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First Practical Measure - Stop your business losing revenue
If you are selling a service, you’ll know how important it is to manage time: for example, if your customer has a 1 hour
appointment at 3pm Monday and they ‘forget’ to show up, you can never sell this time slot to this customer ever again.
That’s the nature of the service industry, what’s called ‘perish-ability’.
Customers will and do forget their appointments with service providers such as yourself. You could request credit card
details to prevent revenue loss but you risk causing a negative impact on the customer relationship. Indeed, in these
challenging times, you need to stay very close to your customers and foster a good relationship because if you don’t,
someone else will!
So what if you could prevent just one customer ‘No Show’ (or missed appointment) per week? If you could and your
average charge for the hour of service was €50, you would add €2,600 in turnover to your business in 2009!
How you do this is simple: you use non-intrusive/permission based daily SMS text reminders using MintonBook™ SMS.
For example: “Jane/ Joe, this is an automated courtesy reminder. We are looking forward to seeing you at 3pm,
Monday, DD/MM/YY. [The senders Name] [Your Business Telephone Number]”
As part of the MintonBook™ suite of software applications, the MintonBook™ SMS add-on enables you to automate
daily SMS text reminders to your client base dependant on your individual business requirements.
Simply put, not only are you providing good customer service but you’re also giving your customer the opportunity to
contact you if they need to change their appointment details.
Second Practical Measure – Developing New Business
One of the most valuable assets that you have in your business is each of your clients’ appointment history.
This is an invaluable asset to your company because it can help you generate repeat business.
How? Well, by looking into each customer’s appointment history you can discover lots more about your client’s likes
and dislikes, times that suit and times that don’t.
This logic applies across all service businesses whether it is a car service, a hair cut, a check up or even a window
clean.
Armed with this intelligence you can create small, frequent and highly focussed marketing promotions delivered by
mobile text.
Example:
After reviewing your appointments for next week you notice that Wednesday is particularly quiet. You decide to take
action and send a promotional SMS text to all of your customers who are due a particular service: let’s say you’re a
hairdresser and Mrs. O’Kane who normally books every 4 weeks, hasn’t booked her next appointment. So using mobile
text you send a gentle reminder to Mrs. O’Kane with perhaps an 10% discount offer if she chooses to confirm her
appointment for next month too!
This method of Marketing is highly successful, because;
A: You are targeting Customers that have used your services before;
B: You know that the Customer is due to use the service again;
C: You are not offering this promotion to the general public;
D: You are generating appointments at a time that suits your business;
E: This incentive might prevent your Customers from going to a competitor; and finally,
F: The Customers are being rewarded for using your Business.
How you do this is simple: you use non-intrusive/permission based texts. As part of the MintonBook™ suite of software
applications, the MintonBook™ Marketing Manager add-on enables you to automate daily SMS texts to your client
base dependant on your individual business requirements.
Simply put, not only are you providing good customer service but you’re also retaining existing business and protecting
hard won revenues.
Third Practical Measure - Maximise your profits
In order to maximise your profits, you need to know what services generate the most profit relative to the time and
resources it takes to complete each service.
Here is a simple rule of thumb, to determine the ‘Hourly Profitability Rating’ for each of the services that you offer:
1. Deduct VAT from your service selling price
2. Deduct the cost price of the service from the Selling Price less VAT
3. Divide the resultant number by the number of minutes it takes to complete the service
4. Multiple the result by 60
This final number represents the ‘Hourly Profitability Rating’.
Example:
Service A, sells for €150, costs €15 and it takes 2 hours to complete
Service B, sells for €80, costs €25 and it takes 45 minutes to complete.
After applying the rating formula, we find that Service A has a rating of 58.58 and Service B has a rating of 60.65.
There is always the temptation to focus on providing the service with the highest turnover but as we can see from this
example, even though Service A costs us less and sells for more, Service B when compared, on an equal time basis, is
more profitable.
There are other considerations that you will have to take account of such as, the mix of services that are appropriate to
your business but at a very basic level you need to focus as much effort and energy (as appropriate) on the services
with the highest ‘Hourly Profitability Rating’.
How you do this is simple: as part of the MintonBook™ suite of software applications, the MintonBook™ Reports add-
on provides you with reports that allow you to gain an in-depth knowledge of yield and profitability metrics relevant to
the services that you sell and have sold.
