Please take my money

by Mark Nagurski, May 20th, 2008

please let me give you my money

Imagine this. I walk into your shop or office (or wherever) with two big bags of cash and say “I’d like to spend this money, can you help me?”.

How easy is it for me to spend money with you? It might sound like an odd question, but it’s something that’s been playing on my mind a lot recently.

The most recent case in point, we’ve been spending the last few weeks researching promotional stands at various shopping centres across Ireland for a campaign we run on behalf of a major hotel brand.

On average, renting space for a promotional stand in a shopping centre runs to around €1500 per week - with some of the pricier spots commanding 2 or 3 times as much. Considering we might be at a centre for 2-3 months out of every year (spending a total of €20,000 or more), you might think these centres would be reasonably easy to deal with. But as you probably guessed, they aren’t.

In fact, spending money with them is exceptionally hard. Apart from the understandable hoops we have to jump through in terms of quality of client, physical details of the promotional stands, insurance and of course, price - simply enquiring has become a chore in itself.

This of course, got me thinking - as a small business, do you make it hard for your potential customers to spend money with you?

Here are a few examples of the hurdles we’ve had to jump through:

1. We can’t find you. This might sound a little obvious but over half of the centres we tried to contact had no website - not even a holding page. Websites aside, simply finding (working) contact numbers for many of them was a chore. Wrong numbers, fax machines, disconnected numbers and even one that put us through to the cleaning staff - as their main contact number. How easy are you to find?

2. We can’t get through. No answer. Not phoning us back when arranged. Not forwarding promised information. ‘The person you need to speak to’ is away and nobody else knows anything about it.

3. Uninformed staff. By and large the people we’ve spoken to have been able to answer a few simple questions about the size of the centre, key tenants, footfall and the like - but at least 25% weren’t even sure if they accepted promotional stands at all. Do your staff know what you offer and what to do when someone asks? Are you sure?

4. Rude and obstructive staff. In one particular centre, the ‘gentleman’ on the other end of the phone refused to supply any info at all (even down to the size of the centre or footfall) and was helpful enough to say, ‘we can only be contacted by fax’.

Perhaps he was having a bad day. Maybe, but he has potentially cost his employers tens of thousands in one two minute phone call. Who’s answering your phone?

The Point:

The centres that were easy to find, polite and helpful will no doubt benefit financially - the centres that were not have lost out. If you’re going to dedicate time, money and mental energy into marketing your business, don’t have all that work undone by making it hard to do business with you or throwing up unnecessary obstacles when I do.

If you make it difficult for me to do business with you - when I want to - what hope have you got of attracting wavering prospects or indifferent consumers.