Sergeant Friday Was A Great Marketer

At dinner last night, my new client, a well established and successful  entrepreneur with whom I have been coaching "the culture of change" while being charged with developing his "marketing voice" (my words, not his) said to me, "you know Fred, this marketing stuff is really about expert opinions isn't it?"

Pausing he took a quick sip of his martini and said, "lots of companies come to me and promise me results and I get references and, well you know, the whole nine yards, so I go to it and usually get very little results."

"This has happened numerous times and they all have some reason why it didn't work. Usually they pointed to my employees as the reason the program failed. What the heck am I doing wrong?"

To that, I asked one salient question which got him to snap his head around, "Bill", I said, "did you share any customer research with them or did they even ask for it or rather did they just go into their viral Internet world and start producing key words, viral commercials, Facebook posts, etc?"  

Bang!  His head snapped around and he said,  "Jeez, no-one ever asked or should I say even asked about that, and, for that matter, I gave them all the information they needed because I have been so close to the business and pretty much know it cold!"

"Bill, I don't doubt that you know the business," I said, "but show me the facts, please."

Like many other successful entrepreneurs, he has been doing it on gut feel and when the stars and the economy were favorable, he mostly got it right but he really didn't have any facts, especially facts to deal with his business in this inconsistent economic never-land.

Oh, he could tell me who were his key customers and what they spent,  as well as what the smaller customers spent in an average year. But he really did not have answers about those leads that NEVER turned into sales or why these smaller customers were buying from him less frequently.  

He waved off this question with answers such as "'too expensive", "bad timing" and "economic factors" as the reasons why leads did not become sales.

So before you "think" that the reasons your open play is down is a result of the economy, unemployment, too many stay at home video games, Netflix, etc", then ask yourself, why are Starbucks sales up when they are selling $5 cups of coffee in this economy?

People don't need $5 coffee. It’s an easy thing to cut out, but they don't.

"It's time", I said to Bill, "to get to the facts; either to validate or negate opinions, assumptions, stereotypes or long held beliefs which MAY still be valid and to test new ideas, assumptions, and thoughts.  He smiled, shook my hand and said “let’s do it.”

As Sergeant Friday said, "Just the facts, Ma'am. Just the facts.”  

Need help with this?

I am a cell phone call away 516 359 4874

"Recalculating. Please Wait"

Whenever I miss a turn my Garmin navigational device says "recalculating."  Sometimes the voice says "recalculating" when I come out of  a turn, go under an underpass or just for no good reason at all.

It got me to thinking about this"recalculation" business.

Somewhere along the line, we all end up recalculating our plans, our business, our relationships and ultimately our lives.  In fact I saw a quote that read "I didn't end up where I thought I would be, but I am where I am supposed to be."  Not sure who wrote it, but it speaks volumes about our lives and livelihoods and where we all kind of ended up - just where we are supposed to be.

Now that we are here, maybe we need to do a little recalculating ourselves.

How much time will it take us to get task #1 done before I start task #2?  Now that I got this promotion, what do I have to do to get in line for the next step up the ladder?  If my revenue is going to be lower (or higher)  what can I calculate as an investment in the next seasonal program I will establish?  And so on!

Ladies and gentlemen, IT IS TIME to recalculate our business.

At the recent Bowl Summit, many proprietors were talking about the severe fall off in business. Yet others from the South and West were saying they were OK. OK translates to being flat and since when was that OK? I guess we recalculated, didn't we.

As spring/summer slowly approaches, here are some things to think about recalculating:

• Starting Times: Traditional wisdom calls for us to move back the starting times from 6pm or 630pm to 7pm? Why do w do that?  maybe if we started at 5:30, we would get more people because they could then go home early and be with their families.
• Number of weeks: Does the open play bowler or non bowler think that 14 or 16 weeks are too long? you betcha?  then why not offer new "programs" in May, June and July for 6 to 8 weeks in duration?  These programs could include have a ball programs, premium programs requiring a $25 registration fee or thereabouts.
• Spring vs Summer:  One smart proprietor I know (Jon Perper from NJ) calls his summer leagues Spring leagues because they all start before June 21st and people are more psychologically aligned to do something in Spring (indoors)  than Summer.
• Start leagues in March and April:  By starting new programs during these months, you get a little hedge on coming into May and June as well as a little more revenue you can count on.
• Start Your Kids Bowl Free program May 1: Many proprietors wait until the kids are out of school, but if you start it early, you get a running start on a data base to get to their parents for a short season bowling program.

