hospitality

by Andrea Kates, Founder, Business Genome™

In honor of the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Ox, characterized by a spirit of helping others, comes the subject of how to maximize customer impact. The question of where to learn lessons that will drive revenue growth based on meeting the needs of current customers is only the beginning. There has been so much said and done about delighting everyone we touch and creating fans, raving, rabid, and loyal.

But that’s not the hardest challenge.

The conversations I hear these days have to do with the next customers: Where will they come from? Once we’ve captured the loyalty of our current customers, where do we look for the next bunch of people who will connect themselves to what we have to offer?

How do you mine the unknown?

Let’s dedicate this discussion to the hospitality industry, an easy way to illustrate the concept of Cross-pitality, the newly-minted term for borrowing great practices from one industry and implanting them in our own.

The questions sound like these: What will it take to attract more young professionals to our hotels? How can we sell more tickets to NFL games to Hispanics? In a down economy, how can we revamp our sweet spot to include cost-conscious consumers to our restaurant guest profile? What are the best ways to create a great live concert experience for the 20-somethings?

What we know for sure is that the new groups of customers won’t necessarily act like our traditional customer base. Parents with cell phones don’t look for the same thing in a gadget as their kids do.

The answer is Cross-pitality, the discipline of cutting and pasting elements from something that is already a big hit in one industry and piloting them in our own.

51s1cy6w32l_sl160_ Cross-pitality has been the secret behind luring the grab-and-go customers buying potato salad at the grocery store deli into our eateries based on mastering the art of convenience, the trick that shifted the focus at an oil company from viscosity to “the waiting room experience” (think Jiffy Lube), the competitive approach that combined the concepts of just-in-time and time-shared resources and traditional car rental to create Zipcar.

How does Cross-pitality work?

First, cross-pitality is a discipline, not a magic trick. It’s not simply a matter of appliqueing a technique or approach onto our businesses. Just because polenta sells well and Starbucks sells coffee well does not mean that Starbucks’ foray into polenta sales was a hit. (It wasn’t.)

You have to start with the mind set that expertise in selling the same stuff we currently have to different people will require understanding of these questions:

  1. What makes us BELIEVE that this new group of potential customers is a good prospect for our company?
  2. What are these new people CURRENTLY DOING OR PURCHASING that could lead them to want to buy from us?
  3. What types of experiences from OTHER INDUSTRIES (like fantastic e-commerce, smooth queuing, retail, design) appeal to our target group?
  4. How are the people in the new target group DIFFERENT from our current customers? Will we have to do things differently or offer new things to gain street cred with the new group?
  5. What will our NEW SWEET SPOT have to be to capture the loyalty with these new people?
  6. How can we create a rapid prototype or simple MODEL TO TEST AND TWEAK OUR HUNCHES?

The NFL teams looking to attract new demographic groups as fans can become experts at tracking consumer data on leisure activities, consumer purchases, top brand affiliations. Airport hotels with slow check-in procedures can look at the best of the rental car capabilities for pre-registering guests in the shuttle.

Remember, some of these hybrids won’t work. Dodo birds couldn’t fly.

But, when you’re stuck with flat sales and need to chart a path toward a new customer base, it’s all about the discipline of Cross-pitality.

How can you find out who your NEXT loyal customer base might be? Make it your first Chinese New Year’s resolution to find out.