Every week Business Consulting Buzz posts 2-3 articles to help consultants and business owners become more successful. Covering topics like attracting and working with clients, pricing services, marketing and social media.

There are also a bunch of great consulting interviews like a recent one with Mari Smith on Facebook Marketing for consultants.

If you’re new to consulting or want to take it to the next level be sure to have a look at the consulting course, “The Consulting Success System”. The course is all about becoming a more successful consultant.

So for a weekly dose you now know where to go. I will still drop some posts here from time to time when I have a chance.

However, I’m not (usually) an open food critic. The reason I’m sharing this story with you is because there is a nice marketing lesson to be had…

Nagomi Sushi is doing a great job of managing its customer’s expectations. If you’ve read my writing for a while, especially in my book Profitable Relations, you’ll know I’ve touched on this subject before.

It’s especially critical in the hospitality industry. Far too many restaurants for example are run inefficiently. Their service is slow. Even if they know it’s going to take a while to get your order out to you they won’t let you know…rather you’ll be kept waiting…hoping that your meal is the next one out.

Well, this sushi joint puts a short and sweet message on the cover of its menu. It’s nothing elaborate…it’s certainly no corporate jargon – but it works.

When you read this message you’re put to ease. You almost find yourself saying, “ok, it might take a bit longer but it’ll be worth it”.

Obviously a message like this has to deliver. If you read this and the food turns out to be a dissapointement the whole strategy flops.

However, when you deliver, like Nagomi does, it’s a well played strategy on their part.

Hats off to Nagomi. Great food and great service.

They are spending millions on print and billboard (transit) advertising to market their new service. Yet it looks like they overlooked one aspect of their marketing plans…

Being prepared to handle all the inbound traffic those millions of dollars can bring.

Here’s what Wind’s website looks like around 9am this Sunday morning:

While Wind has been around in Toronto for just over 6 months or so, they’ve recently launched in a couple of new markets – including Ottawa and Vancouver where I’ve seen all of their advertising.

Their full page ads and transit posters have captured the attention of the local market. They’ve taken an aggressive approach on their price point and consumer looking to save on their monthly bills are wanting to find out more.

Naturally they’ll go to Wind’s website to do so…but the site is MIA.

This is a classic mistake companies make. These days with hosting services offered by companies like Amazon and others it’s fairly simple to scale a website in preparation for a surge in traffic.

For Wind, at first thought this may seem like a good thing – strong demand. However, from the consumer standpoint, if the companies website can’t stay online … we’re left wondering if their mobile service will?

I should acknowledge that without seeing the back-end of what’s happening with Wind’s website at this moment, it may be down for other technical reasons and have nothing to do with their advertising efforts.

However, it’s been more than 15 minutes and the site … well, it’s still “taking too long to respond.”

It was an over-sized postcard, double-sided in a standout colors.

Nothing that interesting yet … However, what was interesting is the level of personalization they included in the direct mail piece.

(front)

(back)

“Japan just got a little bit closer” To many of you that might not mean anything, but to me it does.

I lived in Japan for many years and we make calls to Japan on a regular basis.

As a marketing guy this intrigued me. How did Shaw know about my connection to Japan?

Sure we use the phone to call Nagoya, Osaka, and other cities. But most of the time our calls are through Skype.

Just looking at the list of numbers we dial would reveal several countries.

Then it hit me. Not too long ago I mentioned to one of the support people at Shaw that I was interested in their Japanese channel. I didn’t purchase it because it’s $17 a month for one channel with very limited programming.

Nevertheless, it’s interesting to see how that one mention got entered into their customer database as a little piece of intelligence.

Did it make me buy? No. But I’m sure there are a good percentage of people that did. Shaw’s not only doing this for Japanese … I’m sure their going after other languages and countries as well.

You go in with your plan, you start to discuss the issues on your list … and somehow the focus of the meetings gets chopped and splinters into a thousand tangents. Surely, you’ve encountered this before?

