I recently watched a video of Jay Abraham doing a very quick marketing consultation. The most fascinating part was how fast Jay would pinpoint the biggest growth opportunity for this particular business:
I run a community pharmacy, and we have multiple pharmacies around Australia. The challenge we have at the moment is that there is a big-box in Australia, called Chemist Warehouse, with a huge marketing power, and we’re trying to differentiate via service, and adding value there, but we don’t really seem to be winning the game. So the question is, how does a small community pharmacy with service and relationships in mind compete against a big-box, very powerful conglomerate?
Now, without giving it a second thought, here are the questions Jay asked after hearing this:
- What is your definition of service that you’re extending? What does it look like specifically? What is it that you’re doing exactly to distinguish and differentiate?
- What is the most profitable part of the pharmacy?
- How many average clients do you have in each of the pharmacies?
- How many pharmacies do you have?
- How do you market right now?
- How many referrals do you get per pharmacy per whatever calibration group you like (day/month/week)?
It’s fascinating to see how quickly his mind went to examine these specific points upon hearing the preceding question.
Here’s the whole video for you if you want to know what this led to. (The relevant part starts at 11:34 if you want to skip the introductory blabla.)