Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an easy and cheap answer to sustainable restaurant growth?  Whether you’re new to this business or have been around the block, you’ve surely realized that there is no silver bullet to increasing your restaurant sales and keeping them high.

One mistake many restaurant owners make is believing that marketing is the answer to growing sales.  Building a great restaurant comes down lots of hard work on a few fundamentals.  Then, and only then, you move on to marketing programs.  All great restaurants are built on the same five building blocks.  These are easy to know and understand, but are challenging to implement effectively.  Oh, and it turns out that these fundamentals are also your best marketing tools.

1. Service.  When was the last time you had truly surprising service?  So good that you actually mentioned it to someone?  Surprising service doesn’t have to be grandiose.  Many times the smallest things make the biggest impact.  A smile, a personal question or comment, greeting the customer as they come through the door, making a first time guest feel like part of the family, offering something extra (maybe even for free?!?), saying their name, cleaning up their garbage, refilling their drink, making a personal commitment that their food or experience will be great, handing them a business card, offering to follow up with them to be sure that their experience was great.  When was the last time one of these happened to you?  When was the last time one of these happened to one of your guests?  It’s easy for our service to become ordinary when we’re serving thousands of guests.  Challenge your team to create simple ways that ordinary can seem extraordinary each and every time.  The best way to generate word-of-mouth marketing is by delivering consistently surprising service.
2. Food.  Yes, as a restaurant, food is your foundation.  Getting a customer to try your food is the first step in creating a long-term, repeat guest.  Get them to try your food, and and they’ll fall in love with you, right?  Your food is a great marketing tool.  Delicious food accurately and consistently prepared is a must.  Like any restaurant, sometimes you won’t get it right.  This is a great opportunity to move a guest from dissatisfied to a raving fan all in one step.  First, of course, make it right.  Give them what they ordered and paid for since it is what they ordered and paid for.  Encourage them to keep what was made incorrectly – they may quickly find they like it a lot more for free.  Then give them something so compelling that they can’t help but come back into your restaurant.  Surprise them with your solution.
3. Environment.  Whenever a guest comes in your doors, you’re inviting them into your world, into your home to eat your food.  Every element of the environment sends a message about who you are, and what you’re like.  Creating a clean, inviting environment with the right atmosphere is critical to giving each guest that desire to return.  You have an opportunity to create an energizing respite for someone’s day.  Friendly service, smiles all around, clean tables and clean bathrooms all help create that atmosphere.
4. Value.  You don’t have to be the cheapest to be the best value.  Your prices have to be fair in conjunction with all of the other components of the value equation – food, service, environment, convenience, brand, speed, location, etc.  Everyone wants a good deal on a great product.  If you can over deliver on every component of value, our guests will have great reasons to choose you over the competition time and again.  Fixing a value problem is one of the hardest things to do in the restaurant business.  When prices rise too high or your service and quality slip, customers walk out the door and never return.  It’s much easier to make customers happy today than to recover someone who leaves dissatisfied.  If your customers are leaving without planning to return it creates a downward spiral that is hard to correct.  Be sure to get ongoing feedback from your guests so you can identify a problem before it gets out of control.
5. Location.  How are you levering your location?  Are you near residential, businesses, or schools?  Each of these has their own excellent marketing opportunities.  Getting involved with the community around your restaurant is critical to building the long-term relationships that will help your location thrive over time.  Your current location is fixed, but remember that a good location can be a powerful marketing tool.  Invest in your location and all the other marketing you do will be more effective.

If you’re over-delivering on these five building blocks, you’re already doing your best marketing.  Generating new trial and satisfied customers who return frequently will happen naturally when you’re focused on these fundamentals.  After you’ve optimized these areas, you’re ready to take your marketing programs to the next level by increasing community involvement, local store marketing, catering, online ordering, loyalty programs, upselling, partnerships, interactive marketing and other marketing.

The foundation of all successful businesses can be simplified into one short statement:

Be different from competition in a way customers value.

Whether you’re a huge brand, a start-up, a product maker, or a service provider this applies to you.  Business is simply customers trading money for a solution.  However, customers today don’t just buy products, they choose between lots of options.  Our lives are packed with spending opportunities, and many products seem the same.  It’s more important than ever to give customers a reason to choose you.

Great businesses get big and stay big by continually learning what their customers value, and delivering it in a way that stands out from competition.

Simple, right?

