You may not realize that US sales force compensation spending is over three times advertising spending. In 2006 sales force compensation was $800 billion, Meanwhile US advertising spend is estimated at only $187 Billion, in 2015.
Sales is the world’s second oldest profession and its compensation is an evergreen question in sales for thousands of years. The trouble is, do whatever management, a large number of the sales force will tend to perform at only the average or poor level. Only about 20% of the sales force tends to perform at the exceptional level, by results. This after you do your best in recruitment,training and compensation. Once again the Jack Welch 4 E’s an one P seems to operate in sales.
If you increase your sales force spending by 1% your sales would go up by 0.34%
If you increase your advertising expenses by 1% your sales would go up by 0.22%
If you increase your price by 1% your sales would decrease by 2.62%
While spending on sales force gives slightly better results than advertising- it still does’nt explain why so much more spending on sales force compared to advertising. Here is our take:
You feel better about attribution: Attribution is the idea that you should be able to trace back a sale to the expenses you incurred on selling. This could be a particular ad campaign or the sales force commission or a price discount. You feel comfort when you can see your salesperson working.When you put a salesperson on a commission or bonus- they are zealous in ensuring that they get the credit and commission. There is no doubt that a particular salesperson got you the contract- particularly when commissions are involved. In off-line advertising it is much harder to attribute a particular TV ad to a sale.
An illustration of this is the case of a seller’s agent in real estate. Commission for real estate sales is 6% which is taken by the selling agent from the selling price. In case there is a buyer’s agent then the buyer’s agent works with the seller’s agent and each gets 3% from the selling price.The seller loses 6%from the selling price to the agent. In our example, the seller wanted to save the 6% and had “sale by owner,” that had no agent.Upon seeing the buyer’s interest ,the buyer agent goes to the “sale by owner” and demands her 3% commission. On the grounds that even though the seller does not have an agent but she(the buyer’s agent) has a signed contract with the buyer. The seller naturally chooses to sell to another buyer who does not have an agent and does not involve any commission payouts to agents.
As advertising and delivery becomes more digital we should see less role of the sales force and its compensation. Also it is easily possible to analyze digital marketing data in terms of attribution than traditional advertising or a salaried sales force. Just think of airline tickets and holidays. The neighborhood travel agent in the US is almost extinct. Unless you need to make a very complicated travel plan you can book all your simpler trips online.
If you are in sales, a good idea is to move up the knowledge ladder i.e. if you are a travel agent its a good idea to specialize in destination weddings and customized package tours that are not easy to buy entirely online.
Five questions to ask to get more n]bang for your digital buck-StratoServe
Too many marketers don’t seem to consider their internal organizational processes as they devise digital marketing campaigns. The customer journey continues after reaching your website.Here are some quick questions to ask if you want to get more bang for your digital buck :
[ Note: This post was published on March 3, 2016. It is updated on March 8, 2021 with a new image and the idea that you really get customer impact when you consider her entire journey that includes after arriving at your website.]
Q1. What do you want your web visitor to do, after they arrive at a particular page? This could be from Google AdWords, Facebook advertising, LinkedIn advertising, email campaigns etc.
Ans 1.Whatever it is, it should be easy to do. Think usability i.e. don’t have a long form to fill at the arrival point. Be welcoming at the landing page. See the LinkedIn post on Landing Pages.
Q2. OK they filled your form-Now what?
Ans 2. Who deals with inquiries should be crystal clear. An interim response is great- saying that you’ll get back in 24 hours or whatever. But please do what you promise.
Q3. But we can’t service some locations- do we need to reply?
Ans 3. Yes. Your problem is that you have not clearly set up the geographical targeting. In Google AdWords you can do this by town. Also you can exclude towns where you don’t want your ad to appear. There is also a setting to have people only physically in your chosen location to see your ads.
Q4. Our telephone messages from advertising go to voicemail. Is that a problem?
Ans 4. No, that’s not a problem. Check your voicemail greeting length. It is unfair to have a caller go through two minutes of a voicemail greeting including several “press 1 for accounts payable” and “press 2 for our names directory”. Real Estate and Insurance folks have incoming calls that transfer to agents every three rings. Again the main message is – be welcoming. Don’t force your caller to give up in despair.
Q5. We get some calls and forms but many don’t buy- what should we do?
Ans 5.Every caller/inquiry should go into a data base. Prospects have different levels of understanding of your product and services unless you are an e-commerce business. According to research people need upto 9 touch-points before they decide to buy after they have shown interest. Have a CRM system and follow up diligently.