At that point you have to make a choice. You can be the bad ass and slam your fist on the table and say “ENOUGH! Let’s focus” or you can sit back hoping that all the bantering and meaningless small talk will end shortly. The problem with the latter is that it just never seems to end and time continues to tick-a-way.

So unless you’re hardcore enough to jump right in front of that out of control train and tell it to stop … well, you’re pretty much screwed.

I’ve jumped in front of that train several times over the years when my blood pressure couldn’t take listening to that bantering buzz any longer. The train has also flattened me like a penny on the tracks.

There’s got to be a better way. Someone should come up with a word that everyone knows that can quickly diffuse the situation when meetings get off track. It’s got to be a bit funny and not too blunt … but clear enough that people know when they hear it it’s time to get back to the real business on the table.

Or maybe, just maybe, more of us just need to start slamming our fists on the table to save time and keep everyone sane.

This is a huge move for Domino’s.

Disclosure: I haven’t had the ‘new’ Dominoes and it’s been a while since I had the ‘old’ one too. Nevertheless, this is a clever campaign and very well done video. Nice work Domino’s and team!

I don’t know whether Warren Buffet writes this himself … though I must say the copy oozes personality … and if he didn’t write it … there’s one heck of a copywriter behind this.

Size Can Fool Ya
Given Berkshire Hathaway’s monstrous size you’d expect an annual letter from the top dog to be some dry cookie-cutter verbiage filled with all the usual corporate jargon.

Yet this letter has none of that…

Financial Copywriting at Its Best
The document his lined with numbers, percentages, return rates and all that good stuff that would usually put the average person to sleep … this letter makes you laugh, nod, and believe in the company.

This paragraph gives a clear picture of the company’s values:

With our acquisition of BNSF, we now have about 257,000 employees and literally hundreds of
different operating units. We hope to have many more of each. But we will never allow Berkshire
to become some monolith that is overrun with committees, budget presentations and multiple
layers of management.

And how about this beauty:

We make no attempt to woo Wall Street. Investors who buy and sell based upon media or analyst
commentary are not for us.

There’s another story going on that many people aren’t familiar with – the success of sales of Olympic goods. A local company, Elastic Path Software was tasked with running this ecommerce store.

During the development process and on an on-going basis the good folks at Elastic Path kept notes and shared their results as they optimized the ecommerce stores web pages.

Here are links to 4 such blog posts. If you’re into internet marketing and website conversion optimization, you’ll enjoy these links:

Checkout Process
Product Details Page
Homepage
Category Page

Was searching for a rental car company in Europe and heard of Easycar. Anyways I was too lazy to type it into the address bar so I just hit up Google for the search. Look what came back … I’ve never seen this kind of Adwords ad that delivers additional links.

Is this new? Any experiences with it?

Many of you are likely familiar with it. But actually executing it takes determination and is harder said than done. Why? If everyone followed through there would be many more successful startups around.

One company that look to be executing extremely well on this formula is Japadog in Vancouver.

Japadog sells hotdogs. But from the get go they’ve taken this commodity type business and differntiated themselves extremely well. How you ask? They sell hotdogs created in Japanese style. The hotdogs are covered with Japanese mayonnaise, seaweed, Japanese pork and many other wild and wildly tasty goodness.

Back to Japadog’s model though. They seem to have started off with just one hotdog stand. They tested the waters and when things went well they opened another, and now another is coming. They started off in good locations and opened up in even better ones.

They expanded only after they took their leap of faith and had their hypothesis proven true.

Now in a few months, Japadog will open an actual restaurant style shop. This is hotdog making at a whole new level.

What’s next for the company? You’d think if this new restaurant approach is successful, they’d open more across the city and be prime picking for becoming the next franchise chain.

Who eats these things you might wondering? While Vancouver has a good sized Japanese population, and a very large Asian population, Japadog attracts all kinds of people. In fact, if you drive or walk by a Japadog stand on any given day around lunch hour, you’ll often see more suits than jeans waiting to grab a dog. Way to go Japadog!