Positioning your business distinctly from your competitors may seem obvious, but many companies, even large ones, fail to do it.  There are four simple questions that billion dollar brands ask themselves each and every year to be certain customers continue to choose them.

Question #1:  Who is your target?

Who are the customers you’re really going after?  Hint:  “everyone” is not a great answer.  As you think about your target, consider these questions:

• Who are your most profitable customers?
• Who purchases from you the most frequently?
• Who do you enjoy serving the most?
• Who recommends you to others most often?
• Who has the most future potential?
• Who do you provide the most value for?
• Who do you have special insights about?
• Who are your competitors not going after?

Question #2:  What does your target need or want?

As consumers, we have lots of needs we’re trying to fulfill with every product we buy.  Think of a simple product like tissues.  We might be thinking about softness, absorbency, strength, price, box shape, box artwork, availability where we shop, size, brand name, tissue count, transportability, and more.

What needs or wants do your customers want to fulfill with your product or service?  Do you know which ones are most important?  Which ones can you deliver better or differently from competition?

Question #3:  What is your unique benefit?

Create a list of the benefits you’re providing for your customers.  What needs and wants are you fulfilling for them? Your list is probably lengthy, but what are you doing that differentiates you from your competition?  Many times companies are providing unique benefits that they’re not even telling the customers about.  The best companies choose just one thing that sets them apart from competition.  Then they focus solely on that message.

Question #4:  Why should they believe you?

What support do you have that you’ll deliver on what you say?  What’s your “because?”  Giving a reason why can dramatically change customer perceptions.  This is best illustrated with some examples.  Papa John’s has better pizza because they use better ingredients.  You can trust that Progressive has low prices because they give you competitor quotes right on their site.

Now you’re ready for marketing.

Once you’ve figured out how you’re providing value different from competition, you’re ready to do marketing.  What you say in your marketing messages will be simple if you’ve done this work up front.

Your customer’s name is the most magical word they’ve ever heard.

I don’t mean when you get your coffee and they insert your name as part of their “customer experience process.”

“Latte for Gerry!”  Yeah, thanks.

When’s the last time you walked into a place of business and someone knew your name?  I had an amazing experience at a restaurant recently.  I was visiting my small hometown back in Wisconsin (Columbus).  In a nearby community, there is a new sushi restaurant that my parent’s like to frequent.  http://sakehousewi.com/ Yes, sushi in rural Wisconsin – yes, it’s actually good food.  But the food isn’t what makes this place special.  It’s the servers.

When I went in with my Dad, one of the servers – Cindy, ran over and said “Hi Bob!”  She was genuinely excited to see him.  I was thinking that my parents must go there more than I thought.  Then my dad pointed out that Cindy regularly learns everyone’s name.  They had been in a couple of weeks earlier with a table of eight, and Cindy had learned everyone’s name by the end of the meal.  When she came over to take our order, Cindy asked about each and every person who had been at that table by name, and she even knew the relationships.  How is Holly?  She’s your niece, right Bob?  How about Pat, he’s married to Cheryl?  How are their kids?

Wow.  Really?

When I asked Cindy about it, she said “Yeah!  Bob’s MY customer.”  She felt such a deep relationship with her customers that she felt like they were her personal customers.  My parents rave about this place, and my mother doesn’t even like sushi!

As you can see from the picture, Cindy is Chinese.  Clearly, Cindy wasn’t her real name, so I asked her about her name.  It’s Zheng Bi Duan.  How interesting that a woman who dedicates her time to learning other’s names is not asking them to learn her real name because she wants to use something easier for her customers to remember.

I asked her if any of her customers call her by her Chinese name, and she lit up.  Yes, one or two of them do, and you could see how much it meant to her that they cared.  Even for Zheng Bi Duan, her name is magical.  I’d say especially for her.

What if your staff did nothing but learned your customers’ names?  Not just for a second, but for real?  I have no doubt that the next time I go to Sake House, Zheng Bi Duan will know my name, and I’ll certainly know hers.

The same thing is true in our businesses and for our customers.  Whether you’re a small business owner, or working on a billion dollar brand, you can shake it up with your customers.  I do a lot of work with restaurant owners.  Think about working in a sandwich shop.  Customer comes in, makes an order, you make a sandwich; they pay and walk out the door.  Over and over and over again.  It’s the same with any service business.  It’s easy to get info that flow.

