What do you customers want?

What do you customers want?

Is your business growth starting to plateau or stagnate?

It’s easy to sit back, take the foot off the accelerator and watch the sales  roll in, especially if you’ve been satisfied with your recent performance. But  keep in mind that if you slack off too much, your competitors will soon catch up  and eventually put you out of business.  At some point you may even find that you have stopped providing what your customers want.

Take a look around – businesses (and your competitors) are closing their  doors due to the drop in consumer spending – which means MORE potential  customers for businesses like YOU, that do survive. Today is the best time to  take steps to revamp your marketing efforts and respond to the needs and the  pain of your target market.

In these tough times, it’s going to take more than “thinking outside the box”  and goodwill with existing customers to secure the survival of your  business.

I want you to STOP right now and make a list of everything that you (and your  competitors) do NOT do to make it easy for your prospects to buy from you. If  you want to succeed over the long term, you will take a good hard look at both  of these lists and find a way to do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes,  to win your customers and keep them.

Granted, this is not an easy task. Most businesses will continue to do what  they have always done – guess or assume what they think their customers need.  However, no matter how challenging it is to ask the hard questions and  re-engineer your strategy, I guarantee it will be a whole lot less painful and  stressful than going under.

I had a married couple come to me once for advice and coaching – both the  business they were in and their relationship were at the breaking point. The  husband turned and said to me “I don’t understand it. I do everything humanly  possible for my wife and she doesn’t appreciate me and I don’t think I can  possibly do anything more to satisfy my customers – they are never happy and  always want more. What can I possibly do?”

My answer to this age old dilemma applies to him, his marriage, and to you in  your business right now. “Sounds like you are doing a lot. Too bad it’s  everything BUT the very thing that your partner and customers need most.”

While this may sound harsh, I think you will agree that it is absolutely  true. It does you no good to work harder doing everything…instead of focusing  on the 1 thing that you customers actually need. Wouldn’t it be easier for you  to work smarter, not harder, if you knew with absolute certainty what that 1  thing is?

How can you take the lesson from my client and apply it to your own business  right now?

How could you go about figuring out what that 1 thing is?

I want you to do something really radical today and start asking both your  prospects and existing customers what they need. You need to find out:

• What is the biggest challenge your prospects are facing in their business?

• When your customer thinks of the product or service you provide, what is  THE most painful or difficult issue associated with acquiring it?

• What is  the most important criteria to your purchaser when evaluating a company like  you?

• What are some things that he/she thinks about or considers from a  financial perspective when selecting that product/service or a vendor?

• What  is the key strategic driver for you customer’s decision?

It doesn’t really matter what you have done up to this point or how hard you  are working. There is no prize for volume or quantity. What counts is quality  and relevance.  You need to do determine what your customers want…and give it to them.

 

What do you need to do to change the playing field you are on completely?

It’s an unlikely source for great business advice for entrepreneurs.  A story about Billy Beane, the general manager of a major league baseball team at the bottom of the ladder – the Oakland A’s.  Crushed by the big budgets and big name players of teams like the New York Yankees and the Cleveland Indians, Beane is forced to take a risk and do something no team has done before – abandon traditional recruiting methods and employ computer-generated analysis to acquire and trade players.  And in doing so, he changed the face and landscape of the game forever.

The following quotes from the movie were never really meant for you and your business and yet, they reveal some fantastic truths about life and success that will make you a better owner and leader.

 

1. You’re not solving the problem. You’re not even looking at the problem.

It is very easy for you to be distracted by all the issues and rhetoric swirling around the actual problem.   The more you (or others) have personally invested in the status quo, the more you will be prevented from seeing the real problem for what it is.  Seek advice and perspective from people outside your industry — those inside will be emotionally attached to the way things have always been done and thus, they have become part of the problem.

Your number one objective is to determine what the actual issue is, and solve it.  You don’t have time to get caught up in meetings talking about why it is a problem or re-engineering band-aid fixes that have not cured it in the past.

2. We’ve got to think differently.

Your business really isn’t that different from the Oakland A’s baseball team.  If you’re a start up or a small-mid size business, you’re likely working under some tight (and possibly unfair) resource constraints.  If you want to grow and to challenge competitors that have much deeper pockets, you need to level the playing field or you need to change it completely.  It is impossible to beat anyone if you insist on letting others dictate the terms.   You must start by thinking differently.  What would need to change in order for you to have the advantage?  What can you do differently right now to achieve your objective? How can you adapt or modify your approach to get what you want?

