Tag: business

Finding ways to reward existing customers

New Platinum Personal Tarde Account – get up to 32% discount on liqueur orders.

Hello there again,

This month I have been inspired by a book on different business strategies that I bought a while ago and came across while deciding which items to throw away. After reading one or two chapters, it occurred to me that what I needed from now on, was a list of strategies to reward my existing customers that I could work on and implement right now. The objective is for me to increase the number of ways to reward my existing customers and to increase the number of times they order from me.

I have now spent a week or so developing our new Platinum Personal Trade Account. With the offer on this new Account, my best customers will be able to get up to 32% off all their liqueur purchases and get some free goodies into the bargain each time they call off an order. The deal is that the customer sets up a Trade Account with us and pays into the Account so that there is always a positive balance. They can then place orders for at least 12 x 50cl bottles at a time.

Once they have applied for an Account, the full Personal Trade Account price list and order form is sent to them – currently the offer is only being made available to those who have signed up for our e-mail Newsletter. To do so, just go to our main liqueur site and click on the ‘Become a Friend of Hebridean Liqueurs’ box on the bottom left hand side of the Home page.

I have a several more promotional ideas coming up for our customers and it will be interesting to see which ones produce the best results. Keep checking this Blog to keep up to date with our offers.

Have a good weekend – all the best. Roy Lewis

www.hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk

 

 

New brand coming soon

New gin to be launched in time for Christmas.

Hello again,

I have been working on a new brand for about 2 years now – not a liqueur this time but a Dry London Gin. Well, what’s so special about that you may ask?

Well, in my research, I have discovered that although there are lots of fancy new gins out there, they are either made with weird tasting botanicals  – the cool name for flavours – or you are meant to drink them in an unusual way. It turns out that the vast majority of gin drinkers like a straight G and T, so I have focused on having a gin that is just that – straight gin, with no messing about.

To make it a bit different though I have designed a gin at a strength of 50% ABV – Alcohol By Volume. Most gins are 37.5% ABV. So mine is a stronger, so you get a real G and T.

I have also chosen a really fantastic looking bottle too and the idea is that not only will it be a great gin to buy for yourself but also, due to the eye-catching packaging, will make a lovely gift too.

I am planning to have the brand out in time for Christmas so keep an eye on our website to see how you can place an order.

I will write another blog once the first batch is produced and will see about getting a copy of the label inserted into the article.

Have a great weekend – wild again here so off to the hills.

Kind regards, Roy Lewis

www.hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk

 

 

Rally postscript – rain, mud and soaked customers

Selkirk Rally a washout but a success despite this.

Well, it was a great plan until the weather altered just a bit. Saturday turned out to have Sunday’s weather so Sunday was wet, blast of sun then wet again, all day.

What this meant was that large numbers of car owners did not turn up – why put your lovely polished car into a quagmire? I wouldn’t, so I was amazed that any turned up at all. Despite the consequent drop in attendee numbers and the terrible weather, I still did okay after all. I didn’t really have much of an opportunity to do any Risk Reversal work but did focus on the two key aspects of our liqueurs.

The first point was that all my liqueurs are freshly made. What this means is that it is similar to when you bake a cake-the fresher it is, the nicer the taste. So it is with liqueurs. Other liqueurs are fine, but it is sometimes hard to work out how old they are when you buy them. To get the best tastes, the newer the liqueur the better.

The second point was that all the ingredients that I use are as pure as I can get. This is particularly important with the water that goes into each brand – only soft water is used, so that there is no mineral taste that you sometimes get in hard water areas of the UK. Soft water is available where I make the liqueurs, as rain does not flow through limestone rock, but over granite, so does not pick up any minerals.

An unexpected benefit of doing the Selkirk Rally was that I found out about other events coming up in the area. This usually happens when I go to a new area and have a chance to chat to other business owners and customers too – they often have good ideas for events that would suit me.

Enjoy the last of the summer this weekend.

Kind regards, Roy Lewis

www.hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk

 

Selkirk Car Rally 2011

Trying a new risk reversal strategy this weekend….

Hello again.

About a year ago I took a Trade stand at the above event in the Scottish Borders. I had never been to an event like this so was intrigued as to how it would go. After a rather damp and gloomy start, it picked up well and in the end, it was a good day with lots of sales.

This year I have applied to attend this Show again. The reason is that I am going to try out a new Customer Risk Reversal plan. The reason is this. Quite often when customers are tasting my liqueurs, they seem interested, but something stops them committing themselves to a purchase. What I am looking to do is to remove the barriers to buying.

What I am going to do is to offer customers the opportunity to return the goods on the day if they change their mind.  In addition, if they take to goods home and for any reason, decide they want to return them to me, they will have a year to do so. All they need to do is pack the liqueurs and send them to me, as long as the bottles are unopened and can be resold.

