Jan 11
5

Gerry Harvey having a good ole blub

2 Comments

Here’s my preface. I like Gerry Harvey as a business celebrity, of course I don’t know him personally,  and seriously respect his success.

Now onto last night’s ACA article. He was on there complaining about increased competition from overseas purchasing crippling Harvey’s profitability.

A lesson that we absolutely need to learn and a warning we need to heed. The message I got was loud and clear…

Continue to do business the way it used to be done, and you will be history. We have all seen Brash’s come and go (or have we, maybe I’m getting old).

None of these guys are too big to fall. I mean K-MArt in America filed for receivership on it’s 40th anniversary.

Here’s one way Harvey’s missed the boat.

They get your name and address. They have a database of what you bought, how much you spent and where you live, phone number etc. How often have you heard follow up sales efforts from our beloved HN? Never?

They attempt to get us as a new customer every purchase, instead of enrolling us in some sort of continued contact, offers, I mean if we buy a washing machine, is there a chance that means we are moving and may need other ‘stuff.’

So why then don’t we get follow up offers in the email or heaven forbid a direct mail piece sent to us.

And if they knew their numbers, they would know how much it costs to get a customer into the store, and as an existing customer, they could give YOU a coupon for that amount (minus the cost of sending you the offer) to spend on the subsequent purchase.

I don’t know if this strategy itself wouyld work, but this is the type of THINKING that Gerry HArvey should be instilling, and none whining about us getting a better deal online.

Innovate and market Gerry, deliver us service, value and an experience, and we’ll shop with you loyally like they do at the apple store. It’s a physical shop, and the bloody things are ALWAYS packed. Don’t tell me we won’t go to a store, we will and do if you give us enough reasons to.

This entry was posted on January 5, 2011 at 2:04 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in business success sales by Glenn Twiddle 2 Comments

2 Responses to "Gerry Harvey having a good ole blub"

  • Tweets that mention Gerry Harvey from Harvey Norman | Glenn Twiddle -- Topsy.com says:
    January 6, 2011 at 6:28 am

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by GlennTwiddle. GlennTwiddle said: Post Edited: Gerry Harvey having a good ole blub http://glenntwiddle.com.au/blog/?p=490 [...]

  • The Frog says:
    March 30, 2011 at 12:57 am

    Dear Glenn,

    You make an interesting point. Gerry will of course (same goes for any retailer) cry wolf if it gets him more tax breaks or other lucrative things. Harvey Norman as a group however is not a single business but in fact a collection of proprietorships (one for each department in each store) and so the question of ‘who owns the customer’ is a matter of continuous debate. The HN business model is quite clever and effective but falls down in the follow-up sales area. It really comes ddown to how a relationship is built between you and an individual sales person rather than the store or chain as a whole.

    Follow up selling is a poorly practiced art for most Australian retailers in my opinion and not something unique to HN. As a sales person I have made my career by utilising follow up sales, but implementing that in a chain like HN would be extremely difficult. Not to mention the swarms of would be marketing guru’s (mostly baby boomers with an MBA and no clue how to actually do business or deal with consumers) and software vendors who preach much but practice little. Doing better business is a must, but delivering it is not a simple task.

    The Frog

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