If you think that the above points are obvious, check in your own organization. We think that you’ll be surprised to find that down the line these obvious things are frequently missed.
Winter Marketing Academic Conference(#WinterAMA16) involved a lot of discussion about the impact of online negative reviews on customers. Researchers have been doing massive work with lots of data to examine:
Are negative reviews for your business catastrophic?
There is cheerful news for all organizations who feel bad about a few negative reviews out there. Now, there is data backed evidence that a few negative ratings and reviews don’t hurt you as much as you would expect.
Think back of the times you have looked at reviews. If a product or service has:
a few 5 star ratings
many 4 star ratings
some 3,2 and
a few 1 star ratings
What do you do? Particularly if you otherwise find the offering attractive. That is the price is right and the quality appears good. You want to look at the 1 and 2 star comments to check
If I went with this, what is the worst that can happen? Can I live with it – if the worst comments come true?
Loss aversion theory by Tversky and Kahneman (Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002) explains this kind of behavior. People are loss averse i.e. want to avoid losses than necessarily look for gains. Loss aversion theory suggests that you would prefer to avoid a $5 surcharge than get a $5 discount.
People think that the 5 star ratings might be fake. Thus Amazon has verified ratings to overcome such skeptical thinking. People also realize that customers remain silent/offer no feedback most of the time. Only those a) unhappy with their experience and b) active online tend to write angry comments online.
So here are three tips to deal with negative online reviews:
Reply and make right: Some forums and platforms will allow you to respond to customer comments. If they do, try to respond immediately.To diffuse the situation, a quick response to negative comments can help.If the review platform does not allow responses, consider writing to them to allow you to respond. This does require tracking social comments analytics to keep track of comments as soon as they appear.
Correct internal processes: If one person complained there are at least several others who faced the same situation but did not feel as bad. Try to review and reconfigure your delivery process so that the cause of dissatisfaction is eliminated.
Negative ratings make your brand look real: A few negative ratings are fine. They make your brand look real. Don’t deny negative ratings within the organization and make a concerted team effort to improve things. Generally if the majority of the ratings are positive – no business is lost.
Managing customer expectations is a challenge. More so if you are a service provider.Products tend to be tangible and you are working against a drawing,specifications and a contract that is clear. Services in contrast, are intangible, and its all about the customer’s perception that the expectations were met or exceeded. If expectations are met or exceeded, the marketer can assume that the customer is happy and a long term relationship is assured. Many service providers are shocked to realize that the customer is not happy because their expectations were different.
Here are some tips to manage customer expectations:
At the pre-sales and “pitch” stage: In the eagerness to get that contract, marketers tend to promise stuff,without thinking. It’s important to be honest about what exactly you can do and what you cannot do. This caution is particularly applicable to industries that employ brokers and sales agents that promise the world because they are paid a commission only. An example is from the moving and re-location industry where the sales person is just an agent who works on commission. The “commission and out” salesperson promises many things that the vendor is not able to deliver leading to backlash on social media.
Communication matters a lot-once the contract is under way: Excluding your newsletter,regular scheduled frequent communication is a must. You must let the customer know about progress,deliveries and updates specific to the work you are doing. Face-to-face meetings are preferred compared to email,phone call or video meetings. For at personal meetings the marketer is able to pick up cues about underlying concerns and address them much sooner. Remember, that before a customer sends out a long angry email, things have been simmering for a while. If you are able to “nip an issue in the bud” things stay positive and productive.
Understanding Expectations: Great marketers know about upcoming customer concerns even before the customer realizes. There is a lot of research on the “service gap” i.e. expectations are at one level while the perception of service received is lower. Highly cited research by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry 1985, explains the implications of perceived service quality.
Dealing with Customer Expectations: When it comes to dealing with customers expectations, we like the suggestions offered by Jukka Ojasalo.The research is in the context of professional services that would apply somewhat to other service contexts as well. According to Ojasalo:
People have three types of expectations- fuzzy (they are not clear of what they want), implicit (they assume that the service provider knows what they want) and unrealistic (they make their service expectations clear to the service provider).
Fuzzy: When the customer does not know what he/she wants (fuzzy) the service provider should try and help the customer define requirements. For example, system analysts in technology services help do this and develop a Statement of Work with the customer.
