Читать книгу Wake Up and Sell the Coffee! - Martyn Dawes - Страница 23

One of the business angels I had met recently had asked me a question and for some reason this had popped back into my mind: “How much time are you really spending on the business against just servicing something going nowhere?”

He was right; all I was doing was servicing a nationwide network of underperforming machines and had almost no time left to find that breakthrough I so badly needed.

I realised I needed to be out there at each site connecting with customers, including those buying and those that weren’t. Everything else was of little importance. I decided to go on a tour of our locations with no particular agenda. My spirits lifted a little.

One of the machines I visited was in a Spar convenience store on a petrol forecourt near to the Merry Hill shopping centre in the West Midlands. The location should have been a winner, but we weren’t even managing to sell 100 cups per week.

While I was at the store, someone approached me. He said he thought it was a great idea and explained he was a manager at a recently opened car showroom just the other side of the roundabout and often came into the shop for a sandwich. Then came the “But…” and in his next statement lay my eureka moment. He had bought a coffee, but only once. He said:

“Why should I buy a cup of instant coffee for 59p when I can put the kettle on in the office? If you want me to buy a coffee in here it’s got to be an amazing product – it has to really wow me.”

In that single sentence I suddenly saw the answer to my issues. My mistake was to think that because I was selling in convenience stores the customer wouldn’t expect real, freshly ground coffee made from beans and fresh milk as they would in a coffee bar. Clearly they would. That was the opportunity – to put a coffee bar product into convenience stores.

My other mistake had been to look at the cost of espresso machines and decide I couldn’t possibly justify that expense. It was now so obvious. How could I have missed this? Giving people a Nescafé drink called cappuccino with whisked up powdered milk and thinking that would work because it was a c-store had been my error.

A low price won’t guarantee sales – if you wow people with the product, then sales will rocket. You then have the makings of a proper business. The next dawning realisation was that this was the pull I had been thinking about, as opposed to trying to push more with signage and promotions. The product itself had to be the champion, the hero, the attraction.

This realisation was the answer to my prayers. All it had taken was for me to get out and spend time listening to what people told me. I had been so close and now I had the answer.