You're So Good, You're Boring

Before getting started on this blog, I wanted to post a few responses from several of my readers to my “Offense vs. Defense” blog of last week.  Thought you would be interested in their comments, amongst a dozen others or so.

“Fred, I think this was one of your most educational and articulate posts yet.  However, I think you left out one management failing that is a combination of the two.  There are many managers who talk about offense and solicit new ideas but never make a decision until they have "more information". 

Or, they try a new idea but give it up after a short period of time before it has a chance to be measurable because "it didn't work".  In this way, they never have to face the changes in the industry or in the market.

One of the challenges facing the bowling industry is the lack of management training.  I would encourage additional future posts that make people think through some of their basic assumptions in their management style.  Good work.”                                                           Sincerely, Ken Paton

“Fred, OUTSTANDING BLOG!!
This one should be framed! The bowling business is a great one!  When we have some group events and corporate parties, we hear the same thing "I forgot how much fun bowling is". You are correct--we need offensive players to create and execute ideas on how to drive traffic!  As we used to say at Brunswick..." most everyone loves to bowl---our job is to keep it Top of Mind." Nice work, Fred.”
                                                                     Regards, Tom Funk

“Fred, GREAT POST AS ALWAYS!

I am so tired of the negative Nancy. While everyone has challenges complaining about them won't change things. We need to take action.

They say league bowling is dead. Our 32-week leagues are up 11% this year. They say even is the new up when it comes to open play. We are up 42% for September and October. They say the chains are killing the snack bar and restaurants inside bowling alleys. We are up 26% for September and October.

 Yes, all my employees know about it, celebrated it at our last employee meeting and take pride in it because I let them know they are the main reason for things going so well. Your best investment will always be training. Attend webinars and seminars, take BPAA on-line courses, join Focus on Results, and read blogs like this one...then pass what you learned down to them.   Only mushrooms grow in the dark. Keep your staff informed”.
                                                                        Thanks, Fred, Lew Simms

Here’s The Real Blog for Today

You’re So Good, You’re Boring

I’ve been in your center. It's sparkling clean, systemized, procedurized, customer servicized and predictable as the sun rising in the East and setting in the West.

In fact, you’re so good, so predictable that after going to your center 3 or 4 times, I think I’ll try something different. 

Want to know why?

Because your center is utterly boring. Nothing surprises me. Nothing excites me anymore.  Your people all have the same smiles, the same predictably canned answers and the oh so familiar, “Thanks for coming –hope to see you soon answers.”

When are you going to get back to being unpredictable? Because the people who set the trends, the people who care are those that live on the edges are drawn to the idiosyncratic nature of a place or product; to its unpredictability, to what can be customized or tweaked…sometimes even the things that might not even work 100%

Anybody remember why you bowled in the Petersen?

Offense vs Defense

It has often been said, especially in professional football, that “the best defense is a great offense”. Or was it “the best offense is a great defense?”

After 20 years of providing marketing and management consulting services to businesses within the entertainment category as well as other industries, their strategic business approach is  either “offense oriented” or “defense-oriented”, based upon the team the leaders, managers or owners have assembled.

Every client says they want more revenue, but in reality, some are actually AFRAID of more revenue. They are the defensive businesses who tend to hire defensive employees. People who are content with the status quo; people who say, “Oh we tried that and it didn’t work.” 

People who believe that they are in a “sunset industry” or a "no growth" or "very low growth industry" and, thus, have no motivation to do anything differently...other than to say, "Nothing works anymore." (Including them!!)

Or people who just want to ride it out until they can sell.

Or they hire people who are mere auditors always thinking about theft; that someone is stealing, that they have to micromanage everything and their strategic visions is, “Don’t lose what you have and protect the principle at all costs”. People who say, “I will invest as little as possible to market my business” and are slow, very slow, to embrace dynamic and new internet marketing processes.  

Some have even hired internet companies to do this for them and may have even been successful with it, but the center no longer manages or plays in the game…they have hired replacements to play what they believe is “offense.”  Yet, when they don’t see immediate returns in 90 days, they fire the company and move even further away from "the offense" culture and dig their heels in even deeper to play “better” defense.

In fact, the worst situation that the defensive company can be in is to hire a bright, intelligent motivated person to develop a new set of programs. And when that employee stays up and burns the midnight creative oil to present proposals with facts and conclusions to owners, managers and other employees, they eventually get, “that won’t work”; “you can’t do that because of blah, blah, blah.”

Eventually and usually before six months that new employee quits, having been frustrated by the defensive players’ fear of risk, finger pointing and blame.  While employees are very concerned about any changes, it is usually, the leader, the manager and/or the owner the owner is even more scared than the employees and this attitude just permeates the organization... So they continue to play defense and still don’t understand why their business begins to atrophy.