Implicit: When the customer assumes certain service levels (implicit) then it can be dangerous. Many of us have ordered food at a restaurant and have been annoyed at the delay. If the waiter had indicated the time upfront, our dis-satisfaction would be lower. Sometimes an explicit service level becomes implicit over time and customers assume as “given”. Also people change,forget at the delivery end and this can be dangerous for customer satisfaction.
Unrealistic: Unrealistic expectations start getting revealed after the work has started. This is also called “scope creep” in project management.It has much to do with the knowledge structure of our minds. We start realizing that some feature in the service would help after we start using the service. But this could involves months of work for the vendor (e.g. in software). It is really important here to sit down with the customer and honestly explain the situation.
If your customer has unrealistic expectations, after the well defined work has started, it is good news. The customer has started appreciating the value of your services and is engaged with it. If you communicate well, good customers tend to understand your constraints and are willing to go full length with your basic core service.
Finally, is always better to offer a core service instead of many bells and whistles that only a small fraction of customers are able to really use. About StratoServe Digital Marketing Services.
It can be confusing when you search for your product category online – and don’t see any ads. Reminds us of the old story of two shoe salespersons sent to a remote island for market development. They find that no one is wearing shoes on the island.One of the salespersons is optimistic and one is pessimistic and here are the two messages they send to headquarters:
Optimistic salesperson:
” Send that boatload of shoes immediately- great market opportunity as no one wears shoes. Everyone here needs shoes”
Pessimistic salesperson:
” Do NOT send that boatload of shoes. No one wears shoes here. There is no market for shoes”
In the offline world the above story has been circulating for at least a 100 years, primarily to motivate salespeople to be more optimistic. If people on the island had Internet, looking at their Internet search data, would have helped both types of salespeople!
When it comes to the online advertising world-it is good to pause and wonder if you search with keywords for a particular industry and don’t find anyone advertising. We saw this recently when trying to look for the word “dinner” for a restaurant in Connecticut. There was no restaurant advertising for “dinner” at our location. Given that, most restaurants are looking for seats to fill particularly on weekdays. Here are some points to consider:
If you look at Google Trends (pictured with this post) for the search term “dinner,” you find that the search intent is not so much to find a particular type of dinner place (eg. Thai dinner)
Another trending search term seems to be “dinner menu.”
Instead people seem to be searching for dinner recipe ideas, that does’nt help restaurants advertising immediately.
Although it is possible that some percentage of folks searching for dinner recipes might find it somewhat complicated to cook up a “Thai” dinner and instead try to go into a restaurant listed in Google local listings or from an Ad online.
If you are a restaurant looking to immediately get new customers from search advertising, the prospects do not seem great. And this goes back to search volume and the intent of the searcher.
Search volume and a deeper analysis of search intent can be revealing. It tells restaurant owners (for Connecticut only, as analyzed) that:
It’s a great idea to have your menu on your website. After all your menu is not a secret, and putting it out there helps all those walk-ins figure out what they want to order, faster. Can help during busy weekends when you can turn tables quicker.
If you decide to advertise just exclude “recipes” as a negative keyword and avoid people clicking on your ads who were looking for “recipes” anyway.
Do not expect people to immediately walk in from your advertising. You are trying to build your digital brand over time. Staying in with online advertising should pay off well over time.
In conclusion, you don’t have to be either pessimistic or optimistic like the shoe salespersons. You now have search data from Google trends to get a sense of what might be going on in your particular industry. This allows much better budgeting and expectations from your online advertising. About StratoServe Digital Marketing Services.
Organize your website by stakeholders -StratoServe
The organization chart seems to be an important driver for organizing websites. This reflects “inside-out” thinking rather than “outside -in” thinking.
[Note: This post was originally published on February 22, 2016. Since then we have great interest from our readers on How to organize a website? We also look at various Google Analytics reports for different types and sizes of organizations and are surprised at how the website structure does not seem to address the interests of stakeholders. This post is updated on March 9, 2021 with a new image and some additional explanation. We hope will help all businesses improve their website organization to try and speak to each category of stakeholders. This should in turn improve the impact of all websites as we come out of the pandemic.]
Our dear readers would agree that the first thing everybody has been doing since the pandemic is – going online. After all what else can you do if you are stuck at home?
