(Time to read this Blog is about 4 minutes)

Before we get to the main topic, here are a few things to get you thinking or smiling:

1. My Biz Quote of the week:
   “We should all take what we do seriously.  People are counting on us!  We just shouldn’t take ourselves so seriously.  We all need to lighten up.  Create a culture of joy!”
   …Donald Cooper.
    
2. Quick Biz Tip:
   Make sure there’s a profitable & sustainable market before you launch a new venture:
    
   I’ve seen many entrepreneurs and even big, established businesses start a business for which there’s no profitable market.
    
   Sobeys Inc, Canada’s 2^nd largest grocer. has just announced the immediate closure of its Voila e-commerce / home delivery facilities in Alberta…and a $750 million write-down as a result.  Apparently, Alberta’s e-commerce / home delivery grocery market was much smaller and less profitable than expected. 
    
3. Fun Fact: The U.S. Federal Government is the largest employer in the USA.  The Canadian Federal Government is the largest employer in Canada.  Walmart is the largest employer in 22 American States.
    
4. Discover the real problems behind your ‘Service Challenges’.  We deliver world-class service and customer experiences by dealing with the human and operational problems that are the real cause of our being ‘less than amazing’.
    
   To help my Biz Coaching clients address and fix these human and organizational problems, I created Biz Tool #A-2, ‘The Service Challenge Audit Sheet’.  It’s just one page, it takes 5 minutes for you and your Team to complete (independently), and it’s brilliantly insightful.  To download it, no charge, Click Here.
    
5. The ‘Cranky Corner’. It might be my age, or a strong concern for where our society is headed, but some things make me Cranky.   60% of Canadians are now gambling every month. Online Casinos and Sports Betting dominate the sector.
    
   Governments who are afraid to raise taxes any further, introduce Lotteries and allow online gambling as a revenue source.  But gambling is a tax.  It’s a tax on stupidity…and, for many, it’s tragically addictive.
    
   Our Ontario government is pocketing billions in gambling revenue (they take a 20% cut), but at a serious ‘social cost’.  Calls to Ontario’s ‘Mental Health Hotline’ for gambling issues have skyrocketed over 300% among young men since the province legalized private online gambling in 2022.
    
   In areas where online betting is legal, personal bankruptcy filings increased by 25% to 30% after four years of legalization. 

Now, to this week’s important topic:

What do your customers not want to do that you could help them with?

Many of your customers don’t have the time, the skill or the inclination to install, maintain, keep track of, prepare or otherwise ‘deal with’ what they buy from you.  There’s a huge value-add and revenue-add opportunity here, if you get it right.

Lowes, Home Depot and many other sharp building materials retailers have partnered with ‘trusted contractors’ to create install programs for customers who don’t want to, or don’t know how to do ‘fix-it’ or renovation projects themselves.  IKEA has crews that will assemble and install for you. .

Grocery stores’ sales of ‘prepared foods’ continue to climb as consumers don’t have time to cook. There are about 950 million cooked rotisserie chickens sold in America annually.

Many manufacturers and importers contract out the warehousing and shipping of their products to outside logistics companies who do it better.

So, the question here is how could you add value and increase revenue by doing for your customers what they don’t have the time, skill, knowledge or desire to do for themselves?  How could you help them to choose, process, control, service, store, resell or recycle what you sell?  Here are a few more examples to get your creative juices flowing:

1. A large distributor ofindustrial safety supplies puts one of their own staff into their largest customers’ facilities to issue safety products, do safety coaching and control  inventory.
2. Our tire ‘hero’stores our off-season tires for us…and charges a fee for doing so.  A ‘win-win’.
3. Businesses that sell seed and fertilizerto farmers have agronomists on staff to do soil testing for their customers to determine which seed and which fertilizer will work best for them.
4. Smart financial advisorshelp clients partner with top lawyers and accountants to keep their estate planning tidy and tax-efficient…and top travel agents to help them plan extraordinary adventures.  In doing so, they create a ‘Circle of Care’ around their customers.
5. Mattress retailer, Sleep Country Canada,takes away your old mattress when they deliver your new one.  They donate the good ones to homeless shelters and recycle the rest.  They realize that folks have no easy way of disposing of an old mattress, and they deal with that in a way that makes us feel good.  

So, what do your customers not have the skill, knowledge, time, facilities or desire to do to be successful with what you sell, or in any way related to what you sell?  How can you help them with that?  And how can you do that in a way that adds value, strengthens the relationship and grows your bottom line?  What might that look like in your business…and when will you get started?

That’s it for this week…

Live brilliantly and be kind to each other!       

Donald Cooper 

Donald Cooper speaks and coaches internationally on management, marketing, and profitability.  He can be reached by email at donald@donaldcooper.com in Toronto, Canada.