Playing the game on your competitor’s terms is no longer a viable option.  It can only lead to frustration and failure.

3. He passes the eye candy test. He’s got the looks – he’s great at playing the part.

Success often depends on good scouting and recruiting. A common mistake that most of you will make is to recruit team members that you like (and have something in common with during the interview) or who look the part. In order to ensure the survival of your business, need team members that can actually do the job that you need them to do. It doesn’t matter whether the candidate has 15 years of experience at a multi-national or comes highly recommended from so-and-so.  None of that amounts to a hill of beans if they cannot do the job.  If you want to boost your success this year, get the right people on your bus.  If you need a good hitter (someone who can close business) don’t hire a semi-retired catcher who is charming in the interview.

4. Your goal shouldn’t be to buy players, your goal should be to buy wins.

It is important to get the right people on your bus. However, in order to do that, you need to figure out exactly what needs to get done and hire people who can do it.  Don’t get caught up in fancy titles, big salaries, stock options and what looks good to the outside world.  If you want to be successful you must be in the business of plugging gaping holes and buying outcomes.

If you need more customers and sales, hire someone that you know can and is incentivized to close business.  It doesn’t matter what you call him, what matters is that he can produce the result that you need to survive and thrive in your business.

5. Why do you like him? Because he gets on base.

Step 1 – figure out what success looks like for the role you need to fill.  Step 2 – don’t hire anyone without a proven track record of achieving that outcome.  Step 3 – Get rid of (or trade) anyone who can’t fulfil their role or who is polluting the office environment.

6.  Where on the field is the dollar I’m paying for soda?

It is good to be frugal and smart with your money but it never pays to be penny wise and a pound foolish. If you want to grow your business profitably, focus on the items that will have the biggest impact on your bottom line and cash flow first. There’s no point focusing on shaving one or two thousand dollars off your fixed expenses if you’ve got $25,000 tied up in dead or slow moving inventory. To make good decisions and take action that boosts your bottom line, you need to measure and track your financial KPIs regularly.

7. I’m not paying you for the player you used to be, I’m paying you for the player you are right now.

While you might get away with recruiting based on potential, in the end, you can only reward based on results. Time and time again I have seen business owners struggle with the decision to let salespeople, who are not meeting their targets, go. The decision is really a very easy one. Someone has to go. It’s either them or you. You can’t win a baseball game without putting runs on the board and you can’t build a successful enterprise without hitting sales targets consistently.

8.  It’s day one of the first week. You can’t judge just yet.

Patience is a virtue. Don’t pass judgment judge too soon. If someone’s not performing or the team is not quite gelling, take some time to investigate, ask questions and make adjustments. All changes to the team will have a natural breaking-in period.

Too much tolerance can become a vice. Good performers tend to contribute value very quickly – both in terms of their attitude and work ethic. The typical 3 month probation period is more than enough time to make a fair evaluation. When the writing is on the wall, have the confidence to cut your losses and move on.

Despite the Oakland A’s disadvantaged revenue situation, Billy Beane took his team from bottom of the ladder to World Series contender in just a few months. By re-evaluating the strategies that produced wins on the field, they built a winning team with only one-third of the salary budget of the New York Yankees. To do this, they had to do more than just play better a better game of ball. They had to transform the playing field completely.

What’s the best way to grow your business?

When clients ask how to close more sales and  free up cash in their business, I like to tell the  story of Byron the guns and collectibles dealer. He lives for his business  because it gives him the chance to make a living out of doing what he enjoys  most: collecting.

He was struggling 12 months ago because he was out of cash and unable to buy  new stock. This was a real problem because the strength of his business lay in  constantly having new items to show off. New stock encouraged his customers to  come back often; no new stock meant they would tend to check out his competitors  first.

When I first walked into Byron’s shop, one of the most obvious items was a  beautiful old gun, proudly (and securely) displayed in a glass cabinet. I  couldn’t help but ask how much it was worth. He explained that it he had bought  it for $5,000 dollars, but was looking to sell it for $7,000. Following a hunch  that I had hit on his problem straight away, I asked Byron when he had bought  the gun. He didn’t remember exactly, he said, but thought it was about five  years ago.

