Trainning will save the day, if you have a day to do it

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So, we’ve done it again.   We’ve gone to a great restaurant in Brookline with high hopes and walked out frustrated.  The food is great, but the waitstaff makes rudimentary mistakes that are unacceptable for a restaurant of their caliber.

What can they do?  Train, train, train.  

Here are some suggestions for effective employee training:

  1. Make a plan.  Have an outline of all the items that you need to cover when training new staff.  You’d be surprised how many things are done automatically.  If you can’t afford to make a manual for each employee, have at least 1 copy for every 5 employees at your location.   It’s even better if you can make it electronic since that makes it really easy to search.  Review this with your employees regularly.
  2. Know your business.  If your business model is based on your unique touch and interaction with your customer, consider hiring help to do the things that you spend a lot of time doing, but those that don’t face the customer, like shipping or stocking items.
  3. Know your staff.  What kind of staff/salespeople tend to do best in your business?  Those that can learn on the spot?  Those that learn by doing or by reading?  Hire and train people in a way that fits them and your business. 
  4. Get feedback – make sure that your customers have an anonymous way to give you feedback.  That way, you’ll know all the things that aren’t going well before you lose customers.

Please, ship directly

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Dear Readers,

I’ve been shopping online recently and I’ve noticed that many stores charge fantastically high shippping costs on items of high value.  One store, for example, charged $12 for an order between $50 and $75.   What effect does this have on me, as a consumer?  Well, it makes me try my darnest to get all I need in $49, because I’d rather pay $8 in shipping and handling.  See the problem here?  

So, just in time for our yearly shopping binge before the holidays, online stores should give some serious thought to a free-shipping threshold.  It’ll help your business if you’re able to move more inventory and some of the shipping cost can be folded into your prices.  Just make sure that your shipping process is extra lean before you start.

More ideas than time

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Since I have more ideas than time (I am borrowing this line from a friend – Greg Raiz), I have to write them here in the hopes that someone picks them up and uses them to do some good.

So – here is my idea.  I met a couple of women who are starting out as independent attorneys in the Boston/Brookline/Newton area and are looking to share office space.  I think that someone should start the Zipcar equivalent of office space rental.  For example, there would be a building with, say, 5 personal offices, a receptionist, a main number with several extensions, Internet and a coffee pot with a never ending supply. You’d have to pay some nominal fee for the year – say $200 – to partake in this venture.  Then you’d have to rent the office space by the hour.  I’m not sure how much an hourly rate should be, but I’m guessing that something around $20 dollars should be able to cover the cost while being affordable.  

This setup would allow the contractors to keep costs to a minumum because they would only use the office when they were meeting with clients or when they needed some quiet time and place to work.  There would also have to be a conference room. 

I think that if the prices were right and the marketing was done correctly, they would really be able to make this a good profitable venture out of this.   You’d have to figure out a way to track hours of who occupied what office for how long.  Perhaps the card readers most companies use to give access to facilities for their employees would do the trick. Finally someone would be open about tracking time with those things.

And, so? Any takers?

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum

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I attended a meeting yesterday on Effective Networking orgnized by the various groups on Brookline that support women-owned businesses.  Usually, these networking things spend about 95% of the time with a guest speaker who talks all about the different tactics on networking and then 5% of the meeting is alloted to meeting the people present and well, networking.  I was pleasantly surprised that this meeting was actually more intent on us putting the networking advise to practice rather than sitting in uncomfortable chairs listening to a speaker drone on and on.

So, what’s so funny about this event?  Well, you see, there was a raffle from the attendee’s business cards – pretty standard stuff. I didn’t have a business card, so I filled out a blank.  I completely forgot about this towards the end of the meeting because I met amazing people and the raffle had not real consequence to the proceedings.  So, as with all of these things, there is usually a raffle administrator looking for someone to pull cards from the pile.   I step up and lend a helping hand (literally) and yank a card.  In my usual, off handed way, while I do this, I say – “Would it be a problem if I pulled out mine?”  A split second later I pulled out my business card from a pile of at least 60 cards.

Label goods and prices

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Labelling the yarn in the image would allow readers to order it quickly!

A sample page from the Knit Picks Catalog

 Here is an example of a classic mistake:  I just received a catalog for some beautiful, affordable yarn from Knit Picks (www.knitpicks.com).  The first few pages are dedicated to promoting the new fall yarns and I have to say that they did a great job on the layout and color selection of the featured skeins.  Doesn’t it just make you want to buy yarn?  Ok, maybe it’s just me, but take my word for it – that page is well done.

