Customer Survey time

Customer survey coming soon to find out what else I can offer that will be attractive to our mail order customers.

January is normally fairly quiet for the Liqueur business. Most of the time, it’s just sorting out administration from last year. This year I’m thinking of ways to improve our mail order service and have decided to ask our regular customers via an online survey.

From about November last year, a paper survey was included with each order – a fair number have now accumulated and the results are very interesting. One of the most popular requests was for a ‘Free delivery’ option.  This was implemented in November and  resulted in more orders and happier customers, so that is top of the list for this year once I have worked out the best way offering this.

Another area I am looking at is how to ensure that the orders arrive in good condition. Some other mail order companies spend a lot of time and effort on this and I will be analysing what they do and then incorporating the best ideas for our own online and offline mail order business.

If you have any mail order experience as a customer that you think would be useful to me, please get in touch – all comments and ideas welcome.

From time to time I will be focusing on business tools that I come across that improve efficiency, cut costs or help sell more goods. Look out for these ‘tools of the trade’ especially if you too have a business like mine.

All the best. Wild weather here today – hope it calms down for the weekend as I’m off on the ferry from Oban to Coll.

All the best.   Roy Lewis

Coming soon…20 steps to starting a direct to consumer business

A New Year -the ideal time to start your ‘direct to consumer’ business – what you need to know in 20 blogs.

Well here we are at the end of the year and what have you done? How about getting that business idea you have up and running in 2011? Read on….

I remember years ago when I was an employee, I just couldn’t imagine how on earth anyone could start a business and get going. There was so much that I didn’t know about and when I eventually did have to get on and start a company, because I was no longer needed by my employer, I had to learn by making mistakes, how do do it.

I have been asked for years to write down how to get started in selling something direct to the consumer, so now I have done it. In January, starting from 6th, I will produce a blog each working day until I have it all down. The focus will be on how to start a business selling direct to consumers at events and then how to build a customer base. The same principles apply for an online business too.

Once the Startup blogs are published, I will then have a go at all the new ways to start a business on the Internet. I will report back on how I am progressing, what has worked and what has not and what I did about it. I am especially interested in trying out ideas that all the blurb that goes with it says they are ‘really easy to do’.

So, the objective of the forthcoming blogs is to provide you with some stepping stones, based on years of experience, in all the areas I will discuss. This is not just the same old stuff from textbooks, churned out by yet another wannabe businessman – I have created liqueurs, marketed, sold them and developed a mail order business, on and off line, so it’s all real. I will detail too, all the horrendous mistakes I made on the way, so you can avoid them, save time and money and get to your planned end point quicker and with less hassle.

For the up and coming blogs, you will be able to discover:

  • How to plan your new business
  • Routes to market
  • Building a customer base
  • Setting up a mail order system
  • Events – choosing the right ones for you
  • Setting up your stall – what goes where
  • Talking to customers – which words work best
  • Your year ahead plan and handling doubts
  • Selling or supplying – which is more profitable
  • Persuasive words and closing the sale
  • Things not do do in front of any customer
  • Deciding what to sell and why
  • Confidence boosting measures that work

That’s just some idea of what the blogs will cover and I’ll add more content as they go along too, depending on comments during the process.

So have a good New Year, write down some ideas for 2011 and look out for the first blog of the series starting on January 6th. All the best, Roy Lewis

YouTube video uploaded at last

YouTube video now loaded and working – hebridean whisky liqueur
Mail order ‘Free delivery’ option planned for 2011

What an effort that took. After hours of wrangling with YouTube and Google login pages, managed to not only upload my first video, but also add a title so that it can be found.

Making the video was really embarrassing-viewing it is even worse, for me anyway. If you want a good laugh, just go to YouTube and key in this:

hebridean whisky liqueur

This should take you to my video where you will see a half starved looking man, dressed in warm outdoor clothes while indoors, describing the joys of Hebridean Whisky Liqueur and doing so really badly. Hollywood has certainly not missed any opportunities with me. Perhaps I will get better with practice.

Once I had loaded up the video, I have to choose what category I wanted it listed under – Entertainment or Education? You can be the judge of that.

I will be doing other videos and will let you know when they are up on YouTube. I found the whole process of getting it uploaded fine the second time round. Like many other sites, YouTube assume that you are familiar with their site so don’t appear to explain things very well. This means that it is hard to work out what to do and what they mean by all their special terms.

Facebook, on the other hand, is still complicated , but their explanations are better and on the whole, quite helpful.