What other ways can you recalculate your business?

"Recalculating, please wait."

Changing Changes Everything

It happens. We all know it.

Changes come around and make us women and men, in one form  or the other.

This past week Marie and I moved from Manhattan to Westchester country, about 20 miles north of NYC. This quiet bucolic setting just seemed more in tune with our immediate needs of being close to the "craziness", but no longer having to be in it.  

The packing, moving and unpacking is always a chore, but given that this is our fourteenth move in our four decades of marriage, we are pretty experienced at it and pretty good about the changes.

What we are not good about, and I suspect that many of you feel the same way, is the feeling of being disconnected either by phone, email, Facebook or Twitter, etc.  So before we moved, I diligently notified Verizon who assured me that my move to FIOS phone, Internet and TV would be painless.

Four days later, I am still in pain and unable to receive emails on my fredkap@verizon.net Internet account.  Having placed two calls and received an official "ticket order", I began to feel that this problem would be solved.

I even received an email from Verizon assuring me that my problem would be fixed by 9:38pm on January 27, 2012.  This hour has come and gone with no assurances of when it was to be fixed.

So I began to wonder, what do our customers feel like when their problems aren't fixed immediately or within a short period of time?  How do they feel when our "customer service" people cannot make a decision without speaking to the owner, manager, boss, supervisor, etc?

Do they feel as frustrated and helpless as I do now?
Do they swear they are not going to buy from us again?
Do they tell their friends about their bad experience?
Do they choose other activities other than bowling to spend their precious entertainment dollars/

My guess is "all of the above."
In these economic times, we cannot afford not to make every customer experience a great one.

 It all starts with Hello.

Focus and Balance

We talk about focus, the importance of being one dimensional,  gritting our teeth and getting the job done come hell or high water. Professional athletes, physicians, and tech people – almost everyone talks about focus as the key element in working your career, your life and your relationships. 

Yet 3 out of 4 Americans wear some type of corrective eye wear; either eyeglasses (64%) or contact lenses (11%). I find it ironic that in a nation that values focus, 75% of us need some type of corrections just to “see”; we’re not even close to “focus” yet.

To the word focus, we add “balance”; that has been popularly defined as the ability to, if not equally, divide our lives into “time zones” where we strive to spend about the same time in each zone such as career/work, home, alone, and of course family time zone. Yet 68% of Americans are considered over weight. I find it ironic that we strive for balance, even though most of us are overweight.

So somewhere out there amongst people who are overweight and need corrective eye care, you could surmise that about 7 out of 10 Americans are trying to focus and lead balanced lives.

Seems to me, and I may be a little biased here, that bowling a game or three is really an ideal way to practice focus.

It is even better for balancing one of our time zones - Family/Friend TZ

What do you think?

No Delicatessen Please

In the past month of visiting clients, I have taken particular notice of lots of fliers in  centers. Most of them have headlines that start with the name of the center. Others have only day, date, time and price of the specific event or program they are promoting. Hardly any had a clear benefit to the customer or a clear call to action.

Your headline should be about BENEFITS to the customer, not about YOU!

Here's an example of an existing headline:
Headline: Happy lanes announces its all new 10 for 10 league
Subhead: Program starts January 23 at 8pm; just $10 per week

Here's an example of a benefit headline
Headline: Here's how to get all the bowling fun you want in just ten short sessions.  Join now!
Subhead: If you don't have a lot of time, this program is for you

See the difference?
The second headline goes to the target's obstacle and ergo its benefit. its a short 10 week season that provides the benefit of FUN!

The second thing the headline does, it asks for action ("Join Now!")

If your flyer or ad is more about you and how modern your center is or how many charities you support than it is about the benefits of the program, you have an EGO flyer and one that probably won't sell much.

Your flyer has one purpose: to tell people all the benefits of what your program offers and why they need to act now to get it.

If you want a quick lesson in this, just tune into a late night infomercial and watch how they verbally hit you over the head with all the benefits of the product they are selling.  And then offer you other benefits if you buy now!

OK, here is your homework. If you don't have an ad strategy that gets people to take action now, then review all of your fliers and online ads.  Whittle the ad down to what matters to the buyer. 


