Donut Boss Fails To Dunk It

So eating my brekkie Tuesday I caught the boss (sounding rather English) of an expanding American fast food chain on an early morning tv sofa.

Nigel Travis was bullish. 20 years after shutting down, Dunkin’ Donuts are back in England. They just opened their first store outside central London.

His performance was an embarrassment.

How are these people appointed?

What’s so galling is that it’s exactly these types of responses that give selling a bad name. When it’s so easy to show the light of how to properly answer this most basic of ‘sales’ enquiries and turn it around to a winning statement. Our Nigel should at the very least sack his media adviser…

It was all about him.

There was precious little about his customers. The imbalance only slightly redressed when during the latter stages of his interview he mentioned a “DD Smart” range. Supposedly appealing to the new dietary demands of the day yet he explained it poorly and in a skew context.

Even when he had the chance to extol the new jobs he aimed to create he bumbled through. Any promising point lost in a fog of numbers.

The first question was a kind we face in the field everyday. It was along the lines of what can customers expect when they walk into one of his stores.

His answer talked of “beverages”. How they were different purely because they were founded in 1953. And how the N East of America “runs on Dunkin”.

Shameful and inappropriate.

He compounded the misery by then promoting his wares in terms of what was high margin for him.

Incredible.

Who cares about the customer. In this case by the way, one that I’m sure doesn’t give a monkey’s about anything supposedly happening in another far away territory.

How useless must his stores be if he can’t articulate why customers would love them and their fayre, or even what makes any of that so different and special.

You get a spot on prime telly and you produce this rubbish.

I despair.

Make sure when you get that similar, once-off, chance in front of your prospect you are on it.

No mention of words from a different language. No mention of what’s good for you. No mention of your margins. Do mention why you are different. Do mention what you want the customer to feel. Do mention with punch any wider stakeholder pluses.

Absolutely make sure that whoever asked you the question is left in no doubt as to what they’d experience handing money over to you.