Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock
Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock

If you have ever eaten at Taco Bell, you have this man to thank. Without Lynn Hinderaker it is very possible that Taco Bell would not exist and that the concept of the fast food “value menu” may never have seen the light of day.

In the 1980’s Taco Bell was a struggling subdivision of PepsiCo and was about to be closed down completely. One struggling franchise owner contacted Lynn and said he wanted to make his restaurant’s last stand on an idea that surrounded a value menu. His idea was that if customers could buy their food through inexpensive small transactions, they would buy more of it and profits would follow.

Lynn helped design the concept, the marketing pieces, and then shepherded the franchise owner through the process. Success soon followed and as the word spread, other franchise owners asked Lynn for his help.

I was white hot mad. My son was crying. I looked for a supervisor to communicate my disappointment to. There was not one that could be found. That was the end of it. I was left to return to our room angry, upset, frustrated, and disappointed while at the same time trying to console a 2 year old who just didn’t understand.

At that moment it hit me like a brick wall. There are only three kinds of service in the world. I had just experienced bad service and I didn’t like it. The other types are good service and exceptional service.

After I had calmed down a bit I thought, I wonder if we had ever sent a customer away from Schrock feeling like I just felt. In that moment I resolved that that I would do everything in my power to make sure that no customer ever leaves Schrock with a bad service experience.

A few months back I wrote a post about why a recession is the perfect opportunity to use the assets you have to position yourself against your small business competition. I also encouraged my readers to make a plan based on your businesses strengths and not the strengths of their competitors.

If you are successful in gaining market share during slow economic times, that market share is coming directly from your competitors.

There is no doubt that recessions can be stressful on businesses, and if you are soaking up market share form your competitors their ability to pay their bills on time will be effected.

Last month Schrock Innovations screwed up badly repairing a customer’s computer. Our customer had a Sony notebook and Best Buy said it would take 2 weeks for a warranty repair. The customer was going to Spain in a few days and needed the notebook. They brought it in to us for a speedy repair and in our zeal to provide a superior service experience, we fell flat on our faces.

There are only two ways for businesses to survive an economy in recession. They can lower service levels and hunker down for the economic storm or they can raise your service standards and position themselves to take customers from their cowering competition.

The way your company handles difficult situations is more important than anything else if you are working to take customers from your competitors. Here is what we did wrong, why the laptop did not make it on the plane to Spain, and why we ended up buying our customer a whole new Sony notebook on our dime. How would your company have handled this situation?

Lincoln, Nebraska is the 7th best metropolitan economy in the country right now. That is a good thing for Nest Furniture, because with their poor customer service I wouldn’t be surprised if they are still around next year.

Maybe the owner was having a bad day. Maybe his dog died. Maybe he had a fight with his wife just before we came in. The point of this post is that NONE OF THAT MATTERS. Small businesses need to understand that the quality of their service – especially in an industry as competitive as furniture – is what separates failure from success.

Here is the situation my wife and I encountered at Nest Furniture today as we tried to give them $500 for a pair of tables for our new service center. Needless to say, our order has been canceled and we will not be back again. How would you have handled this one?

I have had a ton of success using radio (AM and FM) and I prefer it over all other mediums for dominating a local marketplace.

Over the past 10 years I have learned what works, what doesn’t work, and what you can do to leverage your relationship with a radio station to gain the maximum exposure for the least expenditure.

If you do things right, you can penetrate a market quickly and effectively. If you don’t, you can always blame the bad economy for your failure 🙂

Here are some surefire radio advertising strategies that can transform the fate of your business in weeks – not months and leave your competition wondering how you do it.

Circuit City’s announcement that all of their remaining electronics retail stores are closing exposes a fundamental but often overlooked lesson that all small business owners need to know and understand.

Before reading on, ask yourself a simple questions – does my business respond to the actions of our competitors, or do we make our competitors respond to us?

Best Buy’s Changing Plans – Background

A massive Q3 2008 downturn in Best Buy’s sales forced electronics retail giant to reassess their plans of placing new stores within 5 miles of Circuit City locations in an effort to grab more market share from their rivals.

Best Buy was aggressively working to choke off competition from Circuit City by saturating only the markets where Circuit City had a retail presence.

Learn the Yellow Pages Phone Book advertising strategy that will get you the best deal, generate the best results, and will launch you past your competition.