The one problem is that none of the pictured skeins are labeled, so there is no way for anyone to buy the yarn Knit Picks is working so hard to promote.  A friend of mine once said very wisely that the saddest thing in a store is wanting to give them your money for stuff and not being able to.

So, what lesson can we learn from this unfortunate error?  Label everything clearly.  That includes names of products and prices.  I find that too many store owners get so involved and carried away with their product that they forget that their customers may not know it as well as they do.  Classic example is a bakery with beautiful bread pieces displayed in the windows (almost too good to eat) that are not labeled so noone knows what to order and most people are too shy to ask.

In the case of service ventures, like spa and salons, the price list must be clearly displayed.  Out-of-the-air prices make the customer feel very uncomfortable and less likely to return.   It also makes the owner/seller look untrustworthy.

Spread’s the word – Deborah’s Kitchen

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My sandwiches are, at best, bland and every time I watch my husband take a bite of what I’ve created, I think to myself that I really need to learn to make better sandwiches.  And I might just have found my salvation: Deborah’s Kitchen spreads (www.deborahskitchen.com).   I read about them in Edible Boston and decided to give some spreads a try. 

What I like:

  • The taste! There are some wonderful, creative combinations with names to match. 
  • The spreads are made from natural ingredients and contain very little added sugar. 
  • They are local (Littleton, MA).

What I would recommend:

  1. Consider making at least a couple of the spreads organic. 
  2. Sets should cost less than the combination of their individual components, i.e. giving a discount for quantity buys. 
  3. Include a recipe section on the website and perhaps even distribute recipes with each purchase. 
  4. The website needs more substance (no pun intended).  So far, it’s basically an order form. 

So, with some marketing assistance, Deborah may just be on her way to becoming the next Mrs. Fields.

Zippi Di Do Da – A review of Zipcar

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I’ve taken on a new challenge recently and given up my old friend and buddy – my 1995 Toyota Tercel – to become a car-less city dweller.   This is just the latest of our many green steps.  But very few of us can survive entirely without wheels, so I’ve signed up for Zipcar (www.zipcar.com) for the occasion trip the burbs.  Here are some comments on the concept and the service they provide.
  1. Zipcar is fantastically convenient. We live in the city and there are about 25 cars within a mile walk. To get one, I reserve online (about 1 minute of my time), walk to the car (another 5 minutes, maybe), tap the Zipcard on the windshield and the car is mine.  So in about 10 minutes, I can rent a clean car, that’s full of gas, that someone else drives to the repair shop, someone else cleans, someone else takes care of paperwork.  What else could you want???  A funny side note about this. When my friend and I first rented a zipcar, on our way out of the parking lot after locking up everything and painstakingly checking that we left nothing, I said to her “Do you feel like we’re forgetting something big?” She said “Yes.”  And then, I figured out what we’d forgotten:  “Like the car?!”.
  2. It’s convenient, but is it cheap???  As we’re making every dollar stretch as far as it can go, I had to do some calculations to make sure that Zipcar is actually worth its hype.  Here is my calculation. I use Zipcar for errands that last about 3-4 hours each. That’s somewhere around $30-$40 for the car. $40 you say. That’s crazy. Well – do some quick numbers. I was paying $135 in parking, plus about $100 in insurance and gas per month. That’s $235 per month, or about 6 such trips.  I use the car only once a week, which means my tab is somwehere between $160 and $200 dollars, which is less than I was spending.  Suppose I didn’t own a car and had to shell out another $300 to $400 in monthly payments, plus regular maintenance, etc.  Well, you get the idea!  It adds up fast and Zipcar is suddenly looking very nice indeed.
  3. Take your pick.  Probably one of the coolest things about Zipcar is the variety of cars they have available. I happened to rent a Mazda 3 ($9/hour) since it was the closest, but they also have Toyotas, Hondas, and others in sizes small and big. The bigger the car, the more you pay, but it’s still very reasonable to rent a truck if you need to go to say, Ikea, to buy something thrifty will all the money you’ve saved from ditching your car.
  4. Hybrids… One small gripe is that Zipcar doesn’t have many hybrids.  They are about $6/hour for the smaller models, which is $3 less than most others and I would rent one in a heartbeat, but there isn’t one within a mile walk of me.