I asked Byron how many other, similarly high value items he had in his store.  We went for a walk and in the course of showing me around, he pointed out at  least a dozen items which he had bought for over $5,000 over the last few years.  In each case, he was quick to tell me how much he was intending to sell the item  for, and the margin was always 30 to 40%. But the fact was he hadn’t sold these  items so they were costing him money and, most importantly, causing him to miss  the opportunity of buying new stock.

Byron had spent nearly $100,000 on expensive items over the years. The items  were attractive and valuable, but they weren’t particularly rare, so they  weren’t appreciating in value significantly. In effect, Byron had put $100,000  on the shelf of his office and left it there for all that time. In other words,  while he wasn’t borrowing money from the bank, in effect he was borrowing it  from himself. He had missed the opportunity to invest the money somewhere where  it would give him a solid return, such as in a term deposit or in blue-chip  shares. And he missed the opportunity of using that money to buy smaller, less  expensive items that he knew would sell quickly.  He needed to do something (and fast) if he wanted to close more sales.

Compounding all of this was the fact that the global financial crisis had  caused demand to drop markedly which meant his customers just weren’t coming in  or spending as much as they used to.

By making a few simple adjustments, responding to trends in the industry and  addressing a need that his customers, Byron was able to turn his business around, close more sales  and double his bottom line.

The first thing he did was to free up some cash by actively selling some of  his more expensive and slow moving items. He used online auction sites and his  own network to find buyers, while keeping his marketing costs low. In some cases  he had to sell the items for a little less than he had intended, but the benefit (when he was able to close more sales) was cash in his pocket.

The next thing he did was set up some systems to keep better track of  inventory. He started by recording everything and noting the age of all the  items (i.e. the length of time he had held it in stock). We agreed that in  future, any item that had not sold after 8 months would be reviewed. Byron would  investigate the item’s market value and decide whether or not it was increasing  in value sufficiently to be worth keeping. If not, he would act to move the item  on.

After a few months, Byron was making much smarter purchasing decisions. He  was still enjoying ‘collecting’ for his store, but his focus was different. His  focus was less on attractive, expensive but not-so-rare items, and more on  smaller items he knew he could sell quite quickly. To his pleasant surprise, he  increased cash flow by $100,000 in 3 months and found that by using this  strategy, he was able to do more shopping rather than less, because he had more  cash available to spend.

Lastly, but perhaps most significantly, Byron introduced 2 new complementary  strategies which literally transformed his business. To counteract the soft  demand for firearms and the relatively fixed, low margins, Byron convinced his  customers to purchase 18 months worth of ammunition upfront and he provided  storage (if required) onsite. This allowed him to renegotiate terms and pricing  with his suppliers, plus generate more cash flow in the short term. Since the  margins on bullets was much higher than on the guns themselves, his overall  profitability improved. In addition, Byron incorporated training and  certification into his standard offering and opened up his target range to  paying customers 3 nights a week. This allowed him to create new, highly  lucrative income streams and increase the frequency with which his customers  came into his business.

While Byron’s story on how to close more sales might seem unique and industry specific, there are many ways to take the overarching philosophy of what he did and utilize it to improve  your operating cash position.

How can you identify and start selling silver bullets in your business?  Begin by first examining the big picture…

Identify the items in your inventory that are essentially dead stock – i.e.  haven’t sold in over 8 months. Determine what the total value of the stock is  and devise a plan to convert it quickly into cash using a minimal amount of  advertising.

Focus on the gross profit margin of all of your products and services. Are  some of these more profitable than others? To improve your overall performance,  concentrate on the former, and improve or eliminate the latter. What items or  services could you add which would allow you to service a need, improve your  relationship with your customers and grow your bottom line?

Negotiate better terms and/or prices with your supplier in order to increase  the amount of gross profit you make on each sale. Consider which items you could  sell in bulk upfront to your customers and use this new volume to improve your  buying leverage or cut out the middle man.

Marketing should not be treated as a fixed and sacred cow in your business.  Do not spend another dime on marketing until you ensure that you are maximizing  the amount you retain on each sale to cover fixed costs. Also, only spend money  chasing customers and sales if you can measure the financial return that you  will get. Unless you are a multinational brand, money spent solely on branding  is wasted.

Make it easy for your customers to find you and see what you have to offer on  the internet. The database of potential shoppers that you have earned the right  to speak to, is in fact your greatest asset. What can you do today to add value, enhance their experience and close more sales?

