The business that win: three skills winning business have in common

CEO of Hewlett Packard once said, “marketing is too important to leave to the marketing people” and actually this is true, successful and skillful marketing is the key that builds your business into what you want it to be.

Marketing ought not to be reduce in importance or delegated to anyone, lower in an organization than the CEO. They need to be actively involved and be on top of them. An by no means saying they have to actually do the marketing work, but they need to have an understanding of what going on.

CEO’s Don’t needs to let marketing jargon impress or make then inadequate, and also you has the CEO should not feel you need to let this most important and Vital mix of your business to those expects.

Look at your marketing campaign and strategy. If possible put yourself completely into there shoe.

Focus on your customer

If I were to defined marketing prior to the best definition that I’ve heard, and what have learn all this years I will say “marketing is focusing on your customer’s need rather than product or service- and profit is the by product”

How true is this? You can easily judge your marketing because the most important aspect of it is common sense, good marketing focus on your customer and treat them as normal people.

Think about it: if you wanted to invite friends over for a party, would you run a boring ad or send them impersonal letters they wouldn’t even read? No, because if it were you, you won’t come also.

And this what most people are doing every day and then expecting there business to get better. People want value, fun and excitement, honesty, fairness and not necessarily the cheapest price. They don’t want to take risk on dealing with you, they want to be treated has friends,. They don’t want it to be hard doing business with you.

Take time to recognize the one thing that answers your customer’s need.

Are you in the right business?

May be you have heard the saying. “Build a better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door.” Well, this is no longer true, because there are more than hundreds and in some market even thousands of companies building a better and far better mouse trap, and in some cases those mouse trap that are winning are not by far the best but they win anyway because they’re customer oriented; what does those that are winning have in common.

Understand there customer
Empathize with there customer
Relate with there customer.

They know quiet for sure that they’re not in the product and services business but rather in the people business. So they recognize people need and desire and then find a way to satisfy them.

Because people’s are the once who make the decision and spend there money. So let’s look more closely at the four mix, success and super business uses in winning with there customers.

They understand there customer need

At the core of every successful business, whether it sells directly to individuals or other business. Knowing and understanding your customer needs can’t be overemphasize.

The simple truth is no one buy what they don’t need, and if they mistakingly buy they don’t refer to friends, and it’s not who buy that makes the futune but who his is your customer for life, and that what this post is about, to help you turn then into a customer for life.

People buy to meet there need, and you can’t persuade anyone to like or buy what you are selling if he don’t need it neither can I. And for you to sell that piece of product or service in your hand you need to know what your prospective buyer need.

Once you have this knowledge you can use it to persuade potential and existing customer that buying from you is in their best interest.

“no customer means no business that’s why understanding your customer is the key”

Here are how you can fully understand your customer to Foster growth.

a. Start with the basics:

Do you know we’re they come from? What there desire and fear is? Do you know there daily routine or do you even know the age,sex and social class? If you want to be successful in business you should better should.

Demographic help you to get a first idea of what your customers is likely to be. To fill your customer with life, create personas which include major characteristics like needs, behavior and price sensitivity. Creating personas is the secret to marketing success. It allows you to access Informations that shapes your marketing and reveals strategies you need to be adopting.

b. Why should your customers buy from you

Every business needs a reason for their customers to buy from them and not their competitor’s, this is called a unique sales preposition (USP) your USP can be identified by completing the phrase “customers will buy from me because my business is the only…..”

Your USB can change as your business or your market changes and you can have different USP for different types of customers.

It’s a good idea to review your USPs regularly, you can tailor your products or services to better match your customers needs? Consider asking your customers why they buy from you. This will tell you what they think your unique selling preposition is. And it’s also useful to check constantly what your competitors is doing- if your competitor’s are doing the same, your USP is not unique anymore.

C. Put yourself in your customers shoe

Understanding your customers requires you to put yourself in their shoes which your customers have contact with your business. These include meetings and visits, phone calls correspondence and deliveries, do your promise looks scruffy, is your receptionist unfriendly, does your phone rings and rings without being answered? All these things can make a customer feel disappointed.

The most common customers complaint is being kept waiting, if you’re slow to return calls or fulfil orders, then you are in danger of losing customers, above all customers want you to deliver what you have promised and surpass there expectations.

As a small business, you can offer a personal service. If you remember a customers name and recall. Your last conversation with them, you will have brightened up their day. They will also tell their Friends what a great service must be a priority throughout your business. Everyone from the front desk to the delivery staff should focus on exceeding customer expectations.

d. The customer current supplier

Chances are your potential customer is already buying something similar to your product or service from someone else. Before you can sell to a potential customer you need to know:

If buying from you would offers the customer any benefits- and if so, what this benefits would be.
If the customer is happy with there supplier.
Who the customer current supplier is.

The easiest way to identify a potential customers current supplier is often simply to ask them. Generally people are very happy to offer this information as well as an indication of whether they’re happy with their presents arrangements.

If you can find out what benefits they are looking for you stand a better chance of being able to sell to them. The benefits may be related to prices or levels of service, for example, are there any benefits your business can offer that are better than those if potential customers. If there are, these should form the basis of any sales approach you make.

e. Ask your customers what they think

Conduct a customer satisfaction survey and you will make your customers feel valued. You will also gain valuable insights. But don’t ask for feelback. If you’re not prepared to make improvements: tell your customers what you have done as a result of their feedbacks.

Well compiled customer surveys can tell you things you may not know, including human factors such as staff behavior. Not everyone complains when they are dissatisfied, instead they tell their friends about their bad experience and take their business elsewhere. Unless you proactively consult your customers, you may never discover if you are going wrong.

