Maybe it was the recession.
Frank’s ice-cream corner was not earning as much money as he had thought. No one was buying the specialty ice creams even though they were much better in taste. The normal ice creams like chocolate, vanilla and strawberry were doing good but the profit on them wasn’t good enough to keep the shop open. Frank thought maybe it’s the recession…
But before he closed his shop, he gave it one final last try. He met a marketing consultant and asked him for a few suggestions. If the consultant helped him out of his troubles without spending too much money on advertising, Frank would give him free supply of ice creams for a life- time.
Even though the marketing consultant wasn’t too keen on the ice creams, he took on the challenge. And the first thing he did was to target the basics. He told Frank: “Get the basics of selling right and you will be out of the red.”
He asked Frank to take snaps of all his specialty ice creams. Then blow them up in size. And stick them up on the walls with their names below. Then he told Frank to write the descriptions for all the specialty ice creams. Before that, Frank just had the names of the ice creams on a black board behind the counter. This was ok for the normal ice creams like chocolate and vanilla. They were self- explanatory. But for the specialty ice creams, names weren’t enough. How would people know what a “Raz Mataz” ice cream is?
Just adding the colourful pictures and the mouth- watering descriptions got Frank out of the red. 80% of his customers started ordering the specialty ice creams paying a premium on them. Sales were up. Profits were up. And the recession went knocking on some one elses door.
Action summary:
° Get the basics right.
° Right words and colourful pictures sell even during a depression. The sales of almost all the products go up by getting the words and pictures right.