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September 03, 2007
Competition, cutting through the clutter and focus on your customer
KLCC's foodcourt, the one atop the Centercourt. But it could be any foodcourt in any shopping mall in any country.
Competition is hard. While there are thousands of customers flooding in through the gates at any given day, for lunch, tea, or diner, not every outlet is frequented equally. Some more, some less.
The shops embark on different tactics to entice customers to come, see and order their food. There are shops offering discounts (what's new?), different flavours, some stand out with fast food delivery and so on.
A few have someone standing inside or outside the shops to bring customers to the counter and get them to order.
I observed this young employee behind the counter, addressing all the people that walked by. She was good, even so she repeated her message over and over again. It was good enough to attract a crowd. People started to crowd around the store.
But the moment they stood in front of the counter she somewhat dropped her attention from them and directed the attention to those outside passing by. Basically, she left those standing in front of the counter to ... no one, she didn't hand them over to another colleague to take the orders.
So here they were, a few customers, that suddenly looked lost, browsed the menu and sometimes ordered, sometimes, they left.
A break down in the value chain.
Marketing and business development worked, but execution in the final stages failed to deliver.
This happens. Often enough. In small shops, such as those in a foodcourt, or even in MNCs.
Ask yourself, how many sales have you lost to the competitors? Because you didn't meet their expectations across the value chain. Basically, you first lost the focus, then the customer.
Care to share?
Posted by Andreas at September 3, 2007 06:02 PM
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