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A *Dry* Table for Two Please! © 2003 by Michelle Lee, http://www.UltimateResourceBarn.com ----------------------------------------------------------- It hit me one fine day while I was at the beach for some fresh air and some piece of mind. Some weekend ago, I was at the beach, sitting at a cafe, sipping my coffee when it started to rain. Lucky for me, I was under one of the few big umbrellas fixed up at the outdoor tables. I counted my lucky stars for the strategic place I was occupying. Some other people were not so luck, they had to ran for shelter. The rain came and went within half an hour. Shortly after the sky cleared up, there came a couple of staff from the inside of the cafe. Each of them was equipped with clean cloths, wiper and pails. They started to do their rounds, going to each table and cleaning up what was left behind by the rain. You see, what happened was that the majority of the outdoor tables and chairs were not covered by the umbrellas. The staffs did a good job to make sure that every table and chair were wipe dry and clean. And I thought to myself "Wow, talk about efficiency! The manager must have worked out some kind of rules - send some one to clean up, make sure that the tables and chairs are dry after the rains stop." Very quickly, the available seats were taken up by customers flowing in. Folks start placing their orders and you could hear the cashier ringing. They are back into business! Now, I was so tackled by what I had just witnessed! Oh, it is just a simple small episode that happens over and over again! It can happen to you while you are at your local cafe. In fact it can happen to anyone! Let's go back and review again what has happened. This time round, with careful analysis from the cafe manager point of view. The manager must have observed the behavior of his customers well, understood his customer needs as well as his business operations. 1. When it rains, the unsheltered seats get wet. Nobody will seat on the wet chairs in the rain. 2. When the rain stopped, the seats are still wet. Nobody will seat on wet chairs! 3. Unless there is something that attracts the customers, such as value for money items, or fantastic food and drinks, the patrons are not going to clean up the chairs themselves. If the customers are not sitting down, there is no order coming in. It did not matter that your kitchen chefs are ready to cook, the waiters and waitresses are ready to take orders and serve food to the customers. If there is no order, there is no business. Period. Sure, the customers can request to have the tables and chairs clean up! But when there are so many other cafes along the whole stretch of beach which may have dry seats, why would the customers bother? I would not. Would you? Sure enough, as I look across to the other cafes with less organized and diligent staff, nobody took up the wet seats! What can we learn from this incident? Taking the cafe analogy, let's look at your business. As a business owner, you need to sit down and think hard, analyze what are vital components to your business. You need to identify what is the key resource that you need to manage to sustain your business, on a daily, weekly, monthly, even yearly basis. Ask yourself these questions: 1. What is the "tables and chairs" of your business that you need to have? 2. What do you have to do in order to make sure that your "tables and chairs" are always available to the customers? 3. Why are they the "tables and chairs" of your business? What are the consequences if these "tables and chairs" are not available? Once you have answers to these questions, you will be able to handle the case in which customers passing you by and going to your competitors, simply because you do not facilitate your customers with the necessary to close the sales. The little incident illustrated may be trivial, but we sure could learn an important lesson from it. It's time for you to take another look at your business operations, make sure your "tables and chairs" are readily available at all time! © 2003 by Michelle Lee ----------------------------------------------------------- Michelle Lee is the publisher of the @UltimateResourceBarn Newsletter and owner of the ezine website http://www.UltimateResourceBarn.com . Both the website and newsletter are jam-packed with Informative Articles, Tons of Resources & Tools, Ready To Use Tips & Tricks, Proven Internet Marketing Concepts, Affiliate Programs & more. Claim your FREE eBooks + 1 FREE Ad view by over 10,000! mailto:subscribe@UltimateResourceBarn.com?subject=artclsub ----------------------------------------------------------- If you wish to publish this article in your own ezine or newsletter, you are most welcome to do so. However, please publish this article as it is. No modification, alternation should be made to the content of this article, including the resource box.
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