I’m typing this just after lunch and there are two stories that I feel that’s worth telling and that caught my attention.
For about a week now, I had trouble with my clothes dryer, after asking around, I had to resort to good ol’ google.
So I googled clothes dryer repair and a couple of ads came up. I picked whoever was the easiest to contact and within the next day he came over to repair it on the spot. Oddly, in Malaysia I couldn’t even find a repair person for clothes dryer on sites like recommend.my which is my go-to place for such things.
Now after chatting with him, what’s interesting is that he’s run Google ads for over 10 years now, spent thousands and has 5-10 inquiries a day about breakdowns. And boy the repair wasn’t cheap either, setting me back a few hundred bucks.
But he mentioned the fact that he has to open up every screw, have the right tools and equipment to do so, keep stock for parts and that justifies the cost versus the cost of transportation, delay in repair for a week, offered to clean the machine etc. Brilliant salesmanship on that part. He’d also use the current retail price over the cost of repair.
These sort of repair ads are urgent ads, something that needs fixing asap. I’ve had similar stories for car batteries and even being locked out from my room/toilet as well.
Now for the second story, it was today’s lunch.
I went on to have some chicken rice, expecting a pretty ordinary and uneventful day, and I ordered some sweet and sour vegetable soup along with it. I was the first customer dining in for the day.
The second person that came in, ordered take-away and started looking at what I ate and ordered the same soup.
The boss was thrilled and excitedly interrupted my meal…while I was eating he spoke to me saying that I became his advertisement for that soup because no one really checks the food menu.
Some takeaways to learn here:
- A customer is your best referral. (Soup example.)
- People are lazy to check the menu, they want something they see it and order it on a whim. It becomes more real when it’s served on the table as they are probably hungry.
- On my broken dryer. I needed a solution fast, looked for it via Google and in return, have it solved a.s.a.p.
The pain of a hungry stomach and the pain of a non-working dryer.
No elaborate, fancy funnels or copywriting required for these sorts of niches.
I hope the boss will do something about show-casing his soups/meals. There are many ways to make it more appealing and aware, not just relying on a dine-in customer and luck.
It could have been more systematic and this can be a learning point for improvement. That was an extra 15 bucks which he wouldn’t have earned.