Now as I did the same event last year and have the sales records to see what I sold, it will be easy to compare the effect of the guarantee. Watch out for another Blog on the results. I am really looking forward to the show as the attendees were very friendly and relaxed. I suppose the kind of people who can afford a spare car to show off at Car Rally’s probably would be fairly laid back – just the kind of person who has time to come along and chat about which of my liqueurs they like best.

Have a good weekend. Kind regards, Roy Lewis

www.hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk

 

 

 

Are you a Creature of the Web?

Getting to grips with the new ways of finding and keeping customers

Hello again,

What on earth is all this about? Listened to part of a program last night on 21 year olds and what they all thought of thing specific and general.

One of them said ‘Us 21 year olds are Creatures of the Web’. They do everything via the Web – they were born at the same time as the www got going so know nothing else. What this means is that an entire generation expect to use the Web for all their needs. What an opportunity this is, as was the opportunities in the past:

1930-1950 – Silver Screen Age

1960-1990 – TV Age

1990 to now  – PC screen and now Smart Phone Age

With Social Media expanding at a rate of knots, what are you doing about it?

It is now easier to reach your target audience, survey your customers to find out what they want and for you to be able to provide goods and services to them to satisfy their needs. A majority of employment comes in the UK from smaller companies – these are well suited to taking advantage of the new opportunities coming along.

In the recent past, to reach a large audience, vast expenditure was needed for TV and newspaper advertising – now you can join a group on Facebook and interact with current and prospective customers without the expenditure previously required to do this.

To cap it all, there are amazing new ways to sell thing – Ebay and Amazon are thinking up new ways to assist sellers and buyers constantly and Facebook and Google are not far behind.

Is there a really good reason why you are not at least having a go at these new routes to market?

Don’t know where to start? Send me a message and I’ll see if I can help you.

All the best, Roy Lewis

www.hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Too many things to do? Have fewer, better customers?

Have a plan for less things to do, and looking after your best customers and ditch the rest – they cost you money.

Hi there again,

A lot of small businesses from time to time are overwhelmed by too many things to do. When this happens, customer service and general ‘looking after customers’ suffers. I have had this issue recently and decided the solution was to have fewer and better customers.

Really paying attention to our customers does help. It certainly gives a focus so that everyone knows what to do all the time. In the middle of an administrative task-fine, but let’s get this customer issue sorted out right now before it really eats up our time and gets very complicated. Sorting these out right away is always better than leaving it to fester.

Who is your best customer and why are they? Do they buy often from you? Would you like more like them? If so, what can you do to move some of your others customers closer to the best one you have?

How about treating them as if they are already your best customer and tell them that they are really important to you.

At the same time, why not ditch some of your worst ones? You know who I mean – the ones who won’t pay, complain all the time, have unrealistic expectations of you and your company or just want to try to bully you into giving in to their demands. Imagine how much easier it would be if you didn’t have them at all? Getting rid of them and just dealing with the best customers can be one of the most profitable things you will ever do in your business.

All this is not about giving a poor service but simply focusing on the customers who make you 80% of your profits. You might as well forget the rest, which means you have more time to get to know the goods ones better.

Why not give it a go and let me know how you get on.

have a good weekend. Roy Lewis

www.hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk

 

 

 

 

Why it’s worth meeting other business people just for a chat

Using coffee chats to get inspired with your busines and how you can do the same for others.

Hi there,

What an odd title for a Blog. Or is it?

All business owners get the business equivalent of ‘writers block’ from time to time. Your list of things to do stretches into the future with no end in sight. To make matters worse, you don’t have the information to hand to actually complete any of them either.

What you need really is not more things to do, but an injection of inspiration and surprisingly, this can come from just having a chat with another business owner. As you discuss how you are getting on etc and listen to their conversation, you pick up ideas from what they are doing right and then can apply this to what you are doing. Sometimes you will even get a terrific new idea of how to get more customers or sell in a different way – and all this just by having a coffee with a friend. In my experience, I have never come away from a meeting/chat like this without some new angle and one that I am keen to get on with – something that gets me up in the morning.

That’s not to say that all you do is pump people for information and then just copy their business using their inside knowledge – you would soon run out of friends that way. What I mean here is just listening to what is happening in their business, mulling it over and then applying the idea to your own, non-competitive business. In fact, if you then go back to your source and tell them that you have implemented and idea you got from them, tweaked it and applied it to your business, they are likely to take that as a compliment.

Remember, they may do the same for ideas you have too. In fact, what I try and do during these chats is to see what I know that I can give away to the other person without any expectation of a return favour. By doing it this way, usually something does come your way, but not from where you might expect. I know that sounds a bit woolly, but just try it for a few weeks and see what happens.