Always ask this question; "why should I, as a buyer, buy this program, over all the other options out there?  WHY?


Everything else is delicatessen.

Trying

The "needing" to do something is the difference between "doing something" and "not doing something" 


The hardest words to hear are "I am trying".  


If this sounds cold, I don't mean it to be that way. 


What I mean by this is, "there is no trying, either you do or you don't".


Ever "try" to call someone?


Either you call or you don't.

Taking a Chance to Start 2012

As a writer, I sometimes struggle to find relevant subject matter to communicate to my audience. Other times, the keyboard cannot keep up with my fingers as words seem to flow from their tips.

With 2011 getting ready to go into the record books and 2012 ready to become a reality, I have spent considerable time deciding what to write.  Should I offer 10 ideas for 2012;  10 "life style" ideas for 2012 or perhaps just a short poem or ditty about living in the moment, happiness, health, prosperity and all that good stuff?

 I decided against this. It seemed as if it "had been done" and certainly done better better than I could by such notables as Henry James, Faulkner and Updike to name a few.

In addition to my bowling consulting work, bowling operator work and motivational speaker, I have taken to writing short stories, poems and, for other new clients, even speeches.  Like my bowling business, I get great fulfillment in writing.

So today I am going to take a chance.  I am going to share a short story, actually a very short story, I wrote and submitted for publication (which is pending approval) to a noteworthy magazine.  It has nothing to do with bowling, but everything to do with "a moment in time" and a greater insight into what my friends and colleagues have said is my "weirdly eclectic mind set."

Here it is. I hope you like it and I hope you comment on it


There’s a Reason I Missed My Train
 by   
 Fred Kaplowitz

By one minute, I had just missed my Amtrak train #55 to New York City. Realizing that I had no juice left in my cell phone to call home, I wandered Boston’s South Station, forgetfully dragging my charger, trying to find an outlet that worked, but to no avail. Spotting a woman charging her phone in a double outlet, I approached and asked if I could use the other outlet. Smiling politely, she said, “Sure, why not?”  As I plugged the phone into the charger and the charger into the rusted outlet, I realized that she and the man standing near her, but not close to her, were together. They looked to be in no hurry.  No hurry whatsoever.

We began with some small talk about travel and the places we had been. After a very noticeable pause,  turning hard to look at me, almost through me, and clear out of the blue she said, “I saw the white light and then saw the beauty and glow of Jesus; more spectacularly than I ever could have imagined”. As she completed her sentence, and for what seemed like a lifetime, her eyes closed and she began to rock back and forth. So unexpected was this sequence of word and movement that I found myself trying to catch my breath. For a moment, an instant really, time stood perfectly still. When she opened her eyes and stopped rocking she said, “It was right after an intentional hit and run accident on me.”

Continuing, she said that “Jesus asked her to come with him”. “But”, she said, “I told him I was too young to die” and he said, “Go. Your wish is granted, but you will see me some other time”.  She said, she had survived breast cancer, colon cancer and is now homeless. “I am still here”, she said, through her dark liquid eyes and, oh so tellingly, hard to find smile.

The  small slender man who had been standing with her was eerily silent and, while busily rolling a cigarette, was watching me intently through eyes so sunken and so engulfed in dark circles, he reminded me of someone I knew  a long time ago who had just barely survived a nasty street fight. Almost tempted to ask him what had happened to his eyes, I quickly thought the better of it and held my piece. Silently, I said to myself, “I hope to God you were protecting her”, but  I already knew the answer when he reached out his hand and introduced himself to me.   

                            

His name was Dale. He was her husband. Her name was Pat. They met in Church. “Been together for seven years and married for four years”, he said.  He helped her, said, “To get off smoking crack and being a prostitute”.

                                                                                       

Tonight they were going to their special place to sleep and then, tomorrow, they would get up and do what they needed to do; find food and find a safe place to sleep. They would endlessly repeat these tasks, I thought, until the Universe brought them the opportunity to change their lives, but only if they could see “the change” they were praying for and then capture it for all it was worth.

We said our “goodbyes” and “be safe” words to each other and then they were gone. Walking toward my train, I sadly thought, maybe she should have gone with Jesus.

.                          Boston, MA 9.1.11.

May the New Year bring you all you wish for and all you desire.