If you are selling a service, you’ll know how important it is to manage time: for example, if your customer has a 1 hour
appointment at 3pm Monday and they ‘forget’ to show up, you can never sell this time slot to this customer ever again.
That’s the nature of the service industry, what’s called ‘perish-ability’.
Customers will and do forget their appointments with service providers such as yourself. You could request credit card
details to prevent revenue loss but you risk causing a negative impact on the customer relationship. Indeed, in these
challenging times, you need to stay very close to your customers and foster a good relationship because if you don’t,
someone else will!
So what if you could prevent just one customer ‘No Show’ (or missed appointment) per week? If you could and your
average charge for the hour of service was €50, you would add €2,600 in turnover to your business in 2009!
How you do this is simple: you use non-intrusive/permission based daily SMS text reminders using MintonBook™ SMS.
For example: “Jane/ Joe, this is an automated courtesy reminder. We are looking forward to seeing you at 3pm,
Monday, DD/MM/YY. [The senders Name] [Your Business Telephone Number]”
As part of the MintonBook™ suite of software applications, the MintonBook™ SMS add-on enables you to automate
daily SMS text reminders to your client base dependant on your individual business requirements.
Simply put, not only are you providing good customer service but you’re also giving your customer the opportunity to
contact you if they need to change their appointment details.
Second Practical Measure – Developing New Business
One of the most valuable assets that you have in your business is each of your clients’ appointment history.
This is an invaluable asset to your company because it can help you generate repeat business.
How? Well, by looking into each customer’s appointment history you can discover lots more about your client’s likes
and dislikes, times that suit and times that don’t.
This logic applies across all service businesses whether it is a car service, a hair cut, a check up or even a window
clean.
Armed with this intelligence you can create small, frequent and highly focussed marketing promotions delivered by
mobile text.
Example:
After reviewing your appointments for next week you notice that Wednesday is particularly quiet. You decide to take
action and send a promotional SMS text to all of your customers who are due a particular service: let’s say you’re a
hairdresser and Mrs. O’Kane who normally books every 4 weeks, hasn’t booked her next appointment. So using mobile
text you send a gentle reminder to Mrs. O’Kane with perhaps an 10% discount offer if she chooses to confirm her
appointment for next month too!
This method of Marketing is highly successful, because;
A: You are targeting Customers that have used your services before;
B: You know that the Customer is due to use the service again;
C: You are not offering this promotion to the general public;
D: You are generating appointments at a time that suits your business;
E: This incentive might prevent your Customers from going to a competitor; and finally,
F: The Customers are being rewarded for using your Business.
How you do this is simple: you use non-intrusive/permission based texts. As part of the MintonBook™ suite of software
applications, the MintonBook™ Marketing Manager add-on enables you to automate daily SMS texts to your client
base dependant on your individual business requirements.
Simply put, not only are you providing good customer service but you’re also retaining existing business and protecting
hard won revenues.
Third Practical Measure - Maximise your profits
In order to maximise your profits, you need to know what services generate the most profit relative to the time and
resources it takes to complete each service.
Here is a simple rule of thumb, to determine the ‘Hourly Profitability Rating’ for each of the services that you offer:
1. Deduct VAT from your service selling price
2. Deduct the cost price of the service from the Selling Price less VAT
3. Divide the resultant number by the number of minutes it takes to complete the service
4. Multiple the result by 60
This final number represents the ‘Hourly Profitability Rating’.
Example:
Service A, sells for €150, costs €15 and it takes 2 hours to complete
Service B, sells for €80, costs €25 and it takes 45 minutes to complete.
After applying the rating formula, we find that Service A has a rating of 58.58 and Service B has a rating of 60.65.
There is always the temptation to focus on providing the service with the highest turnover but as we can see from this
example, even though Service A costs us less and sells for more, Service B when compared, on an equal time basis, is
more profitable.
There are other considerations that you will have to take account of such as, the mix of services that are appropriate to
your business but at a very basic level you need to focus as much effort and energy (as appropriate) on the services
with the highest ‘Hourly Profitability Rating’.
How you do this is simple: as part of the MintonBook™ suite of software applications, the MintonBook™ Reports add-
on provides you with reports that allow you to gain an in-depth knowledge of yield and profitability metrics relevant to
the services that you sell and have sold.