Chapter 4 Monday morning
Nick and Slater were standing in the car park of the local supermarket, again.
“Tell me the interesting insights you’ve learned about your customers,” called out Zak from behind them.
As he came closer, Nick could see he was drinking a take-out drink branded with the Coffee & Company logo. Nick smiled at this, and then spoke.
“After your talk last week, I realised there are two types of people. There are my current customers that come into my café and there are the potential customers who don’t come in.”
“I already like the way you’re talking,” said Zak.
“It was easier to talk to the people who already come in, so I decided to find out why they come in and what they likebecause then perhaps I can do more of that for the people who don’t yet come in.”
“That makes sense,” said Zak.
“My daughter created a one-page questionnaire on the computer which she printed out at home. We handed one out to each person when we took their order and said they’d get a free home-made cookie if they completed it before they left. One of the questions was what time they arrived, and when they left and handed the questionnaire back to us, we just wrote the time they left next to itso we could see exactly how long people stayed with us. If people sat together at a table, we stapled all those questionnaires together so we could understand how they behaved as a group. Some of the questions revealed really interesting things while other questions didn’t. I think we phrased some questions wrongly. It was a really useful exercise and I’m going to run this again, but next time I’ll do some things differently,” added Nick.
“Smart thinking on giving a rewardand also for wanting to do this again. That’s one of the things about guerrilla activitydo it rapidly so you learn quickly for when you repeat it. Don’t spend an age trying to get it perfect,” said Zak. “What did you find out?”
“People come in for very different reasons and the same people can want different things on different days. I thought they’d have the same reason for coming inbut no. I found there are three different types of customer that I have. From around eight-thirty to late morning, there are the mums who come to meet in groups after they’ve dropped their kids off at school. They normally just have drinks but would also have breakfast if we had healthy breakfast optionsas they are often too busy getting their kids ready for school to eat first thing. Then there’s the lunchtime crowd who want to sit down to eat but are actually interested to try something new. My wife always cooks a dish-of-the-day, but the peculiar thing is that sometimes they want a hot dish and sometimes a cold dishlike an interesting sandwich. My daughter created a second questionnaire that we used with the lunchtime crowd just on Friday, and she asked two questions. They were If you could have any hot dish to eat right now what would it be? and also What is your all-time, favourite sandwich? We got lots of great ideas we can make from that. And then there’s the time from three-thirty to five-thirty in the afternoon when mums bring their kids after school. Now this was really interesting as the mums want to give their kids a special treat, but they’d like it to be healthyand something the child really looks forward to having.”
“Do you know how you’re going to respond to all this?” asked Zak.
“I’m standing back,” said Nick with a chuckle. “My wife and daughter are on to this in a big way. My wife loves to cook what she calls comfort food, like the hearty meals and traditional cakes. My daughter on the other hand prefers the healthy side of thingsand the two of them have ideas on offering both. They’ve come up with the phrase healthy and hearty, which I kind of like,” he added.
“They have this idea of different cakes for mornings and afternoonswith larger slices of the healthy ones or smaller slices of the more-decadent ones. They also want to offer special fruit and vegie shakes after school for kids. My daughter read an article where you have to use bright colours to appeal to kids and they’re busy experimenting with beetroot for a purple colour, and carrot for orange. They also want to get involved in some way with the two schools that are quite close to us to engage the parents there.”
“And do you feel that there’s potential for growth by doing this?” asked Zak.
“Definitely. It seems that this is what people want and so this is what we’ll offer them,” said Nick.
“And what about you Slater?” asked Zak.
“I’m the opposite to Nick as I don’t have many existing customers to ask, so I had to take a different approach. I set up an online survey using one of the free survey tools that I found. I created a simple questionnaire to understand what issues people have with their kitchen as it is now, and what they’d ideallybut realisticallywant, to make it better in some way. I asked my family, friends and existing customers to send it on to people they knew.”
“Why didn’t you ask them to fill it in?” asked Nick.
“Because I felt that family and friends might give me the views they thought I’d want to hear rather than the truth. Also, my existing customers should ideally have what they wanted and so their responses wouldn’t add any value.”
“That makes sense,” said Nick. “How did you get them to fill it in though?”
“I said anyone who forwarded it on or completed it should send me their email and I offered a set of three home design books as a prize, and that I’d draw a name at random from the people who entered. I also put a deadline of two days for the draw to encourage people to complete it quickly.”
“Good ideaand also that you used a relevant reward,” said Zak. “And what did you find out?”
