The Ray Kroc principle
If I told you I was selling restaurant franchises at a million dollars a pop, plus an annual royalty percentage, would you take me up on that offer? If you answered yes, call me immediately as I got so much crap to sell you. But if you’re most people, you’d need a wee bit more information to make that kind of a decision. I would have to get a bit more specific about the restaurant concept, the business model, competitive advantage etc etc. Even so, ideas alone might not suffice for you to part with that cool millie.
Ray Kroc Story
While working as a salesman for a piece of equipment that mixed five milkshakes at the same time (“the multi-mixer”), Ray met the McDonald brothers who had opened up a hamburger store in San Bernardino that featured the “speedee service”. As the brothers kept ordering more and more mixers, Kroc studied their business model and the reasons behind its success and decided he wanted in.
But the magic didn’t happen until he bought out the brothers and took over the business. He had a hunch that by tweaking the Mcdonald’s system and making it more efficient, he could turn it into the well oiled greenback “printing” machine that it is today. However, he had no interest in running each restaurant in the empire to be. Instead, he would franchise the system to owner operators that would run the stores day to day and share in the profits. Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner. But at the time, he was about as believable as I was in the question that started this post. So what did he do? He showed that it worked. In an actual store. That he ran.
Show me that it works
There isn’t a day that passes by that I don’t get some phone call or some email from someone claiming to sell me a “can’t fail” expireds kit, cherrypicked leads, marketing conference tickets, social media consulting or what have you, all in the name of enabling me to “dominate my local market”. Ninetine and a half times out of a hundred, they’re so full of crap, I have to call the City for a septic inspection.
If you happen to be a Gary Keller or Russell Shaw or Gary Vaynerchuk or Jeff Turner and you want to sell me a book, a pair of tickets to a conference you’re keynoting or a marketing system I’m inclined to buy. Why? Because you have shown that it works by means of your own experience, in real life. You have therefore created a valuable PROVEN franchise out of your way of doing things.
The Ray Kroc Principle is simple:
If you want to sell, teach or consult you must first show your prospective customers that it works in a “model store”
Final Ifs
- If you joined social media two months before your customers did, that does not make you a SM expert
- If your leads were truly that good you’d switch to the real estate business (trust me, I know math)
- If your real estate marketing system has yielded mediocre results for you in your own market, that disqualifies you from throwing a real estate conference.
Put the Ray Kroc principle to work today. Show people that it works or shut the hell up.
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8 Responses to “The Ray Kroc principle”
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I’ve been mulling over how to say this for some time and being Southern, I’ve aimed to say it politely, but your final line sums it up best: “Show people that it works or shut the hell up.” AfreakinMEN!
Got here via Lani’s FB post – thank you Lani! Thank you Erion – this post appealed directly to my Navy Chief background – and my own “southerness.”
Git ‘er done! Or STFU.
Navy Chief, Navy Pride
Couldn’t agree with you more. This is my whole philosophy as well. We have such strict policies about trying things in our corporate owned stores before pushing out to our affiliates. We get all the bugs worked out and have the opportunity to find out ways to improve before pushing out to everyone.
Unfortunately there are hundreds of lead selling services that take advantage of Realtors. (Although there are a few decent ones.)
I like to say that in general there are two types of tech vendors in real estate: Those that give you what you want, and those that give you what you need. Unfortunately, those that give you what you want tend to be much more profitable than the others….
@Eric
First, thanks for stopping by.
Third party lead generation (and subsequent resale to agents) is at best, an unsustainable business model. As history has shown again and again, even the lead gen companies that start out doing good things for their agent customers, inevitably lower their standards as the word gets out and more agents sign up.
Lead management tools however can be a different story. Certain third party apps can be very valuable to agents in improving their efficiency.
Thanks for taking the time, Joe. There’s plenty more Southern “hospitality” where that came from
Erion,
I keep saying it, your perspective is so damn refreshing. You have to listen to JPMicek and CoachDeb (Tribal Seduction)talk about the very same thing in a different way – why would you listen to someone that claims to know what they are doing but don’t have anything to show for it?
The whole concept of “social media expert” really bugs me. There are many that use the medium successfully but so difficult to gauge because of the screen that separates us. One thing is true, some of us have survived the craziness of this market because of this medium ….thanks for the MickyD’s story (wink wink)
Ines, you’re a real social media expert if I ever saw one. One just has to check out your reach in Twitter, FB, Miamism.com to understand the extent of it. Keep doing what you’re doing as many of US are watching and learning.
Erion – I am humbled by your word – thank you
you ROCK!!