Maintaining Good Relationships With Vendors
Maintaining a good relationship with your vendors is crucial to your business. Some ways to maintain good vendor relationships are described below:1) Dedicated Manager: A dedicated team leader or product manager will help maintain good vendor relationships by keeping track of the progress of each team or vendor. He or she helps keep all channels of communication open and this avoids miscommunication of any kind.2) Progress Report: Insist on getting detailed progress reports from vendors periodically. This helps you solves glitches and problems of any kind and gives you an insight into how the business is growing.3) Plan in Advance: When dealing with vendors, you cannot afford delays and extensive alterations. Especially if you are dealing with software vendors, you must keep in mind that a small delay or mistake can substantially affect their profit margin. This may strain the relationship between the vendor and you.4) Loyalty: If you do a lot of business with a particular vendor, he or she will reward you for your loyalty by offering discounts and incentives to you. They will even go out of their way to help you by speeding up the shipment process if you need to quickly ship some orders, for example, or receive a back order.<

Branding in the Face of Mergers and Acquisitions
Your company is considering a merger or acquisition. You’ve explored the financial and legal ramifications. But do you know what your point of distinction will be post-merger?Today, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are commonplace. They are strategic decisions grounded in geographic expansion, product and competency diversification, and brand leveraging. While businesses clearly address the associated legal and financial issues, they often overlook a critical component—brand management. Effective brand management goes well beyond the basic marketing tools. It requires an integrated approach to ensure consistency of your corporate message and identity throughout all aspects of your business. Without careful brand management, your M&A effort is vulnerable to failure.Simply put, brand management helps to secure stability and brand loyalty for your company. You may consider discounting its importance to the M&A process, but be prepared for the possible outcomes: Brands are managed inconsistently and brand equity suffers Management and staff send mixed messages, creating confusion in the marketplace Company image/brand loses value in the market Employee morale decreases and turnover increases"Before you begin marketing through a VIP Club, you need to take a step back and look at your restaurant. Make sure that you are ready for increased business. Don't attempt to market your restaurant unless you have above average food and service. Good marketing can actually put a restaurant that provides poor food and service out of business faster because more people will have a poor dining experience, and the negative word-of-mouth will cause them to fail faster than if they do not market at all," says Brent Davis, Director of Coaching Services for RestaurantMarketingGroup.org (RMG) a company that specializes in helping restaurants to build sound, trackable marketing systems through its easy-to-use software, "How-To" marketing manuals and personalized coaching.

Gathering the Data:
Once you have taken an internal inventory and feel good about the food and service that you provide, it's time to start using and building your database of existing customers. Remember that in most restaurants 30 percent of the customers are bringing in 70 percent of the business. For the sake of our discussion, let's say that Joe's Family Diner has 10,000 customers a month. That's 322 customers each day. Seventy percent of the diner's monthly customers would be 7,000. If the restaurant's VIP Club marketing c

actually put a restaurant that provides poor food and service out of business faster because more people will have a poor dining experience, and the negative word-of-mouth will cause them to fail faster than if they do not market at all," says Brent Davis, Director of Coaching Services for RestaurantMarketingGroup.org (RMG) a company that specializes in helping restaurants to build sound, trackable marketing systems through its easy-to-use software, "How-To" marketing manuals and personalized coaching.

Gathering the Data:
Once you have taken an internal inventory and feel good about the food and service that you provide, it's time to start using and building your database of existing customers. Remember that in most restaurants 30 percent of the customers are bringing in 70 percent of the business. For the sake of our discussion, let's say that Joe's Family Diner has 10,000 customers a month. That's 322 customers each day. Seventy percent of the diner's monthly customers would be 7,000. If the restaurant's VIP Club marketing

tor of Coaching Services for RestaurantMarketingGroup.org (RMG) a company that specializes in helping restaurants to build sound, trackable marketing systems through its easy-to-use software, "How-To" marketing manuals and personalized coaching.

Gathering the Data:
Once you have taken an internal inventory and feel good about the food and service that you provide, it's time to start using and building your database of existing customers. Remember that in most restaurants 30 percent of the customers are bringing in 70 percent of the business. For the sake of our discussion, let's say that Joe's Family Diner has 10,000 customers a month. That's 322 customers each day. Seventy percent of the diner's monthly customers would be 7,000. If the restaurant's VIP Club marketing

the Data:
Once you have taken an internal inventory and feel good about the food and service that you provide, it's time to start using and building your database of existing customers. Remember that in most restaurants 30 percent of the customers are bringing in 70 percent of the business. For the sake of our discussion, let's say that Joe's Family Diner has 10,000 customers a month. That's 322 customers each day. Seventy percent of the diner's monthly customers would be 7,000. If the restaurant's VIP Club marketing g in 70 percent of the business. For the sake of our discussion, let's say that Joe's Family Diner has 10,000 customers a month. That's 322 customers each day. Seventy percent of the diner's monthly customers would be 7,000. If the restaurant's VIP Club marketing creates only one more visit per year per customer at an average check of $25, the volume will increase by $175,000 per year or $14,538 a month and that's with only one extra visit per existing customer per year. You can see why it's important to go after additional customer visits.

"Don't forget that your existing customers are your neighbors. A VIP Club enables you to market within your neighborhood to existing customers. It's permission based and therefore considerably more effective than if you did a blanket coupon offer to all of your neighbors. These are folks who know and frequent your restaurant; they took the time to fill out a VIP card and have shared personal information with you," says Davis.

"VIP Clubs are a great way to build customer loyalty. Always give a thank you reward bonus for joining the club. We recommend that the offers go out by email or regular mail within 72 hours after signing up. The offer should be without any strings attached. I like to suggest that the offer be for a dollar amount. A flat $15.00 or $10.00 am