“I found that the majority of people weren’t satisfied with the size of their kitchen as there wasn’t enough storage space for all the appliances they had. They also wanted a new kitchen look but were unsure of what to do, as they need different things all at the same time. They want a kitchen they could change to suit the different needs and feel of the time of the year, but they also knew they couldn’t affordor want to doa complete kitchen rebuild or extension, as that was too much trouble. When I got all the responses in and realised this, I had an idea. I emailed all the people with an extra question and offered an additional book prize to those who answered this one additional question. I asked what was the upper limit of what they’d be prepared to pay for a make-over that would address all their issues rather than them buying a completely new kitchen. The numbers I got back were nowhere near the cost of a new kitchenlike I’m doing nowbut were surprisingly much higher than I’d thought they’d pay for a well-designed make-over. It appears there’s a threshold where people who don’t want a new kitchen can be triggered to actand I’ve realised there’s so much I can do in this space and still make a good profit. I’m going to make a change from what I currently and offer rapid kitchen transformations as this seems like an interesting and sizeable opportunity. And you know what else appeals to me about this?”
“Go on,” prompted Zak.
“It’s the opportunity to do more design work, as there’ll be more projects, but less intense and of shorter duration. I’m quite excited about this.”
“And that’s good to hear,” said Zak. “So listening to the voice of the customer appears to have been of real value to you both then?”
They both nodded in agreement.
“Then let’s move straight on to the next part. What’s your story going to be?”
“I don’t understand. What’s a story?” asked Slater.
“In days of old, poets and minstrels wrote songs about great heroes as it was easier for people to re-tell the story by learning to sing the song. And the song would spread as other people started to sing it. This is what you need to havepeople singing your heroic song or re-telling your story.”
Zak took a sip from his coffee and then continued.
“You want people to be re-telling your story in a way that includes you as part of the story. They need to be saying I was at Coffee & Company and had the most amazing cup of coffee or Our kitchen was designed by Slater. Not just We’ve had our kitchen re-done or I had a nice cake the other day. And often it doesn’t matter how you’re a part of the story, just as long as you are in the story in some way. It could be about your business, your premises, your location or, more likely, about you personally. Customers must intuitively feel that they need your service, and that you are the only one they know or trust who can do it for them. So you need to have a story that is unique to you. You must be their hero.”
Zak sipped his coffee again, smiled and raised it towards Nick in a silent cheers movement. “Hazelnut-roast. Very nice,” he addedand then continued.
“There are two sides to a good business storyyour side and the customer’s side. You keep telling your side because that’s how you sell what you do. But there’s only one of you and there are countless potential customers of your business, and it’s their side of the story that’s important. The story they’re going to tell and re-tell about your business. This is your why. It’s your purpose for being in business and will be how you actually connect with new customers and keep connected to existing customers. Make it personal to show you care.”
“Have you got an example?” asked Nick.
“I can tell you my storyor storiesfor they changed over time as I started doing new things,” replied Zak.
“This I want to hear,” said Slater.
And Zak told them his story.
“I left school at sixteen and had a number of different jobs before I ended up as a window cleaner. I did this for seven years and was happy in what I did. I’d often sing while washing the windows as I carry a tune quite well. One day, I went to one of my customers who had a friend visiting. They were in the garden while I was doing the windows and this woman’s friend called out to me So you’re the singing window cleaner are you? For that was how I’d been described by my customerand which obviously stuck in this friend’s mind. I replied that I was indeed that person and gave her one of my business cards. She became a new customer, I became a new personthe singing window cleanerand that became my first story. I came to realise that cleaning windows was just the function I performed, but what made it personal was that people could hear my singing. It also reminded them that I was about and they should remember I could see into their houses.”
“You were a window cleaner? But your business is everywhere around this part of the county. How did you manage that from being a window cleaner?” asked Slater.
“I have a good friend Jake, who was a taxi driver at the time covering this area. I asked if he ever carried any famous people and he said he did, but he told me it was the memorable advice these people gave him that was more important, and not the actual person. Apparently Jake had a question that he asked every passenger and it was this. You are an accomplished person in your own rightso what advice would you give me as someone who doesn’t want to be doing the same thing for the rest of their life? Jake said that people have similar issues to youor they don’t because they’ve overcome them. So either way, there’s an interesting conversation to be had. And of course he knew that people love to give advice, especially when it’s asked for. So he’d always ask his passengers this question as a conversation topic, and of course he learned a great deal from it too.”
Zak sipped at his coffee which seemed to trigger the next part of his story.
“While we were having a drink, Jake once told me that he ate a hamburger on a bagel instead of on a bunbecause there were no buns available, and that it tasted really good. As a joke he said he wanted to try a hamburger on a doughnut one time to see what that was like. We started talking about strange combinations and got onto the subject of a business that a taxi driver and a window cleaner could do together. That might sound a bit crazy, because a taxi is always moving and windows never move, so how could the two go together to form something meaningful? As a joke we set ourselves the challenge that the next time we met for a drink, we’d both have a business idea for something to do together.”
