Customers

Make sure your customers get a good deal trading with you. Serve them well. Get in the habit of helping people, every chance you get. Prosperity is all about being productive. Add value to the economy.

Imagine how much our material economy advanced during the 20th century. Now, instead of a small group of nations generating most of the economic activity, the whole world economy is booming. And the Internet provides a way for all of us earthlings to trade with each other.

Everyone has a greater opportunity to choose a variety of options. There are also a lot of inferior products and services. Its like the wild wild west, only on a global scale. We’re building safe, clean and decent cities all over the world.

One Booming World Economy

The explosion of material prosperity the wild wild west produced was just another wave of progress. This next wave, which we’re in the midst of right now, is global, and it will dwarf anything that has happened before.

Many people seem distracted by all the corruption and conflict and contention. The reality is, we live in the richest, greatest civilization in human history. The human race is growing together into one universal and divine civilization, and many of us live in these giant cities.

The controversy about this booming, one world civilization, is just the result of shedding old ways of doing things and blending ideas from a variety of diverse societies into one universal commonwealth. This is a good thing. The conspiracy theories about the new world order are man made superstitions.

There already is one global federation of self governing nations, growing together, in never ending waves of progress, from now on. Its just now getting on its feet. Its like a new born baby and it can barely stand, let alone walk.

Carve out a niche for your free enterprise in this booming world economy. Produce something very excellent and valuable. Get really good at trading what you produce, with a world wide audience.

Investigating Your Commercial Ecosystem

Seek the truth about your customers, in order to attract them and to sell your products and services to them. Your customer research will help you customize your marketing system and develop reliable sales tactics and strategies. It will produce valuable information about the wants, needs, expectations and behaviors of your target market.

Think about who’s buying products like yours? How old are they? What gender, marital status, income and occupation are they? If you sell to other businesses, how big are they and what kind of business are they?

What are the most popular products and services like yours? How do your products compare to other similar products? Is there a pattern of demand being higher or lower during specific times of the week, month or year? How expensive are your products? How expensive are they compared to other similar products?

How do your products or services benefit your customers? Do your products fulfill a specialized niche or a more holistic service? Are you trading on or off line or both? Are you delivering physical objects, digital information or some kind of home service?

Trade magazines and the Internet are valuable resources for learning about your customers. Colleges and universities probably have a lot of statistical information about your niche. Surveys are a great way to find out what your customers want, expect and need. Find out why your customers buy what they buy.

Track your customers behavior on your websites. Do people buy one thing or many things at one time? Do a lot of people leave at any particular step in the process? Do they browse around or do they go straight to a particular product? Do your customers like buying online or do they prefer to talk to a sales person?

Get one of your friends to buy things from your business and then tell you how the process went. Interact with your customers a lot.

Monitor your order fulfillment process. Make sure your payment and delivery systems are working securely and efficiently. Make it easy to close the sale and comfortable to trade with you.

Investigate what other options are available for your customers. Find out what your customer thinks about other companies like yours. Do they have any experience with those other companies?

The process most customers use to decide to purchase something involves these 5 steps:

• They have a need they want to fulfill.
• They search for solutions to the problem.
• They compare available options.
• They purchase the product or brand that best fills the need.
• They evaluate how well the choice solves their problem.

(SBA, Understand Your Customers, tutorial)

Immerse yourself in your research. The more information you gather about your customers, the more accurately you can target your market. Your existing customers will supply a lot of information, for figuring out how to get them to spend more and for finding new customers.

Analyze your sales records. Talk to your customers. Ask them to fill out a survey about their experience trading with you. Let your customers teach how to serve them well.

Create a database of your customers, which includes as much feedback as possible about how they rate your business and your products and services. Include details about how, what and when they trade with your company.

Attracting Customers

Marketing attracts customers to look at your company and your products and services. Sales enables them to actually buy your products and services. Make it easy to buy your products and services. Make sure everyone gets a good deal trading with you. Add value to your customer’s life.

Your product will probably not appeal to everyone. Are your customers teenagers, working moms, home office based entrepreneurs or employees in a small or large business?

Create hypothetical characters who represent your typical customer. What kind of marketing and sales techniques would be most effective with that kind of person. Create several personas, to represent your current customer and some to represent potential customers that you might want to target.

The more you know about your customers, the more effective you will be at trading with them. The more you understand about them, the more you will be prepared to fulfill their wants and needs.

Keep track of how your customers find you. Do they find you on or off line? Is one of your marketing activities working best? If so, which one. Collect all available data about your customer’s trading activity. Study patterns.

Anticipate your customer’s needs. Inform them about a need they are unaware of. Those wants and needs could be a new technology or they could be new ways you can serve your customers.

Your unique value proposition describes the people you want to target, the needs that you fulfill and why your products or services are the best option available. And then, what do you want them to do. Practice and get really good at leading your customers to your most wanted response, both on and off line.

How critical is the problem your products and services solve? How many alternative solutions are there? How are your products and services different and better than any alternative?

If your product is difficult to use or expensive to buy, you’ll have to make sure the benefits greatly outweigh the costs. If its practical, you’re going to have to use the products to really understand the benefits and then describe them to your customers.

After thorough market research, you’ll be ready to design your value proposition. Identify your customers, the problem, your product, how your solution solves the problem and how and why it is better than any other option.