If you look at your search terms on Google Analytics or Google Ads ( if you run ads) is a lot of traffic coming from your brand name. People type your brand name and click the first thing that comes up. Here is a way to look at how you might organize your website for different stakeholders. In each case, it’s a good idea to think of these stakeholders as already connected to you and those who are potentially interested in getting connected to you:
Customers/Prospects: If you have a large customer base (eg. Amazon) it makes sense to allow the customer to be logged in to improve the customer experience. For both Customers and Prospects there should be content on this section that is frequently asked.Marketing and Sales folks should weigh in on theses pages.
Employee/prospective employee: Here too the employee is already a “connected person and it’s good to have an employee portal that can have specific details like email, benefits like medical insurance etc. Also it’s good to put out content that is useful to a potential employee here. The potential employee is already looking at different sites (eg. Glassdoor) so why not put out your official version. Human Resources (HR) should weigh in on this section.
Investors/prospective investors: Similarly this section needs to speak to questions investors and would be investors might have that you are able to share. The finance and investor relations folks need to weigh in on this part.
Suppliers/potential suppliers/partners: This section should speak to the external partners who make your business work. For example, innovative suppliers should be able to pitch ideas to the right people in your organization. Partners would include distributors,resellers etc. who are either part of your value chain or might be interested in becoming a partner. This section needs inputs from the Supply Chain, Innovation and Distribution folks. Why innovation? Because having a way to attract innovators to partner can be very helpful. If a portal seems too difficult, clear email details can make the organization seem more welcoming.
Coming to an example of a flower business, you will see websites organized around departments. A prominent flower website has the URL that is organized in typical industrial era format, for e.g.
One wonders about reasons for this kind of “manufacturer’s perspective” and not “customer perspective”. It could be that there are different managers for wedding flowers vs. anniversary flowers. Or the financial/accounting system is around these categories. Or some other totally internal purpose that has a good reason. There are good reasons why you have a Boss,Departments and Sections. But that may not have much to do with your customer need structure.
The trouble is that anyone who comes to these pages,in the flower example above, through organic search is not typing the word “categories” when looking for birthday flowers.And that affects the SEO ranking of the website. More importantly, this “inside” orientation does not help the internal organization get more focused on the different needs of the different segments of customers. Instead of thinking constantly about how respective markets for wedding and anniversary flowers is changing, managers are caught up with internal and supply chain issues.
Here are five tips to developing more effective website structures. In the following imagine different stakeholders in place of the customer and you have a clearer idea of what the content should be:
Think like your customer: If the customer thinks occasion (eg. wedding) then have all the flowers appropriate for that particular occasion organized into one page that has a URL like xxflowers.com/wedding. Cut out the word “categories” and there is no need to insert “occasion” instead because no one types “occasion wedding” on the search bar. If the same flowers can go to other pages like the anniversary flowers page , it’s OK to repeat that particular arrangement in the URL xxflowers.com/anniversary. And if these happen to be roses have another page that has the URL xxflowers.com/roses.
Think URL and landing page from customer’s eyes: Every page should be talking and presenting only one theme. If you have a page that is about “roses” make sure that there are no orchids on that page.
Make sure that the images have “ALT TEXT”: Search engines like Google are getting better and may be soon be able to read an image. But for now you need to have every image titled with what the image is about from the customer point of view. If there are different types of roses then mention the word “roses” on every image description. Try to be accurate in your image description. Another specialized florist should not have to disagree with your description of the image.
Install Google Analytics other analytics software: Make sure that have analytics code installed on your website. It’s free for Google Analytics and easy to install.Over time you will know amazing details about the visitors of your pages like visitor location,date, time on page, which other pages they saw, eCommerce, cart abandon and many others. So long as you have the analytics past data is easy to pull up even if you do not have the time to analyze immediately. At least the data will be there and help your next website re-design and tweaks.
Decide which pages to promote in advertising: If your website is already organized around how your customer thinks- it becomes far easier to advertise particular pages. Thus if you are in the flowers business and you are expecting wedding demand over the Spring and Summer- you are ready to advertise that particular page. We feel sorry for advertisers who advertise and get a visitor to land on their home page. It’s just too much work for a visitor to figure out the “wedding” page unless they are really close to buying. And this goes for Google AdWords and PPC advertising, display advertising, Facebook advertising etc.
To summarize, a digital presence is customer facing and the website should be organized in a manner that corresponds to what the customer is looking for. About StratoServe Digital Marketing Services.
