That Little Red Book

In this report you will find something that is very simple and easy to implement that will have a dramatic effect on your business. It will take you by surprise the immediate effect and that can be achieved for very little time and money.

As business owners we are looking for ways to enhance and improve our businesses. If not we should be. Either through training courses or home study or even night class. A major subject that we come across time and time again is marketing. We read information on marketing strategies and procedures and modern techniques and just the terminology used is enough to put us off. But before you embark on any of these training courses, implement one simple tried and tested strategy and reap the immediate rewards.

We are looking at the Phone Message Book for your business. It may be that you will need to start keeping one or may be you already have one that needs just a little tweak to make it even more useful as a major marketing tool.

What do we need?
A little Red Book. Well it could be any colour but it is essential that you like the way this book looks and that you can find it easily. Feel free to write in big letters on it or even decorate it, what ever makes it work for you.

The book can be any shape and size and I will not insult your intelligence on this point. However, we use A4 hard back books in a strong maroon colour. These are the only books in the office in this colour to avoid any time wasting of picking up the wrong book by mistake and they survive being handled better than soft back books.

The book and what it will do.
If you follow this procedure the information that you will get from your book will simply astound you. Draw lines down the page in the book and put a heading on each column. Some columns will need to be bigger than others and I am sure you will work that out.

The suggested columns are.

Date, Time, Name and Address, Details, Where Heard, Booked, Phone Number and Email.

I will now go through each heading in turn and explain why you may need it.

Who.

This is who the message is for and is relevant if more than one person ever answers your phone. I also suggest that you use this column to write Done each time a message has been actioned.

This will show up as a reminder to you that certain jobs still need to de done. A time saving issue in itself and saves you having to remember everything.

If you have several staff this will show up who is not clearing and acting on their messages promptly.

Date and Time are self explanatory but why would you put time in the phone book?

This will highlight when you receive most of your calls and will therefore tell you which time it is best to be away from the phone doing other jobs.
It will also seem very efficient if you ever have a query and you can remind the person of the date and time that they rang you. It will put you firmly in control.

Name and Address (and email).
It is essential to capture this information on all callers, every single one, to your business.

For sending brochures and information to them correctly.

For general enquiries about your premises.

For people who want dates when you are full so that you can put them on the waiting list and contact them if ever you do have a cancellation on the date that they enquired about.

For future mail shots of special offers, seasonal activities or last minutes vacancies.

Start building up your database now. You don't have to put it on the computer yet but start capturing the data today.

Details.
Make brief notes here of what the enquiry was about.

Dates wanted, which accommodation, special requirements, pets etc any thing that may help you provide a better service for your guest either now as a guest or in the future.

Include here information on requests for times when you are indeed fully booked and you can start building up your waiting list.

Where they heard.

This information is vital to your business as it lets you monitor the response to all your advertising that you do. You can spend as much money as you like on advertising but if you do not ask every single person who rings you, where they heard about you, you will be wasting a lot of money and time. It makes total sense to just jot this information down and not try and remember it.

Booked Just put yes when this person books your accommodation so easy!

Why would you do this well with this information and where they heard about you can actually calculate quickly and simply if you advertising is working. You know how many people are calling. You know how many have booked and you know how many have enquired about dates that you are fully booked. You now know how much that sale was worth to you and I am sure that you know what the % profit that you run at is, and so now you can calculate if the advertisement works for your business.

If it cost a huge amount and the phone rings every day then great. But how many bookings do you get from the advert and how much profit does it bring in to your business? So has it paid for itself? and then if the answer is yes, when the advertisers ring you again to renew you will know that this advert works for you and you will renew or that even though the advert took you weeks to prepare, looks great and cost an arm and a leg, it did not produce the results that you need. Then you will not renew even with their best salesman doing his best. If you do renew an advert that is not working, then it is most probably still unlikely to work.

So from this simple recording of your phone messages you can tell who is ringing and when the most calls come in, which adverts work and which don't, the best member of staff and which jobs have still to be completed, as well as building up a waiting list for your busy periods and an up to date database for future marketing. What a great start. It will cost less than a fiver and you will not have to go anywhere for training. Implement it this week and see for your self the difference. By Liz Beaumont

That Little Red Book

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