Changing What Works
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Why Change Something That’s Successful?
If it works, don’t fix it!
A successful restaurant, great service, great menu at reasonable prices, any day of the week they had a crowd.
Visited the restaurant for the first time in over a month, surprised to see it almost vacant. New waiters waiting the tables. The menu remained the same so we ordered the usual.
The food arrived to our table in a red basket, the kind you get in a fast food place. No more nice china plates, cloth napkins and table cloths. The changes seemed odd, but at least willing to be optimistic for a good meal.
Wow! Forget our expectations, the food was even awful by any standards. They substituted good cuts of meat with the toughest and fattiest. Most of it difficult to even bite. The bread, poor quality. Easy to understand why the place lacked customers. Soon the business closed.
Property of https://maryjstephenson.com/topics 2-12-2018
This experience reminds of a great hamburger joint. The burgers a bit pricey but worth every penny. They baked their own buns on site. You walk in the door and the aroma of fresh-baked buns aroused the taste buds. The burgers plump and juicy made to order while you wait. A huge bar of fixings to put on your burger. On the menu they sold baked potatoes and a bar of fixings to top your potato. Plus, large fresh baked cookies.
The place always crowded. Until they changed!
Walk in the door and the aroma of fresh-baked buns was gone. The restaurant almost vacant, the reason became apparent. Buns were no longer baked on site, only plain ordinary buns, the hamburger meat no longer thick or juicy as before, and fewer fixings. Soon their doors closed.
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Don’t mess with what is working
A franchise works for a reason; they know how to market through trial and error. Some owners in an attempt to cut costs make stupid decisions.
An ice cream place that served the best hot fudge sundaes, changed owners, and it spiraled downhill. First thing to disappear, the cherry with a stem on top. No big deal but not a smart move. Soon less fudge, then less ice cream. The cherry was cut in half, then into a quarter. Less whipped cream. Next time the whole concoction was below the top of the glass. The prices never went down and actually crept upwards. She got rid of the help and ran the ice cream shop by herself. Customers quit coming when they didn’t get value for their dollar. To save a buck, she barely had the AC on and it should be no surprise her business took a nose dive in the middle of summer. The business closed before the end of summer.
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When customers no longer find value, they walk away.
Greed made those businesses fail. Taking over a successful business with a large happy cliental should be a no-brainer.
Unfortunately, new owners try to figure how to put more money in their pocket and they forget who pays their bills.
Customers will pay more for what brings them to your business. Take away quality, service and your customer disappears.
If you buy a business or a model for a successful business, you don’t change things. Before you take the risk to make changes, ask your customers the following questions. “What do they like about the business?” “What keeps them coming back?” “What would they like for you to change?”
Bad publicity travels fast. A business making a change without considering how a customer will respond to the change can be detrimental to the success of the business. Ask yourself if your favorite business made a drastic change, and you felt ripped off, how long before you would quit buying from them? Don’t be blinded by how close you are to your own business.