On the other hand, those companies who are led by the “offensively oriented proprietor, manager or company executive wants all employee input; wants to reward them for new ideas; has established a culture of "teamwork", goal setting, easy to implement processes, and constant training. 

In this offensive minded environment, every idea is valuable, is considered and evaluated thoroughly from the perspective of “how can we run this play”?   What new resources will we need to make it happen?  How quickly can we roll it out in an alpha and then beta test?  It is this organization that truly values every employee and accepts new ideas from all.  

Unlike the defensive company that says, ah we’ve heard that before, it just won’t work here, the offensive company looks for reasons to make it work, to reward the employee for his /her idea suggestion, recommendation and creativity.

What kind of people do you think they tend to hire? That’s right. The aggressive self-starter who wants to achieve, who wants to be part of a team and who respects everyone on that team

If you find yourself in the former category (defensive), look in the mirror and evaluate yourself first.  

Offense or Defense?  The choice is yours

The choice is yours. But I know what I would do.

Because Every Voice Matters

I  never ask my blog readers to buy anything, except a couple of times a year I ask for a contribution to a charity that is near and dear to my heart; SAY (Stuttering Association for the Young). As a youngster, and even as an adult, I experienced stuttering first hand. And it made me what I am today. 

I am fortunate and blessed to have achieved many of my dreams and that’s why I am so passionate about helping kids who stutter. I know the humiliation, the teasing, the embarrassment, the tears of anger and frustration and the low self-esteem they feel because I felt that too. Like Moses, who had a stutter, he was driven to succeed because of his trials as a child.

In this world, everyone is given obstacles, some more serious and painful than others. Part of our intellectual, emotional and spiritual growth is to use them as motivations and not merely restrictions. 

Sometimes the challenges we are given becomes the accomplishments.

So today I am asking that you go to www.say.org/ruddbowling. 

See for yourself what SAY does and how you can be a part of our fourth annual bowling benefit just by clicking the donate button. Then use your credit card and donate any amount, $10, $50 or $100 or whatever you feel good about. 

And if you’re in the NYC area October 26^th, please join us. Please know that SAY and the entire organization of specialists and volunteers are doing the needed work to help each child who stutters feel like his voice matters and that stuttering cannot and will not cast a pall on his dreams.

“That which limits us can also empower us.”  Moses

My heartfelt thanks to you in advance.

Best regards

Fred

www.SAY.ORG is The Stuttering Association for the Young and is a non-profit organization that empowers young people who stutter and inspires the world to treat them with compassion and respect, so they can achieve their dreams.

What's Your Marketing Vision?

In the days before computer imaging and technology, manufacturing was conducted by subtraction.

That is, a large block or sheet of metal was rolled out and a press or a cutter was used to make it into the precise size the part was specified.

Manufacturers literally “subtracted” pieces of the block or sheet to make the part.

In today’s world, 3D printing technology, it can make a car fender, a computer screen or almost anything else by “adding” the technology to it.

Parts for spacecraft have been done this way for years. I haven’t seen it in person, but some of my friends who are 3D geeks say this is the future that all manufacturing will be done.

If that be the case, then what is to follow?  Will we add more to our existing stuff?  As proprietors, we have added sweepers, tournaments, 9pn and 8 pin no tap games, and a myriad of other games to the basic 10 pin gam,e?

But how do you know what consumers want?  

Henry Ford once said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”  Obviously the Model T was not even a dream in their mind, but it was in Henry’s mind.

So it took old Henry to have a vision, to have a dream and come up with something completely different from the horse to satisfy desires customers didn’t even know they had.

It took a risk. It took perseverance and it took looking into the future.

As bowling slowly morphs into FEC’s then FEC’s will start morphing into something else.

Because as always, THE MARKETING IS THE PRODUCT?

What will that something else be?  Is someone already working on that?  

Why not you?

Spend some time; sitting and staring time, soon and think about your vision, about how you can manufacture something that just might be the next Model T

What You Can Learn from Volkswagen Today

No doubt, you have heard about the recent crisis at Volkswagen. 

Seems the good folks in Wolfsburg, Germany decided that the emissions standards for their diesel engines weren’t quite right so they fraudulently reported lower emissions and greenhouse gasses than they actually had.

They got caught and the CEO was forced to resign while the largest automobile manufacturer in Europe, VW, with over a 50% market share has just suffered the worst calamity a company can go through; loss of trust in their product. 

No doubt this will have far-reaching consequences for the global automotive industry, as well as impacting the European economy, and perhaps the future of the diesel and or gasoline internal combustion engine that has been around since Karl Benz invented it back in 1897.

And it happened because VW forgot the cardinal rule of 21st-century marketing.