The customer is in their flow, the business is in their flow, and everyone is walking around like zombies – rushing around, getting their stuff done, and moving on with their life.  Businesses give adequate service, people get adequate service, and everyone is more or less “satisfied.”

When everything seems like a sea of sameness, you can find opportunity.  In today’s society, being different can actually be more powerful than being better.  Many business owners, especially small business owners, are not differentiating themselves.  They want more customers and struggle with how to get them. 

So how to be different?  I challenge you with this exercise.  Brainstorm 100 ways that you could do something surprising for your customers.  I’m not talking about big, grandiose gestures.  Rather, think of things that will disrupt that flow of sameness.  What could you do to positively disrupt your customers’ day? 

Like what?  A friend recently got her oil changed, and when they brought her car out, there was a pink carnation on the dash.  Small, and totally unexpected.  Does this have anything to do with a better oil change?  No way, but do you suppose that she thinks of that every time she looks at the oil change sticker in her window, or when she drives by that place?  Absolutely.  Do you suppose she took a picture of that, told others, and maybe posted it on Facebook?  Surprise!

I recently stayed at a Hilton Garden Inn – a pretty basic hotel.  They had a breakfast buffet, so I grabbed a quick bite before I went to my meeting.  There were four servers in the dining room.  In the 15 minutes I was there, each of the servers had interacted with me.  They were all happy and playful with me and with one another.  I eat at a lot of hotel restaurants.  In the sea of sameness, these folks stood out so much I asked for the manager to find out how he found and trained them. 

Now keep in mind, they didn’t do anything grandiose.  They just did what they did in a way that was just different enough from the norm that I was truly wowed. 

Think of your customers.  What do they see and do day after day?  How can you be surprising?

Here is a quick exercise for you.  Create a timeline of your life from birth to today.  Put birth on the left, and today on the right.  Now plot the milestones or achievements that changed your life along that line.  The bigger the moment, the higher above the timeline it is placed.  Mark each one with a short title.  Now, consider each achievement.  How proud are you of each?  What impact did each have on your life?  Now think about this – how far out of your comfort zone were you when you accomplished each?

As humans we are naturally drawn to our comfort zone. Our happy place where everything is OK, we feel in control and we feel comfortable. That’s a nice place. But great accomplishments in life and business rarely happen in our comfort zone. The experiences and decisions that propel us forward happen in what I call our commitment zone.

Commitment zone?  Look back at your timeline.  How many of your accomplishments happened when you got out of your comfort zone because you were truly committed to a different outcome in your life?  The fastest way to get out of our comfort zone is to get clear on a specific goal that we truly want to accomplish.  Something we’re not just interested in, but that we’re committed to. 

Running a business can be busy.  Very busy.  There are lots of things to do, and many things to distract your focus, but there is always one thing that remains true – without your customers your business doesn’t exist.  How awesome are your customers?  They allow you to do what you do, and have the business you do.  We spend a lot of time trying to find more of them, and trying to sell them more stuff.  How do we create new things that they might want?  How do we create better marketing?  Grow, grow, grow – that’s what successful businesses do, right?

This week, I challenge you to stop looking out and spend a week looking in.  Look at the customers you already have and appreciate them.  Think about what they mean for your business and for your life.  Now, create a list of five ways that you can show your current customers how much you care about them, and how much you appreciate them as your customer.  And I don’t mean some cheesy Thanksgiving-week email  or ecard with fall leaves or a turkey that says “I appreciate you.”  Think about an unexpected and authentic way that you can reach out to your customers and let them know that they are important, and that you actually appreciate their business.  You might want to make your list and NOT execute your ideas this week, or during the holidays at all.  What if you do it at a random time?  Might it have more impact coming out of the blue?

Gratitude can have an even deeper impact on your business than simply letting customers know that you appreciate them.  What are ways that you can help your customers feel appreciated in general?  Feeling appreciated will make your customers much more loyal.  What customer wants to stop buying from a company who truly appreciates and values their business?  Look at your business, your customers, and your day-to-day interactions.  How can you build in the feeling of gratitude throughout the year in the interactions you are already having?

Living in a state of gratitude will make you more connected to your customers, view your business from a different angle, and always help remind you why you do what you do.  Being thankful for the customers you have already is a great way to attract more.

Clarity of mission, purpose and values. Clarity in message. Clarity in how you interact with and treat your customers. Clarity in what you stand for as a company. Clarity about what drives results.