He indicated that they should walk as they talked and he set off on a slow circuit of the car park.
“Jake picked up a passenger who must have been one of the first people to move into a new housing estate. He was talking to the passenger who said there were going to be 160 properties in the developmentand that was just the first stage. Jake realised that was 160 houses that would need to have their windows cleanedso he told me about it. This development was located out of town and beyond normal walking distance, and so as a taxi driver he knew there was an opportunity for him to get regular business too. We talked about him spotting all these new developments as he drove around and that we could both service them for our own businesses. And that’s how we got started.”
They all stepped aside to allow a car to pass.
“On this new development I offered to clean the windows for free for the first three people who moved in for six-monthsif they’d act as references for other new residents. Naturally, these initial customers agreed, and each time someone new moved in I could say that I was already doing most of the houses and so the new residents started using me toobecause of the references I could supply. Soon I was doing almost every house on the estate, which meant I had very little travelling between jobswhich was the unfortunate situation I’d been in before.”
Zak continued.
“These new housing developments are built with very little being done to the gardens. It's mainly big lawns front and back with a few new trees in the middle of them. It always looks quite bare. My wife's a keen gardener and as we've lived in this area for many years she knows what plants do well. So because people were busy with other things in their lives, my wife started to speak to some of the owners about garden design. When there were a number of houses in a row, she suggested that some key components of their gardens should be consistent so that in a few years’ time, if they ever decided to sell their house, the more-established and consistent gardens would increase the value of their property. She had an overall vision but suggested a staged approach for the owners. Some took up the full vision immediately and others just took up the first stage to save money. However, she'd always try to come back to them later to finish it off. This worked well, she enjoyed the work, and because of the volumes of plants she was buying she got big discounts by using a commercial plant supplier. And because I was on the estate doing the windows regularly, I'd do the daily watering for the first week or so.”
“I was at this estate nearly every day, which meant I could offer competitive pricing that kept my competition out. Jake did the same with taxi driving and we had the idea that maybe we could provide a whole range of services for a localised area. By keeping things concentrated and busy we were able to keep prices very competitive. We both started talking to our customers about how we were the local provider of services and people started asking if we knew someone who could provide additional services to the same standard we did.”
Their stroll continued as more cars drove into the car park.
“We realised that we were helping people to turn their house into a home and that we could handle the maintenance aspects of keeping that home in good shapeso we started looking for more things we could do. Do you know that magnolia is the standard wall paint colour for new-build houses? While there's nothing wrong with it, do you want a whole house of this one colour? We got a retired painter and decorator on board who wanted to get some extra income and who had a keen eye for how to use colour. We introduced him as part of our service and people started to listen to him as he explained about painting just one wall in a room as a feature wall to match the furnishings they had. Apparently, people often believed they had to change their furnishings at great cost when they re-decorated, but he said that it's much cheaper to just re-paint a feature wall a different colour every two to three years to completely refresh the appearance of their home at minimal cost. He became part of our team and he actually found his niche as more of an advisor on decorative painting. He's enjoying his retirement even more nowand he earns money as he actually does the painting too. We added a handyman service for the installation of new goods and the assembly of DIY furniture. After all, who wants to spend half of your weekend installing some Ikea wardrobes or cupboards when you've got busy weekday jobs?”
They’d already walked one lap of the car park, but just continued as they were curious to hear more about Zak’s story.
“Jake would be identifying all the new developments that we could support during his driving, but he did something quite smart. When he was taking his passenger somewhere, he'd engage them in conversation and would explain how he was trying to better himself by taking night school courses (which he actually was doing) and that he and I had started our own business. He wanted to know if they had one piece of valuable advice they'd learned that would be useful to us. They'd always tell him something, and if he didn't understand it properly, he'd ask them to explain in more detail. He's a very good listener and after dropping his fare off he'd write down what they had told him. But what’s interesting is that without fail, they would always ask him what kind of business we were in. He’d always reply that we were trying to make people's lives easier and more enjoyable for them and their families by taking away all the mundane choressuch as the different types of work we are doing now. This clearly hit a chord with them as they’d invariably ask for a card as the business sounded to be of use to them. The interesting thing was they got to trust him as he'd normally be picking them up from their home or dropping them off thereso they knew that there was an implicit sense of him not being a complete stranger to them. Naturally, he told them that if they ever needed a taxi driver they should call him directly too.”
Slater and Nick were enthralled with this story and prompted Zak to continue.
