How lucky were we to get the sun this week? To be sitting outside at 6pm in the sun, in Scotland, with a G&T on 21st September is remarkable (yes the pic attached is from drinks in our garden on Saturday).
The G&T was a reward after cutting the grass in the heat, however during the grass cutting I was absorbed in a podcast interview hosted by Joe Polish, founder of Genius Network (a mastermind group of top entrepreneurs and marketers).
The interview was with Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi and the subject matter was what it takes to launch, grow and scale a business in a sustainable way. There were some key messages that stood out for me:
- Don’t fall in love with your product or service, fall in love with your customer
- Understanding the psychology necessary to wage the battle that is growing a business
- The two key ways to grow a business – Innovation and Marketing
Did you know that a staggering 96% of businesses will fail over a 10-year period of time? That was an alarming stat that Tony shared.
Being a Serviced Accommodation business owner in our third year, we have already closed down the first iteration of our SA business (I shared those lessons in a previous post). The second iteration has been significantly more successful however it’s so important that we don’t let ourselves become complacent. We’ve slipped into that mode before and had to work hard to get momentum back. So, listening to this interview about growth and sustainability I was naturally running the ideas through the filter or our SA business, in so far as how could the principles apply to us.
REFRAMING INNOVATION
From that list I shared above it was the reframe around innovation that really jumped out at me.
It is probably fair to say that when we think of innovation it conjures up images of introducing new technologies and things like that. But Tony and Dean were encouraging us to look at it from a different perspective, to think differently. And the key behind all of this is to get to know more about your customers than they potentially even know about themselves. It’s about figuring out how can you add more value in your market place than anyone else, and do this consistently over time. These things can’t be a one off or a quick fix.
I think in the SA space it can be easy to focus on our product ie a beautifully dressed property, or the fact it might be in a prime location. Those factors of course play a massive role in the success of an SA business, but its when the seasons change that we can get caught out. Anyone can make money in the summer months, when demand for accommodation is always high. But what happens when demand drops off along with the temperature? The differentiator is finding and understanding; who is ideal customer, what do they want most, what do they fear most, what annoys them most about XYZ product or service?
Then upon learning all this, what is your irresistible offer?
I’m focusing in on SA examples here but these principles of continuous innovation in order to deliver more value apply across all property businesses (and any business for that matter).
To get more answers we need to get new voices around us and ask more questions. In other words, speak to more customers and ask more questions – if we want better answers we have to ask better questions.
Below are some simple examples of small innovations we’ve introduced in our SA business over the last couple of years. These are merely scratching the surface but they each contribute to the overall result of satisfied guests and repeat bookings. We ask, we observe, we listen and we respond, but there is always more we can do. We just need to be intentional about asking good questions, especially as winter is coming.
Some simple examples of what we’ve introduced:
-providing oversized stock pots in each contractor property for the hearty soup/goulash dishes that we found they like to cook
-adjusting the timing of weekly cleans where needed to accommodate guys working night shifts
-changing our invoice periods to help help make client’s accounting life easier
-introducing an e-sign tool for clients to sign our booking agreements and terms of hire on the move, instead of having to print, sign and scan back
-within economic and logistic reason anything to make doing business with us as easy as possible
Whilst we can’t help but feel like it’s been summer this last week, the reality is that winter is coming, and in more than one sense of the word. Seasonally, the colder months and the reduced tourism travel will be upon us soon. Economically, there are four seasons too and many commentators would also say that a period of winter is coming, a major correction in financial and property markets. We don’t know exactly when, but when it does happen, here’s what Tony said, ‘businesses will freak out and cut back on marketing, they’ll cut back on added value to the market place, they’ll cut back on everything, and that will be your greatest opportunity if you are MADE FOR WINTER”. “61% of the fortune 1000 companies in the US were born in the ‘winter’, ie in a depression or a recession (eg Disney, Fedex, Pizza Hut). If we can do well in the tough times we will dominate when the economics change.”
Get good now and be ‘ready for winter’ is the big message. This is what really resonated and will be a philosophy we carry forwards in all of our businesses, especially our SA business- that we can be innovative and be winter ready. It all comes back to these points of understanding how to serve your ideal customer, adding more value into the market place than anyone else and committing to innovation.
So, what can you do to be ‘winter ready’ in your property business?