2. Empathy with customer

Researchers define empathy as the ability to sense other people’s emotions and be able to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.

It goes beyond recognizing and addressing their tactical requirements and put things into further context by viewing things from their perspective of the underlying needs and feeling’s of customer.

It’s the link between self and others because it is how we understand what others are experiencing as if we are feeling it ourselves.

Empathy is what you experience when you see someone hit the pinky finger on the corner, when you show deep empathy towards others, their defensive energy goes down and positive energy replaces it. That’s why being empathetic makes it easier for you to solve problems and deal with the customer well.

“empathy is walking a mile in someone else’s moccasins, sympathy is being sorry their feet hurt.
Rebecca o’ Donnell

Advantages if empathizing

You may wonder why it is important to spend time and effort empathizing with a simgle customer when you can use that time to efficiently solve multiple customer issues.

There are many benefits to expressing empathy apart from moving the bottom line which is “making customers happy” but before we began with the advantages let’s look at how you can show your customers empathy.

Likeability: it sounds cheesey, but smiling when taking to customers can make huge difference, it comes across over the phone and they will feel it in your voice.
Listen carefully: be a good listener and try to repeat what the customers says to assure them that you are listening and that you understand their concerns.
Make it your problem: take ownership of the customers questions, especially if it is a complaint, have a one to one relationship with your customer so that they have a point of contact that they can come back to.
Be respectful: make sure you talk to the customer with respect. Never talk down to the customer or talk over them, approach it like a regular professional conversation an they will appreciate you for it.

How to cultivate empathy

Even at this everybody has some degree of empathy? But for some because of unfair parental environments are far behind. And like any other thing you can develop your own degree.

Maintain positivity: being empathetic to the first customer of the day is eazy, but to treat the last customer in the same way you treated the first customer, you need to remain positive and motivated.. a good way to stay positive is by observing yourself for a week and nothing down the times you feel a positive or a negative emotion and the event that trigger it,

This will give you a clear idea of what activities to avoid when you have to remain positive to get through the day.

Understand your biases

We instinctively make judgement based on language, color, gender, religion accent, and vocabulary. We don’t notice when we are acting out of bias but it makes us treat some customers differently than others. For example, assuming that a customer would not be tech savvy because they are older and blaming them for the issues they are facing is because of our bias, this bias creates a barrier between agent’s and customer.

To cultivate empathy, you need to recognize your biases. Every time you assume something about someone when there is no data to support it, contemplates and find out if that was because of a bias.

Understand your customer base

When you don’t understand where customers us coming from, it’s eazy to think that they are overreacting to a simple problem, it’s hard to mask those thoughts and act as if you are empathetic. To cross that barrier, you need to figure out who your customers are and what your product or service means to them. In the context of their educational background, age, company, organizational structure etc. You can really bridge the gap and cultivate empathy.

Expressing empathy as a company

Empathy flows from the top down, when the leadership is customer-focused and empathetic, the employees are more likely to do what is right for the customer too, most of the horrible customer support stories are rarely about the individual support rep involved, it’s a reflection of the company culture.

Empathy and freedom go hand in hand. If you lead a company or manage a team, encourage your support agents to break rules now and then do what is right for the customer, some companies even provide a small budget for each support team member so they have the freedom to go above and beyond whenever necessary.

3. Relate with customer

Today’s consumers have more industry influence than they’ve ever had in the past. Now, consumers are interested in what you are selling than how you’re selling it, and what happens after you have sold it to them. And for your company to survive you’ve to align with this shift. You have to invest in your company team to meet this demand, your main focus should be on how to manage and grow a great customer relationship.

So what’s it

Customer relations is the process a business uses to proactively develop positive relationships with it’s customers. The aim is they may be highly engaged and satisfied with the business.

Why should you prioritize customer relations

Since we have what customer relation is, and the present pressure that’s now on it, let’s try look at some few reasons we need it most.

a. Word of mouth

In an interview on forbes, Jeff bezos said, “it used to be that if you made a customer happy, they would tell friends. Now, with the megaphone of the internet whether online customers or socialmedia, they can tell 5,000 friends,” spending on marketing and advertising to acquire new customers can be expensive. Relationship marketing causes customers to do the marketing for a brand, by telling others about the brand, product and services, which can drive sales with exceptional relationship marketing program.

b. Customers retention:

Companies that do a better job at managing customer relationships are more likely to see higher retention rates. Research by bain & company found that a 5% increase in customer retention can increase company profits by 25%.

On average,repeat customers spend 67% more than new customers. Plus acquiring new customers can be anyone from 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining current ones.

C. Customer loyalty:

Amazon’s brands is now so trustworthy that plenty of people have signed up for a new service called Amazon key. This service allows a delivery person to open your front door to leave packages inside your home.

When you have a good history with your customers, it makes it more difficult for your competitor’s to carry away customer from your brand. Repeat customers are highly valuable for business as repeat customers are nine times more likely to buy from you than leads that have not yet being converted.

How to build your employees for great customer relationship Service

Simon sinek said, “customers will never love a company until the employees love it first” your employees are the ones who control all the communication with the customer.. so no great experience comes from the product being sold but also from the employees who interact with the customer.

Studies show that 67% of customers churn is avoidable if the customers issues is resolved after first interaction with the company.

So if your employees don’t like their job, negativity and resentment will propagate.

Companies faced with higher volumes of support and services cases can adopt customer service tools to help manage customer relations, adding a help desk software can significantly help customer service support, and successful teams monitor interactions with customers overtime, tools like a customer relationship manager, or CRM. Can helps your team expands it ba