Make your marketing system flexible. Keep track of your sales performance, compared to your sales projections. If everything is working according to plan, then keep doing what you’re doing. If you see a slump in sales, then adjust your marketing plan and your sales strategy and tactics to synchronize your business with the evolving market.

Adjust your product features based on customer feedback. Adjust the price, if you can. Adjust the way you market your products and the way you deliver the products and services. Be careful about the cost and other consequences of adjusting your sales and marketing system.

You should be continuously making incremental improvements to every aspect of your business, including your sales and marketing system. Keep making progress, otherwise, the world economy will pass you by like you’re standing still.

Your marketing efforts should reflect both the identity of your customers and your unique value proposition. Use what you learn from all of your research, to deliver the most compelling reasons to the right people, to buy your products or services.

Keep your mind open and alert. You may discover a new business opportunity in the process of your market research. Emerging trends may arise, which bring new opportunities for marketing your products and services. Examine the new market, investigate your target market and decide whether to proceed. If you do, then create a new marketing plan and execute it.

Serving Your Customers Well

Serve your customers well. Many customers complain about poor service. Most of them just don’t come back and they tell others about the poor experience they had with your company. Social media and the Internet make that a very bad scenario for you.

You can turn that into a good scenario, by delivering great customer service. Your home office based cottage industry has the opportunity to use the small and personal nature of your business to provide exceptional service.

Continuously assess your current level of service. Ensure that your customer service, surpasses expectations. Be mindful of your location. Do you have a physical store or an online store or both? Make your business as readily accessible as you can. Is your system automated or do your customers interact with live people?

Are you the face of your business? Remember your vision and mission statement. Be radiant! Shine! Make your value to your customers clearly apparent. What do customers in your industry expect?

Commit to good customer service and communicate that commitment to your customers and to your staff. Some important facets of good customer service are:

• First Impression
• Ethics
• Effective Communications
• Building Relationships
• Customer Complaints

Strive for your customers to have a positive experience in their first interaction with your business. Their first impression sets the stage for all future interactions with each customer.

Greet your customer within 30 seconds of them entering your store. Communicate clearly and effectively. Pay attention to your body language and facial expression. Practice being genuinely happy to see them. Just think about how valuable your customers are to your business.

Courtesy, a friendly attitude and easy access, both on and off line, will all contribute to an attractive first impression. Just think about how you like to be treated in any business. Demonstrate that you care about your customers.

Practice being happy and friendly. Learn how to respond calmly to frustration, your own frustration or your customer’s frustration. Practice deescalating stressful situations. Imagine that every customer is your brother or sister. Take good care of them.

Hire kind and competent employees who can learn necessary skills, rather than trying to improve the attitude of technically qualified employees. Train employees well. Treat them well and they will treat your customers well. Provide constructive feedback on time. Be open and honest. Incentivize best practices.

Build relationships with your customers. Let them know who you are and what you stand for. Practice developing rapport with your customers. Make sure they understand that you care about their needs, not just their purchases from you. Cultivate a variety of relationship skills to use with your variety of customers.

Communicate with your customers after a transaction. Let them know that you are thankful for their business and that you care about them. If your business is an online store, then set up an automatic reply of acknowledgement to any electronic communications.

Don’t bother your customers. Just be ready to solve any problems your customers have. Make it easy for them to contact you and respond promptly if they do. Be fair. Listen carefully. Do not get defensive. Get to the root of the problem and resolve it.

Investigate and determine the root cause of any problems or complaints. Fix the problem, and restore your relationship with your customer. Train employees to solve problems and serve customers well.

Apologize. Solve problems. Encourage customers to return by offering discounts or freebies. Follow up with a customer after a complaint is resolved. Investigate what caused the problem and work to prevent it from happening in the future.

Make sure your company is always ethical. Be honest about the quality of the products and services you offer. Be mindful of your reputation.

Train your partners and employees to provide excellent customer service. Good customer service should be built into every stage of your business operations.

Use social media as a marketing tool and a customer service tool. Try to make a good impression in your social media presence. Your social media efforts are central to your effort to attract, retain and nurture prospects and customers.

Think strategically and monitor social media regularly, not just when you’re promoting something. Respond to issues immediately, even if just to acknowledge that you’re investigating the issue.

Establish rules about responding to complaints, comments and complements via social media. Assign one person to fulfill that responsibility.

Improve your customer service visibility by establishing customer loyalty programs, to encourage return business and help you gather data about your customer demographics. A simple punch card that offers a free gift after a certain number of purchases is one simple way to encourage repeat business.

You can reward customers who spend the most money and time with you, by developing a premium customer loyalty program. There are commercially available customer loyalty cards that let you design branded cards, and track and manage customer behavior, such as number of visits to your store, average amount spent and more.

Add a digital component to your business, such as an app, a mobile payment platform or even a social media connection, making it easier for your customers to share your business with others. Get your customers email address and add them to an opt-in list for regular communications and special offers.

Choose your incentives carefully. A personal greeting, great service and high quality products or services are the most effective customer loyalty incentives. Make any additional incentives unique to your business. Reward your customers with opportunities that add value to their lives and help your business stand out.

All photos by Bob Mccoy