“Marketing is no longer just advertising or PR or promotion or even sophisticated digital marketing.  If you still conflict and are uncertain about present day marketing, please realize marketing is not all communications, whether old school traditional or sophisticated digital media. But rather:

 Marketing IS THE PRODUCT!

Years ago, in the boardroom of the largest family owned bowling center chain worldwide, I said, “Marketing is Everything.." I was greeted by jeers from other department heads who thought I was saying that their “spheres of influence were less relevant than mine.” 

Of course, they misunderstood my words; they were, sadly, too myopic to understand that what I was saying was that “the customer sees our centers through his/her eyes...and the product is the marketing."

From the lanes, to the cleanliness of the bathroom, to the service we provide, to the quality of the food and beverage to the lighting of the parking lot, to the parking lot itself, to signage to the quality of house balls and rental shoes and to many other elements they visually and tactically perceive our quality and the value of their experience.

They do all of this processing, analyzing and concluding what our center, and their experience, is or isn't in less than a second. Yikes!

And no amount or kind of advertising or promotion will overcome a bad product. Ever.  Can't fake it till you make it anymore. (See VW above!)

So the message for today is to make sure that all of the elements of your “product” are your marketing?

Start with a checklist. What are ALL of the elements of your product? Then rate them from 1 to 10 with 1 being BAD AND 10 being EXCELLENT. Then have your employees rate the elements. Now ask your customers.

No doubt, you will get a very precise feel about your product and then you can start to improve, over time, each and every element…almost assuring that your marketing will be successful!

Whats Possible vs. What's Required

We are required to make up a fall league bowler flier, brochure, advertisement, etc.

We are required to call back league bowlers.

We are required to host a junior registration day.

We are required to do a traffic driver before Labor Day.

We are required to “come up with new league ideas."

But…

What if it were possible to concentrate on getting new league bowlers vis a vis a league bowler recommending a friend to bowl?

What if it were possible to create a promotional program to get people that used to bowl to come back to your center and join a short season program or to sub for an existing team in a specific league?

What if it were possible to develop a traffic driving program that went viral because all proceeds of the weekend were going to (person in need, charity or non-profit organization?)

Sometimes it’s more important to think about the “what if it were possibles” rather than the same old “requirements.”

Back To School For Us Too

For millions of American school children, September signals a return to the classrooms, a clean slate, a new beginning and the promise of a brighter year.

For many business people, September also signals the sounds of the holidays to come. They know, as do you, that before you turn around, the season will be here.

If you’re a bowling proprietor or the owner /operator of an FEC, you recognize the importance of capitalizing on Halloween Thanksgiving, Christmas, Chanukah and Kwanzaa holiday weeks, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.  Maybe your market celebrates all of these holidays. 

Maybe yes. Maybe no.

Point is you have to get your marketing plans together NOW to be able to implement effective income generating programs.

Here’s just a quick game plan of the steps you need to take

1.     What did you do the last several years, during these holidays?  

2.     Were they successful?

3.     Can you quantify lineage, revenue, average price per game, revenue per game during these promotional periods. What’s that, you don’t have that kind of information? Then base it on open play revenue

4.     Ask your open play bowlers which (ideas you have) programs they might prefer. List your 3 or 4 ideas in a flier format (doesn’t have to be all that pretty) and show them to open play bowler families, kids, Moms, 15 to 34 year olds, HS kids and any college people in your market.

5.     Quantify the data and select the program.

6.     Here is the hard part.

a.     How do you communicate for maximum effectiveness?

b.     How do you reach potential customers and existing non-league customers (No, one or two emails will not bring your embryonic idea to life, Sorry. It takes a campaign).

c.     How much will you spend? (“As little as possible” is not a viable answer. Every other marketer is doing all they can to maximize the season so tell me again how your flier sitting on the desk, or your two Facebook posts will have them waiting at the doors is going to compete with them again?).

7.     How will you train your people for handling and servicing more people?  (What about the part time kid you hired from the local high school? Think he really cares? How will you get him or her motivated to satisfy YOUR customers)?

8.     What will you during the campaign to add some excitement, instant gratification, and just plain fun to the experience?

9.     How will you make sure to try and gather as much new data base names as possible? (Oh Fred, we try, but get so busy. We just don’t have the time!) 

a.     Maybe hire a part time hostess for the weekends, Larry and make sure she is a happy, bubbly type that can get people to complete a data base.

10.  Did you lay down a set of goals up front and are now measuring the results against goal, against expenditure to achieve goal and against last year.

More importantly, please recognize that the myriad ways to communicate has changes. In the past we pushed messages onto consumers. 

Today, consumers have a choice to voluntarily accept it or turn it off.  How will you make sure that your message gets turned on??

If you have any questions on these steps, we will be happy to assist. Just give us a call at           516 359 4874 or email us at fredkaplowitz@gmail.com

And have a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah and Happy Kwanzaa