Any entrepreneur who wants to succeed in their small business must consider grassroots marketing tactics. I think we are all familiar with these types of marketing techniques, after all probably all of us have read the popular small business entrepreneurial book "Guerrilla Marketing" by Conrad. Now then, before retirement I ran a franchising company in the cleaning sector, and yes we did franchise mobile detailing units.
One of the concepts that I had put into our operations manual was to remind all of the franchisees that the best new customer to get, would be the car this next door to the one that you are detailing currently. And if you were in a neighborhood, perhaps a high-end section of town, detailing a nice Mercedes, or some exotic sports car, it makes sense that perhaps the next-door neighbor, or another neighbor across the street might also want services.
Not to mention the fact that if you are detailing someone's car in their driveway, there are plenty of people driving by and seeing what you are doing. Therefore it makes a lot of sense to have good signage on your mobile detailing rig, and crisp, clean uniforms. Also, it would be irresponsible in my professional opinion having been in the industry for some 30 years not to put an "A-Frame" sign out by the curb that everyone driving by could see.
"This Vehicle Being Detailed by (Your Business Name and Logo Here)"
And it hardly matters if you are detailing a boat down at the Marina, or an aircraft at the airport. In that case you should put in A-Frame sign on the dock, or a small A-Frame sign in a conspicuous place at the hangar special. Why wouldn't you do that? In fact, whenever I went to visit our franchisees, I would call them on their mobile phone, as I came into town, and I would drive to wherever they were working, on the job site to help them.
It was my way of getting a little exercise, and do something that I really enjoyed prior to becoming the franchisor founder. Often, our franchisees were too busy and in a hurry to put out the A-Frame sign. And yet occasionally they would complain that they didn't make as much money as they had hoped during the month - that they were really busy on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, but they were slow the rest of the week.
Now then, let this be a reminder to you, you should learn from our mistakes, and you should always put out that A-Frame sign to remind everyone in the area who is detailing that vehicle, airplane, or boat; the success of your business depends on it. Please consider all this and think on it.
Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes writing 23,850 articles by July 4, 2011 is going to be difficult because all the letters on his keyboard are now worn off now..
No comments:
Post a Comment