Clarity in all of these areas comes easily when you get clear on one overarching idea:

What makes you different from competition in a way that customers value?

With clarity around this critically important concept all the other challenges in a company become easier to navigate. Every decision, every ad message, every customer interaction supports your focused vision.

Great leaders provide clarity to everyone in their company. They provide a powerful, simple rallying cry by which everyone has a consistent vision of what’s important and how to make decisions. Whether they’re creating an ad, building the website, selling to new customers, servicing existing customers, or hiring a new employee, they know what makes your company special, and how to support that vision. To empower employees to consistently make good choices, give them clarity on what the company is committed to and why.

It’s Hard Work

This level of clarity comes from hard work. Clarity is messy in the creation process, but looks deceptively simple in hindsight, especially when it’s done well. Consider these brands: Chipotle, Corona, and Zappos. Do you know what these brands stand for? Food with integrity, relaxation, and customer service. It seems easy when you look at this clarity in hindsight, but becoming this clear is harder than it seems.

Think of the outcome of each brand’s clarity. For Chipotle, it leads to lots of ideas for marketing and promotions. Everything from featuring farmers in their restaurants, to running a radio campaign about how they use the same kind of food you’d find at your local farmer’s market. Imagine being in charge of ads for Corona. The direction would be simple – make it about relaxation, ideally funny. Every employee on the phones at Zappos is clear about how to service their customers, and is empowered to do it. They’re famous for it. At first they were an online shoe retailer, but now they’ve surpassed that label and are really known for surprising service.

Try This

Try this exercise. Think of an idea for an ad about beer. Now think of an ad for beer focused on 21 to 24 year old men. Now think about that ad for beer focused on 21 to 24 year old men about cold refreshment. Did you notice that the tighter clarity I gave you about your objective, the more ideas you could envision? This will be true for your customers and your employees as well.

As a great leader, you need to do the hard work to create and deploy this clarity in the most simple, consistent terms possible. Try it for your company. Can you describe in one simple sentence what makes your company different that customers are willing to pay for? Would everyone in your organization say the same thing? Give it a try.

When I was 19, I got a job at a department store in the shopping mall near campus.  I worked in what they called “men’s furnishings.”  This is shirts, ties, belts, socks, etc.  I was paid hourly, but the guys who worked in the suit department next door had been there forever and worked on commission.  Whenever they sold a suit, they regularly came over to outfit their customer with all the furnishings they’d need for their new suit.  This is what we all know and love as “upselling.”

Upselling can be one of the fastest and easiest ways to increase your sales, and profits.  But it also accomplishes something even more important than making more money today – it increases customer satisfaction.  This may seem counterintuitive.  Many business owners are leery to upsell because they don’t want to feel pushy or “salesy.” 

Think of it this way.  Your customers come to you because they want to pay you to solve a problem for them, or make their life better in some way.  Some will just want the basics, but many will gladly trade more money for more value.  It’s important that you allow your customers to “buy up” to the level of value that they want.  When a customer chooses to buy up to the next level of value, you instantly make more profit without having to find a new customer.  If you don’t provide this chance, you could be leaving your customers with a lower level of service than they actually want, and leave them less satisfied in the process.

When I was the VP of Marketing at Quiznos, we found that customers were more satisfied when we asked them if they would like to add a chip and drink to their order even if they didn’t want the chip and drink!  Customers didn’t perceive it as upselling, they saw it as better, more engaged service.

The other day, I got my haircut.  I’ve been going to the same stylist for years.  A few months ago, I bought a bottle of expensive shampoo during my visit.  After my haircut, I realized that this bottle of shampoo was almost empty.  I was actually bummed that she hadn’t asked me if it was time for a new bottle.  She could have doubled my sale that day, and prevented me from having to run somewhere to get shampoo.  Better service, more profit, and everyone is happy.

As a professional marketing speaker, many of my clients want me to offer my Business Blueprint package after my presentation.  While they’re paying me to speak, they gladly give me the opportunity to make a special offer to their audience because they want the participants to take action on what they learned.  Rather than seeming salesy, it is an opportunity for the audience to use a step-by-step process rather than trying to do it on their own.  The client looks good because they’re able to offer my package at a discounted rate, I like it because it increases my revenue, and the audience likes it because they get additional guidance that helps them grow their business.

What can you add on the next time you make a sale?

The importance of having a great “because” really stands out when you have the opportunity to look at rows and rows of new products all in one place. What’s your “because?” Getting clear on your because, or your “Reason To Believe” is a core strategy from billion dollar brands that companies of any size can use.

