As anyone who has read my columns will know, I strongly believe that proper marketing and customer relationship management are the keys to success, and the only measurable ways of ensuring it continues for your business.
But, so often when I talk to licensees about this, I hear the same responses: “I don’t have time,” and: “There just aren’t enough hours in the day,” and I do sympathise.
Running a pub takes a lot of work, and chances are you are already putting most of your waking hours into your pub. But the real question is, how much time are you putting aside to work on your pub?
One of the most important decisions I ever made was to put just one hour aside every day to focus completely on improving my pub business and moving it forward.
What this time gets spent on is different every day, and can be anything from reviewing the pub’s menus to see if we can freshen up our offer to planning a new direct mail marketing strategy. But the point is, every day, I take one hour to remove myself from the daily grind of operating the pub, and focus entirely on the ‘big ideas’ that might otherwise get left on the eternal ‘back burner’.
So, the one piece of advice I always give licensees is this: for one hour every day, lock yourself away in your office, if necessary, with a big sign on your door saying: “Not to be interrupted except in the event of fire!” and give yourself the time and space to work on, and get excited about your business.
For many, one of the most appealing things about running your own pub is the freedom to make your own success, and be creative with your business, but without disciplining yourself to allocate this time, it simply won’t happen.
Now, I’m not naïve, I’ve run my own pub for many years, and I know that even with the best of intentions, there will be days when your cleaner has called in sick, or your suppliers have let you down, or the water pipes have frozen, and, ultimately, the buck always stops with you.
This can make it hard to imagine finding the time to think about marketing and customer databases, but the vital thing is not to lose sight of the bigger picture, and to commit to the hour-a-day method as often as you can.
Because if you don’t put aside the time to work on your business, no one else is going to, and whether it’s in the morning or late at night, if just one hour a day could be all it takes to ensure the future success of your business, wouldn’t you say it’s worth finding the time?
- Phil Davison is a licensee, and also runs Recipe4Success, a consultancy for country, rural and village pubs.