Capture those names - Are you capturing the names of the customers who come into your Restaurant?

If not, why not? It is quoted that it costs six to eight times as much to get a new customer as it costs to keep an existing one.

So I ask?are you really caring for and focusing on your existing customers? Has this ever happened to you? You are talking to the assistant at a hotel reception and the telephone rings. The assistant immediately then devotes their entire attention (sometime totally ignoring you - the current customer) to talk to the person on the other end of the telephone.

Does that annoy you?

It does me. Well, each time you go out to search for new customers, without first looking to and looking after your current customers you are virtually doing the same thing.

So, perhaps, pause and think before you go charging off to spend money on advertising endeavoring to attract new customers. You might try focusing on your current customers. You might think about using your advertising budget on them.

But first? do you really know your current customers? Can you contact them? Do you have their names and addresses? Do you have their telephone numbers? Do you have the names and birth dates of the rest of their family. If not you need build this list, this database.

Now, I hear you ask, how do you do that? Customers won't give that information? and you're right?unless you make it worth their while. If you offered $1000 to each of your customers do you think would get their details? I suggest you would. So it really is a matter of accessing how much "bait" you need to dangle in front of your customers to entice them to happily give your their details.

At our Sydney pub we have in excess of 4000 customers in our birthday club database. We have captured their names by offering, in return for their details, $20 worth of free drinks or meals. We add free tickets to the movie cinema that adjoins our pub.

We further add a free entry into a competition to win a free weekend at a five star hotel. (We have special deals with these places). This collection of names underpins all our promotions.


10/9 Myrtle Street, North Sydney NSW 2060, AUSTRALIA
Tel: 02 9966 1144 Fax: 02 9966 1700
Intl: +61 2 9966 1144 Fax: +61 2 9966 1700
E-mail: max@hitchins.com.au

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