Let me know how you get on and what idea got you inspired again.

Have a great weekend. All the best. Roy Lewis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why it’s a good idea to have your ‘Top 5 things to do’

Make a list before you finish work for the day – time to sleep on it.

Hi there again,

Came across the famous ‘List 5 things to do tomorrow’ idea a couple of weeks ago. I used to do this all the time but ended up giving it up as the 5 things I choose turned out to be actions that took more than a day each so were never done. Bad plan.

This time round, I have restricted the list to 5 things that I can actually do during a day where the phones ring constantly and emails pile in. The results? Well I am getting through more of the big stuff that is important than just reacting to the latest call or message. Having help is good too, as at least you can look at what you do and decide if you really need to be the one to do it.

The way I have been looking at this is to decide what actions are the ones that only I can do – all the rest can be delegated. If not, why not? Writing this Blog needs me to do it – so far.

What is worth doing when writing your list, is to do it at the end of the working day – and write it down. Just by doing this, you will end up pondering some of the issues and hurdles involved in actually completing these tasks by the time you get to them the next day. It’s a classic case of sleeping on it and seeing what happens. Since I started doing my own list, I have managed to sort out some fairly complex issues, mostly by not thinking about them too much but at least having them there and mulling them over until some solutions present themselves.

The extra advantage of making your list in this way, is that if you don’t get all 5 items done, all you do is carry them over to the next day and then you have more time to come up with solutions.

It’s worth giving this a go – what have you got to lose?

All the best, Roy Lewis

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to waste time

Getting your priorities in order and keeping them so.

Hello there again.

Odd title but very appropriate is you find yourself going round in circles with too much to do. This happens from time to time to me too, so I know what it is like. Usually it’s because of:

1 Too many things to do that will take quite a bit of time to do, so they never get started and just pile up.

2 Constant interruptions so that you can never get anything finished.

3 A mounting number of tasks where you cannot complete them until someone else gets back to you or completes their part of the job.

Dealing with any of the above leads to a feeling of loss of control, increased frustration and high anxiety.

So how can it all be rationalised? This is what I do now:

1 Work out what only I can do and delegate the rest.

2 Allocate a sensible amount of time to a piece of work. If you know it will take 2 hours, give it that and take no calls or interruptions. Do not check email.

3 Stop checking email for more ‘must be done now’ actions. Learning to not react is the best way to sort out the things you really need to do right now. Most people don’t but lots of message senders want you to react immediately as it makes no difference to them if you have to abandon your work to sort out their issue.

If the above appears a bit hard on other people, that’s fine.

Having too much detail to sort out while the phone rings all the time will drive you to distraction. Have a good long think about how to prevent this happening and once you have a plan that will work and that will stick to, it all becomes  a lot easier to manage.

All the best-Roy Lewis

Our liqueurs and all made by hand – video now on Youtube

Proof that our liqueurs are handmade – it’s on YouTube now.

Hello,

Over the years, whenever I have been selling our liqueurs either at a consumer show or over the phone, it is always been a bit of a struggle convincing customers that our liqueurs really are made and bottled by hand.

You would think that this should be easy.

I do not have a large company, but most people think we are owned by Diageo or Seagram’s and that all our brands must be made in a giant factory on a high speed line.

Nothing could be further from the truth, but if you can’t actually show customers what we do, they just don’t believe it.

Well at last I have filmed a video of Hebridean Whisky Liqueur being made. This is the best one to show as it is the most complicated and you can see all the stages involved.

The amazing part of getting the video on to YouTube is that the software that comes with the Flip meno camera I have, also has a Movie magic option that joins together the clips and sets them to music – I chose a nice acoustic guitar tune. I had set aside a day to do this – it took less than 20 minutes, so winners all round there.

Have a look at the video: my profile name is ‘theliqueurman’ and choose ‘Making Hebridean Whisky Liqueur’

Following this one, I am now looking at what else I can film – I am amending our Online Survey too so that I can find out what customers would like to see. Nothing like asking the customers what they want. Novel idea that.

At this time of year, I am besieged by Show organisers wanting us to attend their events. They all say that the events will be great for us but when I find out the costs involved, the only ones to benefit are them, not us or our customers, who have to pay too much to get into the event.

My new policy is that a new event to us will have to be free for us to attend or it will not be considered. If it is a good one, then it is likely that we will do it again and pay for it. To make these events a success, the organisers need to take into account that the businesses attending need to make money and the public need to be sure they are not paying too high a price to buy a ticket for the show. The successful shows have this about right: most don’t.

More fun and games to come-bye for now.

Roy Lewis