grow your business. 

There is one caveat to this whole message.  You really do have to be the best at what you proclaim; no BS allowed and you have to defend and grow that position every chance you get which is every day of the week, 52 weeks a year...

10 Holiday Marketing Tips to Get You Focused NOW

It was 4:12 this morning, when I pulled into my local gas station for a quick cup of coffee and a two pack of Entenmanns chocolate donuts.

My friend “Focus” was there. “Focus” is a Jamaican man in his mid 30’s who pulls the 12am to 8am shift six days a week.  We talk about his “happy island,” my travel, the Giant’s game and then I am gone, off to catch another plane to another great client.

Somehow I can’t stop thinking about “Focus” and what he said as I was leaving.  “Yoh mon,” he said, “I got my name because my mother and father wanted a baby boy very much and my father used to say to my Mother, Now, Nan, you focus on what you want and you want dat baby boy, you focus on getting him.  So after all the months, my father was saying to my mother, ‘Focus’ she was pregnant, she decided to call me “Focus.” “And that’s a true story", he said through a broad smile and a quick laugh.

I thought that was pretty cool, but the message about focusing on what you want stuck with me.

In the darkness of the highway, I started to formulate all the things I needed to get my clients to focus on…at least through the end of the year.

So while I don’t compute and drive any more, I can voice record., I created a checklist of marketing and service items, upon which, you might need some additional focus.

1.    Send one more email blast to your company data base, targeting smaller companies with 15 to 50/75 employees within 3 miles of your center, offering them a lane package of $99 to $149 per lane depending on your market. Package is valid for up to 5 people and would include a buffet of appetizers like pizza bites (cut your pizza into squares), chicken wings, mozzarella sticks, jalapeno poppers and some veggies and dips.

2.     Follow up with phone calls to those who hit your website and invite them in to see the center.

3.    Be sure you have two or three league concepts- to start in January - on your site, on fliers and prepared for emailing and face booking.

4.    Retrain the staff, before thanksgiving, about the importance of customer service.  If you want a power point presentation on it, drop me an email to fredkaplowitz@gmail.com and I’ll send it off to you.

5.    Examine your pricing. The weekend before Thanksgiving (like this coming weekend) is the perfect time to raise your prices. Kids back from colleges and families who haven’t been to see you since last year have no idea what the price is and given that the average league bowler bowls about 2.3 times annually, in your center, price increases of fifty cents to $1 should not get much pushback. Please remember FREDQUARTERS MARKETING RULE #121 on Pricing:  If 15% of the people aren’t complaining about your price…it’s too low!

6.    By this time your thanksgiving programs, emails and blog efforts as well as robo calls should be set up to communicate your Wednesday night (TG EVE) special edition cosmic night along with  any programs you have, if you are open on Thanksgiving.

7.    Get names, get names and get names during this holiday weekend. Make a PA announcement that you are giving away a $50 of open play bowling and that you or one of your team members will be coming down to get your entry. Do this every 90 minutes all day and all night. Be sure this sign up card has age and gender questions as well as questions about:
               a. Are you interested in receiving information about  (check all that apply)

                                          i.    Short season bowling? _______

                                        ii.    Company parties?  _________

                                       iii.    Fundraising _____________

                                       iv.    Birthday parties _______

8.    Focus on planning for new years eve NOW and get that communication plan together so you can at least speak to some of the families or seniors who will be coming in over the TG holiday weekend

a.    Family parties.  (When, What, Price, Promotion, ROI, new concept to delight and surprise.)

b.    Adult parties or NOT (When, What, Price, Promotion, ROI, new concept to delight and surprise.)

9.    Become a more visible part of the community.  Become a drop off point for Toys for Tots or collecting food for the homeless people or clothes for the poor.  Not only are these great causes, but you will get some notoriety about your community efforts.  It’s good for the community and good for you.

10.  Be not afraid of doing something different; creating change and pushing the outer limits of the envelope.  (I.e.) Get a live band for the Wednesdys before TG; have a petting zoo in your parking lot for the kids; get a magician for your Saturday night Cosmic.  Get the idea? :)

After all, the holiday season is upon us.