Frank,regular and constructive feedback is hard to give or receive in any work relationship. For example, HR performance appraisals are dreaded by both the boss and the employee. If you are a great leader your employees deserve to know how they are doing on a frequent basis , according to the legendary Jack Welch (Also see Jack Welch 4E’s and one P). But when it comes to suppliers and buyers in B2B markets things take an interesting turn. We tend to extend our “fear of feedback” to B2B relationships. Here is how this fear plays out:
Trust and Commitment: In marketing and particularly B2B markets, B2B relationships are similar to long term human marriage in contrast to a “one-night” stand. One of the most prominent research papers on this is “Developing Buyer-Seller Relationships,” by Dwyer,Schurr and Oh. As couples from Valentine’s day celebrations will agree, and marriage counselors confirm, you have to be pretty careful with feedback! And the foundation of marriages is trust on the other partner to look out for your interest and a long term commitment.
Trust is upto individuals: In B2B relationships it’s trust that you will look out for the business interests of the other. For example, if a supply chain rationalization is on the horizon because of a merger, the buyer needs to give the seller a heads up to plan better. Similarly, if there is an early stage innovation that can help the buyer’s process, then the supplier needs to come forth. Unless there is personal trust between the dealing individuals both these situations are hard to imagine. For unlike marriages both marketing and supply chain both try to hedge bets and reduce risk.
Risk reduction operates in Marketing and Supply Chain: You cannot have a single supplier who has 80% of the volume of a large buy, thus the supply chain folks try to split the business up to avoid over-dependence on one supplier. Similarly, the sales folks understand that their company cannot depend 80% on just one customer. Depending on the perception of risk and power on both sides, people tend to be less forthright than their roles demand.
But the above still leaves us with the question as to who should be initiating feedback? Should it be the B2B Seller or the B2B Buyer? And here is our take:
The B2B Marketer is the knowledge specialist and should take charge of initiating feedback: The contracting of a supplier in B2B Markets is always because the buying organization does not have or does not want to do that work though employees in-house.It’s simply not the core competence of the buyer organization. Over time, in many organizations (eg. in the auto industry) even the design and architectural knowledge resides with the supplier. So once you have started supplies, it’s upto you to initiate feedback on how well the goals of the buying organization are being met. Getting to know the user of your product and looking out for great results for your user can put you on the path of sustained success and referrals.
Supply chain folks – just connect the users to the B2B Marketer personnel: Once the contract is awarded, a better option is to introduce the B2B Marketing folks and their operating people to your users and encourage operating personnel on both sides to interact. This way feedback is timely and corrective action can be much faster as folks involved with implementation are in regular touch with each other. Supply-chain folks can then get much better feedback from users at the time of contract renewal or annual review for multi-year contracts.
Looking for feedback of success at the level of the user is the best bet for the B2B marketer.
B2B customers buy everything for some value addition to whatever business they are in. In contrast, B2C customers buy for personal satisfaction. B2C customers do not plan to sell something on eBay at the time they decide to buy. But B2B customers must value-add and sell something onward, made with the help of the purchased item. Even if your B2B customer is a non-profit or the government, they purchase inputs and convert to something that is valued added. That value added output will help in achieving the non-profit or government agency’s mission/program goals.
Thus, B2B customers do have plans to use what you supply – onward in their process- to improve their business outcomes. Take the example of a recruiter who supplies candidates to a client. The client and recruiter figure out the job details and the essential and desirable qualifications of the candidate. The recruiter does screening interviews and provides a shortlist of candidates that might be a good fit with the client organization. But recruiters who have happy repeat clients have provided great candidates in the past who have helped the client succeed. Underlying this success is the recruiters effort to really understand the challenges that the client is trying to solve with a new hire, the workplace context , the reporting executive, the rest of the team. When such a thoughtful recruiter supplies a shortlist – the client knows that anyone on that shortlist will work out well.
So here is a checklist for understanding your customer’s needs:
√ Initial Pre-Sales Meetings: need to be focus on trying to genuinely understand how exactly your offering will help the B2B customer achieve their goals. A sense of who else will be involved? (for example the user- see Buying Center) The specificity and context, people involved,organization structures can different between clients, even in the same industry.
√The Contracting Stage : Here you should try to include as many details that you have learnt about the solution you are trying to sell. The customer is not really buying your product but buying a solution to a problem that the customer’s organization is facing.