“We got some invaluable advice from one of his passengers and that was that it’s in people’s nature to like and support local businesses wherever possible. This person was some marketing executive apparently, and they explained how the principle of local can change. For the local pub it can be the one that is close enough for you to walk to, but for a holiday, the term local means somewhere in your own country rather than going to another country. They explained how the concept of local isn't fixed and can change dependent on what you relate it to. This passenger said that local in terms of your home might even be your street, building or the development where you live. We suddenly had a great idea to include the name of the development we were servicing on the side of our vans using magnetic signs. The business name stayed the same but when we drove onto a particular development we would put the magnetic sign on the side which said 'servicing Winslow Park' or whatever the development's name was. This meant that when people saw our vehiclesthey could see that we were the only trade who had their development in our name and so they made the connection that we were highly focused on their locality.”
Zac took a long drink to drain his coffee cup.
“Another passenger was involved in IT and this person thought what we were doing was really useful to them. He set up a website for each of our developments which shows local events and news and also keeps the residents informed of council activities and other things that are relevant to the residents of each development we serve. The sites are very similar in content as they are all in the same county, and so it doesn't take much to keep all of them updated. But because the website is so local to where they live, almost everyone in the development has signed up to receive the monthly newsletter too. This helps to keep reminding people of all our services and the IT guy advertises his services about helping people with their IT issues. The interesting thing for him is that he doesn't have to go to their homes as he can fix up their problems over the internet.”
Zak crunched up his paper coffee cup and looked around for a litter bin.
“With new housing developments, there are many services they don't need as they are new builds, so we started to look at existing developments where we could offer a new range of services. People may want to have their whole house decorated, pathways re-laid, external roofing and window repairs and so on. So we'd target a number of older developments and speak with the body corporates about what we were doing and how we could offer services at highly competitive prices if a number of people signed up. They helped us spread the word within their development and we started expanding into many existing developments toobut all within tightly defined areas. We didn't realise it at the time, but by being highly concentrated it wasn't long before people who used our services had friends in the area who also used our services. And because we offered great service they started telling others about what we did. We even do individual houses now that lie within our area as they are often close-by the developments we serve.”
Zak deftly tossed his crumpled coffee cup into a rubbish bin as they walked by.
“We only recruit local people wherever possible as this helps our business by being seen to be truly local. Because we are so busy in such a small area we can charge very competitive prices which keep the competition out. We've won lots of local business awards because we ask the people we work with to support us as their local business which helps us to get even more publicity. We’re now offering full-property care for home owners. We’re cleaning windows, gutters, roofing, paving, and doing plumbing repairs, electrical and handyman work too. Care became our key word and part of our current story. All our tradesmen carry vacuum cleaners and dustpans and we make a show of cleaning up your home after we do any work. We care for our customers and we make a little reminder file of the things that don’t change such as their family’s names and the ages of their kids. It’s little things, but it makes a huge difference when you go around to someone’s house and you know how old their kids are and their names. We form a connection with our customers that is so strong, it’s hard to break.”
"Don't you think that you'll eventually saturate your area and so you can't grow anymore?” asked Slater.
"Yes and no. We want to saturate our area so we become the natural choice for local residentsbut this then helps us to expand at the edges of our hub and to set up similar operations around this one. We've already got four other hubs developing and we are looking to franchise the model too."
"That's an amazing story," said Nick.
“This is how we started to build. Accumulation is about being in it for the long run by helping to build up business steadily in the medium term. As long as people were living in that housing estate and we were giving great service at fair priceswhy would people ever want to change? Our vision was to capture customers in the short-term. Build them up in the medium-term and benefit in the longer-term. We talk about how we want to help people care for their families by taking away having to care for the things related to where they live. Our strapline is Compleat care for your home, so you can care for your family.
“Nice,” said Nick.
“Note that it incorporates our name into a story for re-telling,” replied Zak. “Also, part of our growth aspiration actually came from Japan. Soichiro Honda is the person who founded the Honda company in the 1940s. In later years he stated that he wanted to see five Hondas in every home.”
“He wanted to have five cars in each home? That seems a bit ridiculous,” said Slater.
“Not necessarily cars, but five Honda products. From cars and motorcycles to lawnmowers, blowers and generatorsand we want to achieve the same. To have five of our services in every home in our area.”
“That is truly an ambitious goal,” said Slater. “I’m impressed.”
“Thanks. For tomorrow I want you to have your own stories ready. It’s one short sentence that sums up what you do in a way that’s different, so it’s easy for people to remember and re-tell. Make it something that reflects what you’ve learned so farand that if you overheard someone telling it in public, it would inspire you. We’ll meet tomorrow morning outside the town hall at the usual time.”