Tourism Co-Operative

On January 10, 2008 the Southside Technology Cooperative wil begin registering members.

 

You can register at

 

 

After you register, you validate your registration at

 

 

at any time prior to June 30th to get the introductory member rate of

 

1.00 - general membership

5.00 - professional membership

25.00 - provider or capital membership

 

Memberhip as of June 30th will vote to elect a board of directors

on or after July 1st the standard membership rates will take effect at

 

5.00 general membership

10.00 professional membership

50.00 provider or capital membership.

 

Join now.

 

 

Let's stop to look at what we have .....

 

If you have completed step 1, you have a basic idea of who your customer is. Young, old, shopper or buyer , cash or credit, local or traveler.

If you have completed step 2, you will have a basic idea of what product you sell, and the types of product that make up your sales base.

Both of these are core data. They comprise the who you make your money from, and the what you make your money on.

 

Let's link them up.... as best we can for the time being, but keep in mind that our goal is to determine how much of your products or what percentage of your sales are currently from your local customer.  More than likely, your local customer is reflected within certain products that you offer and they generate a certain dollar amount of the total sales. You can determine a predictible pattern of reorder that yields you an estimated amount of sales, and gives you the figures to see what's moving.

 

There are a lot of different combinations of customers and many different descriptions. Young and old may not fully describe the customer. Your can define the lables to reflect more of the characteristics of your customer. As for our example..... our first pass at a product by customer list.

 

young, buyer, cash, local - Product 1

old, shopper, credit, traveler - Product 2

young, shopper, credit, local - Product 3

old, buyer, cash, local - Product 4

 

By knowing your local customer and the products that make up your day to day sales, you can determine, acording to your type of business,

does my base of customers include tourists ? Does any part of an existing draw or attraction crowd pass my establishment ? What can I offer them that expands my sales ? How can I make it easy for them to shop ?

 

Let's look at the first system you bought (if not the first, the second). Your cash register. Big or small, your business has a means of registering sales, taxes, and products at the point of sale. You might also have a system that allows for "user defined fields" that can be preprogrammed as a part of the sales process. In either case, you may already have technology that you are underusing, and before you spend any money on something new, you want to wring every ounce out of the dollars you have already spent. So what we will introduce as step 3 in this beginning is called "Coding Your Business". Big business does it routinely. They produce "Daily Flash Reports" that gives sales by categories. The base their inventory investment or "open to buy (OTB)" on the cumulative sales. They shift their OTB by product sales over time (trend analysis) so that they do not get caught up in overstock, or a "lost opportunity".

 

All because they took the time to make available a few descriptions at the point of sale, and collected the desctiption data along with the sales and tax data. Coding your data can tell you things... sales trends, customer types, and they make your ability to project your financial results much stronger.

 

Next time.. a simple framework for coding your data

The next step in this process is to take a good look at your product line.

As you do this examination, try to stand in the shoes of your customer (all customers) , and make your customer a tourist.

 

The first step is to look at your products. How many do you carry ? What type ? What price ? Make a list of what you have.

 

The next step is to take the list and organize it by product within type. If you are a hair supply business, your type would be

shampoo and you product list may be organized by "for dry hair", "for oily hair", "for dandruff" etc...

 

The final step is to organize the list by price. So at the end of this exercise, you will have created a list for your business that has the products that you sell, their main categories, their sub categories and their prices.

 

I realize that this is a lot of work, but what I can tell you is that once you have completed step 1 and step 2, you will have examined both  

a. your customers

b your product.

 

In our next entry, we will examine the benefits of having both sets of examinations at the same time....

Our discussion today involves a basic question of business. How well do you know your customer ?

 

When I ask that question, I have several puropses for the answer. They are as follows

    a. Are your customers older or younger ?

    b. Are your customers shoppers (likes to look and investigate) or purchasers ( knows what they want and goes directly to it) ?

    c. Are your customers cash or credit users ?

    d. Are your customers local (within 4 block radius) or do they travel to get to you ?

 

It does not matter what the product or service that you sell, each business has a customer base. That customer base has features that infulence how and where they make their purchase. And for that matter, how often they purchase. Before you decide to invest your resources, take a look at who will be impacted by them. For example, I would not make a recommendation to employ a SMS or text based outreach to an older market, but I would to a younger more mobile market. Also, if you have an older customer base, I would impress them with the "efficiency" of my technology, not necessarily the "flash and dazzle" that is so effective with a younger crowd.

 

It all comes down to the right tool for the right job. Technology is no different. You don't use a hammer to drive a screw......

 

Now, when you have taken a good look at your customer base... We will next look at your products with a eye towards tourism.

Stay tuned.....

Welcome !

 

This particular part of the blog is dedicated to the exploration of what tourism means to the local community. As we loose the "old school" jobs in manufacturing and as we watch the "outsourcing" of technology jobs and the "inflow" of service sector jobs, the question has to be "What will the path be to replace the older jobs ?".  Well.......

 

How about Travel and Tourism ? Many European and Pacific destinations have done well in replacing older jobs with jobs that support the traveling public. And given the fact that everyone cannot have a Great America, or a Disneyworld in there back yard, it behooves us to look at the the concepts of service, value and ambiance, and apply them to our local establishments.

 

While I know that the local residents would love to benefit from increased value, better service, and a plesant atmosphere in which to do business or enjoy the products and services in the community, it is the defining point to the traveling public. It would make no sense to return to an area or location that you had a "poor" experience with, and given the nature of travel and its expense, they will try to avoid those places with some level of preplanning.

 

That leaves the smaller businesses in the area of a "single opportunity". That is defined as the one time that a customer appears, without having preplanned this particular stop. They are usually faced with a common need in a strange place. They are also looking for a smile, a friendly face, a kind greeting, and the product that they need. What lasts longer than the product, and creates the return visit is the greeting and reception that they received. That you may not have the product is not a deal breaker. That you treat them poorly, or ignore them can be a death sentence. If you treat them well, you stand the chance of getting a repeat customer, and a favorable reference to others in the travelling public. You may also impress some of the local customers, who enjoy being treated with a little more consideration.

 

No one can argue that there are those in the general public who will make life difficult for you. But have you ever tried to argue with someone that didn't argue ? It goes nowhere fast.....

 

So... where do I go from here ?   Tune in for the next entry.....

 

Cobbler