On the Internet Exploration front, I have set up a new Domain to tie in with the YouTube persona I have-before anyone else did so. It is:

www.theliqueurman.com

There is nothing on it right now, but I am going to use the set up of this new site as an example of how to do it right from the start. I am not a computer person so I will be able to write a blog telling you what works, what doesn’t, what I think has been helpful etc, and I will be building up a toolbox of sites and programs that I have used to make things work. I will only recommend something that I have actually used. Now there’s a novel idea.

On the liqueur mail order front, nearly all our deliveries have been made and still a few orders trickling in. The ‘Free delivery’ option I tried seemed to be a real hit and when all our prices are revamped with VAT going up to 20% in January, I plan to have free delivery as an option or at least as a special from time to time.

Minus 10 here tonight but went for a lovely walk up a nearby hill this afternoon with my two children. Everything iced up – brought back a 15 inch long icicle from a stream (it didn’t melt, even in the car) and at the end of the walk, stood under a group of massive trees and listened to the ice fragments breaking off the branches and falling over us.

More stuff next week-have a good Christmas wherever you are-all the best-Roy Lewis

Recovering from being snowbound

Big companies fail to deliver the goods. I deliver myself as I can’t let my customers down.

Well, what a muddle the transport system here has got into. Found most of our shipments to customers, apart from the one sent via a massive company, whose 20,000 employees or whatever they have, appeared unable to advise me that they had lost my consignment – and still have not found it nearly 2 weeks after a 1-day service was booked. Makes  me think of the maxim of not running away from problems and admitting mistakes. Funny that our biggest supplier is most guilty of both of these traits.

Last week was fraught indeed – I ended up driving stock down to one of my Licensees at a consumer show in the centre of Newcastle, as the Courier used couldn’t even make it to the warehouses. Given that I had more to lose than they, did, I managed not only to collect from two unreachable warehouses but travelled through Scotland to Newcastle, and then on to The Lake District for anther delivery. In commercial terms it might not really make sense, but I couldn’t let my customers down when I knew I could sort it out myself.

Pity my suppliers didn’t have the same view.

What would you have done? I’d like to know your opinion.

On the Internet front, all I have manged to do is get used to looking at Keyword Spy and Google Trends. It is amazing to have these tools available and mostly for free – these type of products are usually in two forms – a free standard one and a version with more features that you pay for. I use ‘Log Me In’ for remote PC access. I am actually using it now while writing this on a Netbook PC logged on to my home PC located in my office. The Log Me In program I use includes remote printing, which is what I want and pay for. The standard version doesn’t have this feature and is free. For me, the extra functionality is worth the cost of @ $40 per annum.

More fun and games next week – keep warm – all the best.

Roy Lewis

One didn’t work but another did…….progress of sorts

Update from last week. My ‘exciting’ YouTube video did not in the end, load after all, so I am going to have another go at it and when I work out the way to do it, I will do a blog on it so you too can YouTube, as it were.

What has worked and took hardly any time, was to put an advert up on Face-book. Took me a while to work out how to do everything, but the instructions do appear to match up with the options. I ended up putting on an advert on a ‘Gifts for him’ headline and choose our Nelson liqueur. The only real snag is that when you upload a picture, it gets squashed so the Nelson 50cl bottle looks a bit odd. For the first time, I inserted a link to the actual Nelson ordering page on my site-let’s see if it gets approved and then the outcome. It is amazing to choose the age and interest profile for your potential customers for adverts-no wonder the traditional media are having a hard time of it.

Uk still in the grip of people unable to get backlogs of orders sorted due to an odd combination of schools off (stuck with kids all day), very icy roads (and they are), piles of snow gumming up smaller roads (which is the case here) and general paralysis of the entire transport system, including the petrol tankers who can’t get to the refineries etc. All this means that than instead of our Courier collecting our orders, I am delivering them to the Courier and some bigger orders,  am driving down to England tomorrow to deliver it myself as the Show Distributor is at a show and is running out of our liqueurs.

With luck, by next week, things will have calmed down and I will be able to move ahead on several exciting fronts-I will announce what next week.

All the best.

Roy Lewis

Trying something new – should be easy…..

Mistakes made in making a YouTube video.

This blog is the start of a slightly different tack from the recent ones. The past ones have been mostly about shows etc. This and a number of subsequent blogs will be about the new ideas I am having a go at and how I get on with it, what worked, what didn’t and how I get round the issues – which may be finger trouble on my part or just not reading the instructions properly, not that that has ever happened.