√ During the contract: Regular review meetings to review “how are things going”? are hugely helpful in assessing how well your product is serving to solve the customers problem. Frequently, you will find that although your product is doing its job, but employees or other vendors are dropping the ball. Instead of thinking of this as “not your problem” try to assist the customer gain full benefit of your product. If necessary, provide training sessions to employees, team up with associated vendors. Everyone appreciates a helping hand and many organizations can find additional money for these additional services if not in the current contract,very likely in the renewal. After all, you are looking for long term B2B relationships that is based on a partnership for the success of your customer.
If every B2B customer is successful, your product or service’s success will follow.
The primary challenge for their innovation teams, according to the Innovation head of a Fortune 50 corporation, is to consciously engage the bosses at the front end of the project. The bosses sign off on initial costs and then when things progress to the stage of making prototypes and trial production- the bosses suddenly wake up. “I never realized that there are such big costs involved,down the line…” is a common refrain. For example, a new project team asks for a $200,000 for initial market research, focus groups and web data analytics – the bosses of the 50 Billion $ company don’t flinch. Things look positive after initial research and now a prototype making plan and concept testing involves $5 million. The amount seems huge and top management seems to balk. The same story repeats with customers and colleagues who don’t mind putting out some money initially and then get nervous when it is time to go Big or go home.
Here are some suggestions for all those entrepreneurial project leaders out there, who wonder why there is so much push-back after new projects have crossed initial performance hurdles and its time to scale and see the real payoffs:
Present a Road-map upfront: Most proposals have a road-map but almost in the footnotes.The road-map should be up-front and offer clear metrics of success and payoffs at every stage of the project (following the organizations’ product innovation charter). The road-map for the new project should have a review meeting as soon as the initial data has come in from initial work. Thus , for a new product concept if customers say some good things and voice some concerns then these need to be reviewed by the very same bosses who approved the initial go-ahead. Do not send an email report to five people and assume that they read,understood or bought-in to the initial report. Meetings can be wasteful, but are essential if you want sustained buy-in with the project.
Do not sugarcoat results at any stage: It is important for new project teams to not sugarcoat initial results or results at any stage. It is always better to under-promise and over-deliver to all stake holders.
Let others take credit and ownership: There is nothing better than a customer or top manager taking credit and ownership for a project that you are leading. This one is not hard to do,if others have let you follow your passion and help you succeed. Just watch for folks who want to take credit but no ownership. A good technique to keep potential “only credit” seekers on track is to ask for a one-on-one follow-up of subsequent progress. This way you have a supporter at the next big review meeting.
Understand budgeting in the organization : Sign-offs on the marketing budget may be hard to get because there are many layers and parallel functions and vendors involved. In contrast, the selling budget may be easier to get at as for example the Criteo CEO explains in the Business Insider. Frequently, the so called sleepy top management wakes up when you ask for $5 million down the line, because there is no discussion or thought about potential budget line items in the initial road- map of the project.
New projects may not pan out-down the line- don’t take it personally: Remember “nothing ventured nothing gained.” Most organizations and customers appreciate sincerity and detailed work by new project teams. And by definition even the most well managed projects may not pan out to the extent envisaged in the proposal. So long you have been communicating with and involving stakeholders regularly, it is likely that you’ll earn their support whether or not the project succeeded entirely. Either way its a good idea to conclude new projects formally.
If you go to any main street in America, the only small businesses that seems to have proliferated are Nail Spas. In one Connecticut town we counted no less than five nail spas on Main Street, spaced pretty close together. And all this growth since 2007: that is an astounding 23% growth. A lot of attention has been given to the exploitation of workers in the nail-spa business, but the underlying economic reality on Main Street is missed.Here is a graphic from the Nail’s Magazine that tells a different story. People displaced from the recession had to do something that could not be outsourced to technology or to cheaper locations. 63% people in the Nail Spa business were doing something else before. You can’t make big bucks in the nails business but at least it is a personal service and cannot be globalized. You have to be at the nail spa to get your nails done. How are all these people getting business? Our guess is that “getting your nails done” is an indulgence that is affordable being local and competitive- for cash strapped American families.
And if you are thinking that the industry is dominated by Vietnamese women, here is another graphic from the Nails Magazine. 49% of Nail Spa businesses are owned by non-Vietnamese folks.
Main Street in the US is indeed in trouble. And that is why we are hearing so much about the economy at the household level: from both Republican and Democratic candidates in the US Presidential elections.
While it may be too cold on this Valentine’s day in the North East to visit your favorite local nail spa, we do encourage our dear readers to continue to support your local Nail Spa with your business.