Purposeful Marketing

No its not about cause marketing, environmental marketing or even green marketing; this is a blog about the purpose of your marketing.


A few friends and faithful followers of ye olde blog will say, "Fred, "don't be silly. You know, I know and all your readers know the purpose of all marketing is to ultimately sell something, so whats up?

"Well" says I,  "Me thinks the purpose of marketing is to create change. For example you are planning to do a presentation to the local Chamber of Commerce about your company's party offerings and fund raising abilities and you are struggling with how to get it focused and directed..

First, realize you're not going to get any one to go gaga and throw thousands of dollars at you during that meeting.

Second, at best - and your goal should be this - to change some attitudes about viewing bowling as a corporate event venue or fund raising venue.  

Third, you want this change to open doors for you; to create possibilities.  Ultimately, you want this presentation to lead to action; to making a sale.

But if you're subconscious goal is to get out of this presentation without getting barraged with negative questions, then you will build a presentation that will merely entertain and waste people's time.  And they will recognize that in a heart beat and tune you out equally as fast.

So go back to the drawing board and realize that every presentation, every ad campaign, every flier, every facebook post, and every email you send has one reason for existence: to change someones mind from either apathy to yes or from no to yes (the latter being more difficult and requiring much more thought and planning) and question: is your message  attempting an attitudinal change; is your tone inviting; does your graphics say "come in and spend 30 seconds of your precious time with me"? Do your testimonials seem substantive and verifiable?  Is your guarantee real? Is your offer too good to be true and therefore too easily to be picked apart by the skeptics that lurk in all of us? 

If your marketing doesn't create change; you have failed. Game over.

But if you do create some change and offer some outrageous program that actually gets accepted, two things will happen.  You will be expected to do it all the time., and that's OK because it will push you every time, even though you may not succeed every time.  But at least you went all out!  Or you might shrink back from the outrageous and do the safe and secure. In that case you would fail again.

In the end, it is far easier to do a "mediocre -i-don't-really-care" job then to create change that says "I- really- give- a- damn." But you can't because the change you strive for, just might make a real difference! 

Coloring Outside The Lines

7:45am this morning found Marie and I on a Delta flight to Pittsburgh to visit our daughter, son in law and new grand-dogger, "Mavis," a cute brown and white 4 month old Labradoodle.

Only 17 people boarded the plane and all but one of us sat in first class. 16 empty seats with pillows, blankets and real hot coffee and maybe a sticky bun.

I was looking for rooting for Delta to do something different that wouldn't have cost them very much, but would have made 16 great impression and no doubt hundreds and hundreds of great word of mouth impressions, Facebook posts, twitter tweets and who knows what else.

But when I asked the head flight attendant if we all couldn't sit in first class, she gave me a look as if I had burped her baby backwards. "Oh no, we couldn't possibly do that", she exclaimed.  "And why not, I said, "it would be a great good will gesture and wouldn't cost anything."  She laughed at me and said, "Oh no, I would be fired for that."  "Really", I said, "what a shame," as I walked away shaking my head in despair.

Isn't it crazy in a day and age where we are all fighting for customers and doing everything possible to get and retain customers that a simple act of doing something unexpected and delightful, that would have exceeded expectations, was nipped in the bud because this person just couldn't imagine coloring outside of the lines.

No doubt our employees are often as guilty as the Delta flight attendant described previously.  Maybe we are too. Maybe we just have too many rules; too many policy manuals; and too many penalties too soon for doing something different.  Maybe we are too jaded as well.  (I had one proprietor tell me what a great business this is, if it wasn't for the customers.) Yikes!!

So loosen the reins a bit, give your employees the opportunity to do something great.  Lead them, teach them and  set the example yourself.  Who knows, you may just be talked about all over the Internet as being a business that ACTUALLY exceeded your customers expectations.

And wouldn't that be cool?