Make Your Customer’s Jobs Easier

I was recently visited by a local hotel chain that wants our business. They know we regularly have customers, sales reps and vendors visit from out of town and they want to be the hotel that gets most (if not all) of that business. However, we are lucky to be located directly on the beautiful Gulf Coast of Florida. Our area’s number one industry is tourism. So this hotel has a lot of competition. What can they do to set themselves apart from the competition and win our business?

The first and most obvious thing they can do is offer our customers an attractive rate. Which they certainly did. But they went a few steps further. They asked what our visitors need when traveling to the area. I explained that these visits are usually short. Our customers come to check out the packaging machinery we have built for them and they don’t necessarily want to rent a car as they only travel from the airport to the hotel, to our plant and back again. The hotel already offered free pick up and delivery service between the airport and hotel. As we are only minutes away from the hotel, they offered free shuttle service to and from our company for our visitors. This is a big amenity that will make our jobs easier as we no longer have to worry about arranging pickup and delivery for our visiting customers.

Next they asked what else would help make our job easier in arranging hotel stays for our visitors. I asked if they could make it easier for us to get the hotel information and special rates to our customers. They had a great solution. They will send us a link to forward to our customers. The link will take them directly to a special website that will explain about the hotel, list the rates, and allow them to make their reservations.

This 10 minute visit from the hotel manager will result in us referring our business to a local company that truly is willing to ‘partner’ with us and help make our jobs easier.  What extra free service can you offer to make your customers' jobs easier?

The author, Marge Bonura, is the Director of Sales & Marketing for New England Machinery, Inc. (NEM). NEM is a leading packaging machinery manufacturer of bottle unscramblers, cappers, orienters, retorquers, lidders, pluggers, pump sorter/placers, scoop feeders, hopper elevators and much more. The company has been in business since 1974 selling to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, chemical, household products, automotive and other industries. For more information on NEM, visit their website at www.neminc.com.