The Customer Hunt

By Scott Bestul

Minus the licenses and permits he sells, the average retailer may not think he has much in common with a state agency. Agencies are large, slow-moving government bodies; he’s a small businessman who needs quick sales. Their customer base is guaranteed; his must be won over every day. Worlds apart, right?
Not quite, says Phil Seng, vice president of D.J. Case & Associates, a consulting firm specializing in communications, information and education, with a focus on natural resource conservation and environmental issues. “We’ve worked extensively to develop a workshop/training system titled Best Practices that’s designed to help state agencies attract and keep new customers. In their case, that means folks who’ll purchase hunting or fishing licenses,” he says. “Much of what’s included in the Best Practices program has application for retailers struggling with the same issues.”
Best Practices is the result of D.J. Case’s work with the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) and the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies (AFWA), which received a conservation grant to explore ways to halt the stagnation and fall of sporting license sales.
“In the past, the market, meaning license buyers, has automatically come to state agencies,” Seng notes. “Now they’re realizing that if they want to stay alive, they’re going to have to remind past customers about the importance of buying another license. And they’ll have to reach out and grab new customers if they’re going to be successful. There are a lot of things competing for the consumer’s attention these days, and waiting for them to come to you is rarely the right approach.”

Familiar Turf?
Sound familiar? If you’re a savvy businessman, it does. “Sure, it’s a brand-new way of looking at things for some of these agencies,” Seng notes. “But the smart ones recognize that in many cases, what they’ve done in the past no longer works. And though we didn’t write this project with the retailer in mind, there are broad applications for that arena. Best Practices is full of process-oriented information that can be used for selling everything from fishing licenses to Froot Loops.”
Seng points to specific chapters from Best Practices to illustrate his point. “Chapter One is titled ‘Overview of the Arena’ and addresses the general problem of declining customer numbers,” he says. “Chapter Two is ‘Defining the Mission’ and examines the process of setting a specific, detailed course for addressing the problem. The fifth chapter is focused on evaluation. Now, some retailers might be content to simply evaluate themselves on whether they’re making money or not. But long-term success can’t always be measured in dollars.”
As an example, Seng points to the popular youth hunting days hosted by many state agencies. “States are realizing that they can host a great one-day event, like a youth pheasant hunt,” he says. “But if those kids don’t have a follow-up program, they simply go home and say, ‘Well, that was fun.’ They don’t become hunters or shooters. States are now calling such events ‘one-day wonders’ and are looking for ways to turn them into programs with a long-term impact. Best Practices includes advice on how to make that happen.”
Shop owners who’ve tried to reach out to an untapped customer base (youth, women, minorities) may be able to identify with the one-day-wonder phenomenon. “If a retailer decides he wants to reach out to female shooters, for example, Best Practices can help him develop a plan, set some objectives and evaluate his success. Our objective always is to integrate any new ideas with what is currently being done, and a shop owner can surely implement our strategies more quickly and efficiently than any state agency.”