The reason for setting up all these forthcoming blogs is so that others who are attempting similar activities can see that it can be done, it is worth the effort and that they are not the only ones feeling a bit overwhelmed by some of the new skills that need to be learnt just to set up one new idea.The new idea I would like to cover in this blog is making a YouTube video of me explaining the background to one of my liqueurs, namely Hebridean Whisky Liqueur. I have thought about doing this for over a year, got the equipment needed but not started. Analysing this, I have come to the conclusion that it is the number of areas involved in actually getting a video on YouTube that has put me off even starting. This is ridiculous as I have explained the background to Hebridean Whisky Liqueur thousands of times at consumer shows over the years-I can do it without thinking. But what happened when the camera was on….

Well, to my amazement, I started to stumble over the words and forgot half of what I was planning to say, It was almost as if not having an audience to perform to, made it impossible to be natural.

So what now. I have two options – keep practicing or try making the video with an audience to explain it to.. My first attempts were so bad that I deleted them right away. By next week, I aim to be able to send you the details of the new YouTube video – has to be less than 1 minute or no-one looks at it apparently.

Have a nice weekend.

Roy Lewis

Personal Development Day-When are you planning to have one?

Today is my son’s Personal Development Day at school. Great idea for him – for me too? Why not? Imagine setting aside an entire day just to focus on making your business better, your offering to customers more valuable, your products and services more in tune with what your customers want? The list of what you could spend a day doing are endless. I wonder how many business owners ever take a day out to do any of this? I am now planning to set aside a day per month for this – no interruptions or checking e-mail allowed. Now that’s a real challenge, but at least it will give me a chance to get some projects off the ground that I know will be helpful in the long run.

Mail order news – last offer of free Miniature Display pack plus free gift surpasses all records. Hit the mark with this one, so I am setting up another simelr offer now. To get the offer, send us an email with your address by 22 November.

Very wild here in Argyll tonight-driving slow just in case of fallen branches.

Roy Lewis

Busiest Internet shopping day-will it be 6th December 2010?

I’ve been thinking about the results of our customer survey and how I can tie in an special offer to coincide with the busiest Internet shopping day running up to Christmas. It’s an odd date for us because we can usually ship liqueurs almost right up to 3 days before Christmas. Customers often have an idea that they need to get their orders in really early to get what they want in time for Christmas. As I aim to send all our orders on a next day service, this is the reason I can keep up with demand at that time of year. Watch out for the offer on our e-newsletter. If you are not receiving the newsletter, you can register on our site. Here it is:

www.hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk

After the very positive and interesting feedback from our customer surveys at the BBC Good Food Show, I ma now including one with each mail order I send out – if you return the survey, then you get 10% off all your orders placed online between now and Christmas. The point of the survey is to help me identify how I can serve you, my customer, better with new products, new ideas and new services – the critical question is, ‘What could we do better?’ If you have ever watched any of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmare series, you will recall that this is the question he is most interested in finding out customers views on, right at the start of a project to help turn a restaurant around. Usually the owners only want to hear praise and just ignore really helpful suggestions from their customers.

Very wet and horrible weather here in Argyll today-here’s to a better weekend.

Kind regards,

Roy Lewis

BBC Good Food Show – aftermath

An interesting 3 days indeed. Lots of people wanting to sample our liqueurs and whisky leading to sales, which pays for everything. More importantly, everyone I asked to complete my new Customer Survey did so willingly. Excellent results and I am planning to change the  special offers for mail order and Internet customers  on the back of the Survey results.

So, what does this all mean for you ? Having taken the step of asking our customers what they want, I will continue this by sending a survey to all our mail order customers. I think  I have been doing this type of survey face to face with customers for years in a more casual way, but is is so much more powerful when they actually commit to writing down their responses to a standard set of questions.

Coming soon will be an opportunity for you to make suggestions for a new brand that I am planning to launch. More on this later.

All the best, Roy Lewis

Lost blog

Just returned to my Word-press page to find that my draft blog has evaporated from the drafts section. Does this happen to anyone else? Is this software flaky? If the drafts option is a dud, then it’s back to square one, again.

Anyway, my blog was about having a stand at the BBC Good Food Show – doing these events is something I have wound down from but now miss them, There is something edgy about having to sell your wares direct and answer questions from the public. after a good day a ta big event, it can be very satisfying and without fail some new angle on a brand is unveiled by a customer, just adding to the stock of stories – a bi like a discussion group. More on how I got on next week.