Chapter 10 An hour and a year later
Shortly after Zak had left them alone with their thoughts and eager anticipation, they both received an email:
Dear Slater and Nick
Our meetings have been a pleasure for me, and also very enlightening. So thanks for your help, and here’s the information I said I’d send you:
A copy of the Blueprint can be obtained here: http://sprintforgrowth.com/blueprint/
There’s also a newsletter called Consider this… which is worthwhile reading.
If you want more ways to identify new business ideas read The Idea Generator book which is available from Amazon here. If you want more information on developing your customer experiences, look at this, this, this and this.
Best regards
Zak
Twelve months later…
Zak had kept in contact with Nick and Slater and they’d even met up a few times. They’d both been sending him news of their growth and the new ideas they were working on, and he’d been following their successes closely. He had to admit that even he was impressed with what they’d each achieved.
Slater had gone back to all her earlier customers to ask them for testimonials shaped around her new business focusand had received numerous responses. She’d used these successfully in her new brochure and website to attract new customers. Her overall value per order had reduced by about two-thirds with her re-focus on kitchen transformations rather than complete installations, but instead of only completing four projects in three-months (as she’d typically done before), in this quarter she’d completed 28 projects. And due to the high visual and functional change for a relatively modest cost, when the customer’s friends visited their new kitchenand of course the owner was always pleased to show it offeach project delivered approximately three new enquiries with over half of these becoming projects themselves. She’d effectively had to stop all marketing efforts as her customers were doing the word-of-mouth marketing and selling for her.
She now had four semi-retired tradesmen working for her. These older people really enjoyed the opportunity to carry on in their trade on a part-time basis and earn some extra income. They were also very experienced and good with the home-ownerswhich was precisely what Slater needed.
She’d started advertising in one of the free home-delivered magazines in the county, showing before-and-after photos with the cost of the make-over transformation. The magazine then asked her to contribute a short article every month on the latest space-saving kitchen devices she’d seen. She got more exposure for her business and in return they give her free advertising. Zak thought this was a particularly smart move by her.
Slater does the quoting, the design work and orders all the different space-saving items needed. This helps her keep abreast of all the new products on the market. She then does the final sign-off with the client. At this point she takes along one of Nick’s home-made cakes as a welcoming gift for the owner for their new kitchen. She said that the owner invariably offers her a slice of the cake and a drink, and she uses that time to ensure the customer is perfectly happy with their transformed kitchen. She’d told Zak that these thirty-minutes she got to spend with the customer was the most valuable for her, as that’s when she can suggest that if the customer is happy, they share her details with their friends. The cake time helps her to make a connection with the customer at a personal level.
Slater had also told Zak about a difficult customer she’d had, who subsequently became one of her most insightful successes. This customer wanted her kitchen to make her feel warm in winter and cool in summer, and she couldn’t make up her mind on a colour scheme. Slater was about to give up and walk away when she’d had an unusual idea about what she could do. Among the other work she’d done on this project, she’d replaced all the cupboard doors and work surfaces with a neutral, slate-grey colour and then added sets of readily changeable colour-matched accessories, including tea-towels, tray cloths, floor rugs and a wall print. The colour theme for these items was warming reds and oranges for autumn and winter, which could be easily swapped-out for the same accessories in sharp blues and greens for a freshening look for the spring and summer seasons. For a modest additional cost, it enabled the owner to perform their own seasonal transformation to radically change the appearance of their kitchen in just a few minutes.
Slater had submitted three photos of this transformation into a major interior design magazines’ make-over of the year competition. The before picture, the after picture with the warming colours, and also the after picture with the cooling colours. For this, she’d made the short-list and was waiting to see if she’d be a category winner at the grand evening event in a few weeks’ time.
This had put an interesting, new idea into Zak’s mind that customers who are demanding in some way aren’t actually problemsthey are assets. Because if you can develop something new that satisfies their needs, it potentially gives you something that you can offer to other customers too. He realised that it was these demanding customers who forced you to develop your business offer, and that rather than walk-away from them as many business owners would want to do, by understanding their needs and thinking creatively about how to achieve this for them, it actually extends your business boundaries. This made Zak think that he ought to try to find more difficult customers in the future. He wrote this idea on a sticky-note, stood up, and placed it in the idea hopper of his Blueprint which was on the wall in front of him.
In Coffee & Company, Nick’s home-made cooking and cakes had been a great success. He’d shied away from offering the overly-rich items and went for the healthily fulfilling items. His speciality coffees were also one of his major drawcards too. Zak had popped in one day and was surprised at how busy it was. Nick had told him how people were trying his meals at lunchtimes and bringing their children there for an early evening meal. He’d explained how some customers had asked if he did takeaways of his specials. He’d asked them if they’d buy it if he didand they’d responded very positively. Zak was pleased to see that Nick was still doing some guerrilla customer research. Nick had experimented with offering chilled portions of his main dishes and was surprised how popular they were with people taking them away to re-heat that night. His daughter wanted to start to offer this as a regular service, even if people just wanted to buy the food as takeaway for the family evening meal.
His home-made cakes were very popular, and again someone asked if they could have three different slices to take-away as their family dessert for that evening. This had given Nick an idea as he was sure no-one would want to buy a full cake of one typebut would they buy four different quarter-cakes? He’d created packs with four different quarters in and was surprised at how popular they were. He suspected that people were passing them off as their own home-baked itemsbut that didn’t bother him. His daughter had another idea around doing this over the internet and selling his four quarter-cakes online.
Nick had told Zak that his café was now almost as busy as it could be, for it was nicely full most of the time. He recognised that to grow even more, it would be by doing things he’d never imaginedlike offering chilled meals for home re-heating, and selling cakes over the internet.
Zak smiled. It seemed like both Nick’s and Slater’s businesses were taking off very nicely. However he had to curtail these thoughts as he was late to meet another two companies he was dealing with. And learning from…