How To Turn A Quiet Night Around
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
“Great exercise!”
“Want to play again!”
“Pretty amazing!”
These are the words I overheard being said following a game at The Fun Warehouse, played by a group of people that didn’t leave their homes planning to play laser tag last night.
Let me explain how a quiet evening turned completely around. Occasionally, every laser tag arena will encounter a slow night, often for reasons beyond their control. When I left my office and headed for the arena I had a feeling that this might be the case on this particular night. Why? First of all, this weekend we had absolutely gorgeous summer weather and that alone can be a challenge to overcome because people want to be outside when the weather is that nice. Second, there was a street festival happening just a few doors down that had blocked off a good part of the road that leads to the laser tag arena. These two factors were unavoidably setting it up to be a quiet night.
The scenario was completely understandable, however I actually NEEDED to play laser tag in order to maintain my average here by playing at least one game with my membership at this location during the month of June. Work commitments are likely going to keep me from getting back to tag for the next couple of weekends, so if I didn’t play a respectable game on this night I was going to miss my window of opportunity (like when I traveled for the whole month of March and lost my streak…grrr). That’s why I declared that I was going to “Go Fish” and bring back at least four people from the street festival to play a game with me, to which Beanz looked at me (I think somewhat skeptically amused by the idea) and said “sure, go try”.
Challenge accepted. Like the Terminator, I left on a mission and said “I’ll be back…with four people.”
For me, this was actually not as absurd as it sounds. I have occasionally encountered similar situations during my travels where I have had to figure out how to make a game happen while visiting an arena on the road when you only have one chance to make it work. Also, I work in radio/sales, meaning in my life I am accustomed to randomly starting conversations with strangers and convincing them to be part of cool things. So, I left and walked up the road to the street festival.
It took only took three approaches and about ten minutes for me to find the right group of people who were interested in following me back to try a game of laser tag that they had no earlier plans to play. I explained to them that this was a blog challenge simply to see if I could get people interested just by saying “come play laser tag.” Fortunately for me, laser tag is a really easy sell! I promised I’d find four people and actually I brought back five. ;)
I don’t know if it’s simply the law of attraction or just coincidental timing, but no sooner did I bring my group back (feeling a bit like the Pied Piper as they followed me into the building), a family group walked in at the same time and all of a sudden we had a real game and could see the night turning around. Let’s play!
We went in for a free for all game. Some people had played laser tag before, but for others this was a first experience and an opportunity to try something new. Everyone enjoyed and as we exited the game a few more players showed up for the next one…more of that law of attraction kicking in!
Beanz gave my group of players a game pass to come back again, so you know they will be returning in the future and will likely bring more friends with them. Building off the momentum of a positive first experience can be a great way to generate return customers, no matter what your business, so this becomes a win-win. That’s exactly the same principle that comes into play when one kid has a laser tag birthday and by the end of the party ten of their friends enjoyed it so much that they want to have their birthdays at laser tag too. I’m pretty sure these people will all be back, based on their reaction.
So this story isn’t really about a quiet night. That’s just something every arena occasionally experiences. But it’s how you respond to those situations that matter. What do you do when life hands you lemons? Sure, you could make some lemonade. Or you could “Go Fish” and enjoy those lemons with a nice fillet piccata and turn your entire night around!
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Contact: Tivia@tiviachickloveslasertag.com
Websites: www.tiviachickloveslasertag.com
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