Good Morning!! Yes it is a good morning, the sun is shining, it's just the right amount of chilly and I managed to squeak by my last blog without getting grounded.Today I need to vent a little bit about coupons and special pricing offers. This stuff is almost always handled by "The Marketeer" she puts together all the advertisements we send out periodically with special offers for loyal customers as well as new customers. Most of our advertising is directed toward a seasonal theme. She puts a lot of time into making each advertisement as appealing as possible. She also tries to ensure that the customer has enough time to take advantage of these specials by spacing the expiration dates out pretty far. When business gets slow on top of these wonderful coupons we make calls from here to offer special limited time offers and again we make sure that the offers are valid usually for at least a month. Do you think people pay attention to these expiration dates; verbal or printed? NO THEY DON'T!
Let's take a little trip down summer '08 memory lane. The Marketeer sent out these fabulous cards at the beginning of August offering long time awaited discounted prices lower than they've been in more than 3 years. (pretty exciting so far huh?)
Everything was to expire August 30, 2008. Then on top of this fabulous card we made our calls offering even more deals on top of the printed offers because let's face it when people are on vacation no one is around to get the windows done or houses power washed. Once again these offers were valid until the end of August. To make things better we even extended all the offers out to September 15, 2008. Do you think this made a difference to our customers? Are you getting excited yet? (I know the suspense is killing you isn't it?). Finally some of the offers were extended even further to September 30, 2008. I bet you're wondering why.
Well here we go fast forwarding to today October 15, 2008. Hope no one got whip lash on that trip. (If you're not laughing you should be). Customers are calling to book appointments for our lowest price ever promotions. What do you think my response is? "Well sorry but that offer is expired" Can you guess what I get back?.... ready here it comes my favorite part.. "How can it be expired I just got the card in the mail" and "Well you didn't run that special very long I just got your message"
So here are my potential reasons for these kind of responses. One the post offices and phone companies have it in for us. The postal service is keeping our mailings hostage until they feel like sending them out in order to sabotage us. The phone company has the same idea so they are internally re-routing our calls to other places until our offers expire then sending them to the right machine. Big Conspiracy to sabotage our business and yours too so be very careful.
Two the most logical reason is the customer is tossing our card aside or hitting the delete button on the machine because they don't want to deal with it without thinking first. Then later on when they actually spend the 2 minutes it takes to look at the windows or the siding of the house causing them to call us with a major case of amnesia; wanting the deals that have expired a month ago. I'll leave it up to you to decide which is the real reason they didn't call for the specials prior to their expiration date.
Lesson of the day would be: Customers please please pay attention to expiration dates and take a minute to listen to our messages... maybe even return the call. We can always book appointments in advance. Fellow window cleaners maybe we can all make more of an effort to make expiration dates clearer, BIGGER, BOLDER.
Have a Great Week,
The Apointed One
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1 comment:
It's too bad that your exciting offer didn't translate into higher sales, or keep the crews busy during the slow summer months.
I think it goes to show that people will get their windows done in the fall, and there is not much you can do to dissuade that behavior.
You also ended up with angry people on the phone too, not the best way to start a relationship with a customer.
Perhaps next summer, don't drop your prices, and keep the extra money in your pocket from the ones that do book. Maybe you might have to lay off a crew, or tell some of your crews to enjoy a hoilday, go to the beach or whatever.
Often I think we are too quick to lower prices, thinking that will translate into higher sales and that is not always the case.
Shannon - love your posts. Keep it up!
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