Ep.129: Inventory Management Tips For Small Businesses

From Madmags. He says I started a roasted chicken business two weeks ago. This is a physical store, almost all who have tried our products says it was good naman, but until now almost everyday negative parin kami. What should we do?

Maybe people are saying your product is good, but compared to some other chicken brand out there, it's okay. Because you have to qualify the question. Is it good compared to all the other chicken brands out there? Or is it good, and that's it? So not selling so much. All right.

How you can improve this is by improving your product. If it's not selling so much, dalawa lang yan. You improve your product or you improve your marketing. An average product can sometimes sell a lot if the marketing is good. So there are two ways you can go about it. Product. What can you improve about the product? I'm not sure how you can improve your product further, but there has to be something that differentiates it from the others.

One example is, ang dami nang roasted chicken business out there, diba? Baliwag, Sr. Pedro, Andoks, Chooks To Go, and some of these players late na sila nakapasok. But they did well because there's a differentiator. Laging may unique selling proposition sila na wala yung iba. Even if it's how you sell, like mayroon kang extra na ganito, bonus na ganyan. It’s not the taste, but it's how you sell, product differentiator parin yon. It's still a unique selling proposition.

Another way you can go about it is marketing. How much are you marketing your product? Are you posting on social media? A lot of people are on social media right now. A lot of people are posting, taking really good photos. Actually, if you're in the food business, what you need to do is make people on social media hungry. That's it. Kailangan nila makita yung food mo na sobrang sarap, tapos magugutom sila, mag iinquire yan. If your food is not in people's faces and social media, hindi ka nila maaalala. Hindi ka nila kokontakin. There's really no way that people are going to get in touch with you and place an order.

Improve your product and USP, and then market that on social media. That's definitely gonna work. So you have to figure this out because if you're not selling so much, but people are seeing your product is good, there is something they're not telling you and you have to figure that out.

One way that you can is not by asking them, is the food good? But by asking them, if you didn't know the product or you didn't know me, would you still buy this product? Would you still buy my food? Or would you refer this food, this roasted chicken to a friend or to a family? And if you would refer it, how strongly would you recommend it from a scale of 1 to 10?

So you know, if they're going to promote the product by word of mouth, word of mouth marketing is still the best form of marketing. What you would want to know is, how strongly are they going to promote your product to their friends and family? That's a question that I'd probably ask them, not about how good is the food, but more of how strongly would you promote this roasted chicken to your friends and family? If they answer a 9 or a 10, fantastic. You're quite sure that they're going to promote it. If they answer a 7 or an 8, probably not. They're probably neutral. If the answer is six or less, they have something wrong with your product that they're not telling you. We call these people detractors.

Six or below yung sagot nila, we call them detractors. There's something wrong with your food, your product, or your service, the way you serve your roasted chicken, and they're not telling you that. So believe in the net promoter score, not in whether they say your food is good or not. And I always ask open-ended questions. Don't ask questions with a yes or no.