Why will your potential customers believe what you’re telling them? Just because I say it, it must be true, right? No way. Consumers have become increasingly skeptical. As a business, you need be as believable and authentic as possible so that customers will not only listen to, but believe your message. As the internet has increased skepticism in our society, your because has increased in importance.

Let me give you a super simple example, so you can see how this works in real life.

Papa John’s vs. Pizza Hut

Papa John’s slogan: “Better Ingredients, Better Pizza.” includes both their benefit and their because. Better pizza is the benefit. Being made from better ingredients is the reason to believe that that benefit could be true. The claim “better ingredients” is supported by their use of fresh tomatoes and filtered water in their sauce. This message was working so well that Pizza Hut sued Papa John’s over the claim. Papa John’s prevailed.

The Power of Because

The power of “because” was documented in a well known experiment by Harvard Professor Ellen Langer.
In the experiment, a stranger approached someone at a copy machine and said: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” 60% of the people let the stranger cut in line.

However, when the stranger added in because: “May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?” 94% of the people let the stranger in. Even when the “because” made no sense, it worked. “May I use the Xerox machine, because I have to make copies?” had a hit rate of 93%.

The lesson is that people want to know why. Consumers today are bombarded with between 500 and 3,000 advertising messages every day. Their brains need to cut through the clutter and filter out information that is not credible or authentic. Your because is what you can use to combat this. It is a very powerful tool.

The Best Reasons to Believe

In creating your reasons to believe, you have to be creative, but also be honest. What are the reasons why someone actually should believe you? Are they true, factual, and supportable? Are customers already giving you that feedback in real life? Does it pass the “sniff” test? Customers can sniff out fluff and puffery faster than you can create it. Does it “sound” true when you tell others, or does it sound like marketing speak?

At the turn of the century John Wannamaker was quoted as saying something that has resonated with advertisers for over a decade – “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” All businesses are interested in maximizing their advertising investment, but how?

I encourage businesses to think about their customer relationships in terms of a funnel. As they go down the funnel, their relationship with your business gets stronger and stronger. Understanding the customer mindset in each part of the funnel is important, because certain media and marketing techniques are best suited to filling the funnel, while others are better for relationship building. The best businesses maximize the flow of customers into their funnel, and then build strong, lasting relationships.

Fill Your Funnel

1. At the top of the funnel is attention. Customers get between 500 and 3,000 advertising messages a day. Your first step is to break through that clutter and get their attention. Whatever medium you use, you have to have a clear, compelling message.  Don’t pack lots of messages into your advertising.  Keep it simple.
2. Next down the funnel is interest. To move customers from attention to interest, you must deliver a message that’s relevant and compelling to them. What pain point are you solving for your customers, and why are you their best choice? If you get a great ad in front of the right people at the right time, it can keep your funnel full.
3. Third in the funnel is trial. The goal of your ad is to move customers from attention, to interest, right to trial. Getting a new customer to give your product or service a try is the big payoff from creating and delivering that great advertisement.

Deliver On Your Promise

4. The fourth level of the funnel is repeat. After they’ve tried you out, will they come back? This is when you really have to deliver on what you promised in your advertisement. The ad gets people in, but your product and service is what gets them to come back again and again.

Build Your Relationships

5. In the bottom of your customer funnel, you move from bringing in new customers, to building the relationship with them. How do you move from a repeat customer to a real relationship with them? This is where tools like social media can be helpful. Many business owners misunderstand how to best leverage social media. Customers are on social media because they want to be in conversations and build relationships. If you’re using it like a one-way advertisement, you’re missing an opportunity. The big idea is to create a dialogue. Ask your customers questions, and give them value. An occasional promotion is great, but if that’s all you do your customers won’t be interested in the conversation.
6. The final layer of the funnel is referral. You know you’ve delivered on your promise, and built a great relationship when your customers refer other customers. Personal referrals are trustworthy and effective. However, if you’re relying only on referrals to build your business, you’re leveraging the smallest part of your funnel. Great businesses grow by continually increasing the number of customers in that make it into the funnel, and all the way down to relationship and referral.

Maximize Your Investment

To maximize your marketing efforts, think strategically about each part of your mix. Is the medium you’re using best suited to the goal your trying to achieve? Take a step back, and lay out a plan for achieving success in each part of your funnel.