Finally, examine the fixed expenses in your business. Identify whether or not  there is a cheaper, faster or superior alternative that doesn’t compromise  quality or customer service. Is there a way to shift how and what you do so that  fixed expenses can vary (i.e on a pay per use basis) with the level of  production and/or sales? And remember, no one has ever grown their business by  [exclusively] focusing on cost cutting – so use this tactic as your final step  in a comprehensive plan to get your business firing and hitting targets.  Your primary goal is to close more sales and increase the amount of gross profit (or contribution margin) that you make from each sale.

 

When did you last ask your customers what they want?

Is your business growth starting to plateau or stagnate?

It’s easy to sit back, take the foot off the accelerator and watch the sales  roll in, especially if you’ve been satisfied with your recent performance. But  keep in mind that if you slack off too much, your competitors will soon catch up  and eventually put you out of business.

Take a look around – businesses (and your competitors) are closing their  doors due to the drop in consumer spending – which means MORE potential  customers for businesses like YOU, that do survive. Today is the best time to  take steps to revamp your marketing efforts and respond to the needs and the  pain of your target market.

In these tough times, it’s going to take more than “thinking outside the box”  and goodwill with existing customers to secure the survival of your  business.

I want you to STOP right now and make a list of everything that you (and your  competitors) do NOT do to make it easy for your prospects to buy from you. If  you want to succeed over the long term, you will take a good hard look at both  of these lists and find a way to do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes,  to win your customers and keep them.

Granted, this is not an easy task. Most businesses will continue to do what  they have always done – guess or assume what they think their customers need.  However, no matter how challenging it is to ask the hard questions and  re-engineer your strategy, I guarantee it will be a whole lot less painful and  stressful than going under.

I had a married couple come to me once for advice and coaching – both the  business they were in and their relationship were at the breaking point. The  husband turned and said to me “I don’t understand it. I do everything humanly  possible for my wife and she doesn’t appreciate me and I don’t think I can  possibly do anything more to satisfy my customers – they are never happy and  always want more. What can I possibly do?”

My answer to this age old dilemma applies to him, his marriage, and to you in  your business right now. “Sounds like you are doing a lot. Too bad it’s  everything BUT the very thing that your partner and customers need most.”

While this may sound harsh, I think you will agree that it is absolutely  true. It does you no good to work harder doing everything…instead of focusing  on the 1 thing that you customers actually need. Wouldn’t it be easier for you  to work smarter, not harder, if you knew with absolute certainty what that 1  thing is?

How can you take the lesson from my client and apply it to your own business  right now?

How could you go about figuring out what that 1 thing is?

I want you to do something really radical today and start asking both your  prospects and existing customers what they need. You need to find out:

• What is the biggest challenge your prospects are facing in their business?
• When your customer thinks of the product or service you provide, what is  THE most painful or difficult issue associated with acquiring it?
• What is  the most important criteria to your purchaser when evaluating a company like  you?
• What are some things that he/she thinks about or considers from a  financial perspective when selecting that product/service or a vendor?
• What  is the key strategic driver for you customer’s decision?

It doesn’t really matter what you have done up to this point or how hard you  are working. There is no prize for volume or quantity. What counts is quality  and relevance.

Are you giving your customers what they want and are you willing to do  whatever it takes to help them cure the pain that they are in?

More of the “same old same old” is not going to differentiate you from the  pack, build trust, win customers and grow your business. Take some time today to  really think about what you offer and how it could be improved to meet the  primary need of your customers. If all of your customers were to leave today,  what would you need to change in order to win them back and survive?

At the end of the day, price is never the determining factor. Once you  uncover the true cost of the problem they are facing, price becomes irrelevant.  Your customers will always be willing to pay a fair price for a product/service  that cures their pain – not to mention the peace of mind that comes with  excellent service. Take stock of what the competition is NOT willing to do and what your customers wnat most from you.

Do something unique – listen and be willing to do whatever it takes to  deliver what they want (and need). Anything less, is simply a waste of your time and money  on everything that doesn’t really matter.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6586203

I recently purchased a pair of authentic Vintage Versace sunglasses online  and was amazed at the number of fake designer sunglasses and handbags advertised  on the internet. In fact, there are more videos and websites dedicated to  promoting and avoiding counterfeit products than there are sites selling genuine  designer items.

What does this tell you?

The market for rip offs and counterfeit items is huge. According to  fashionistas, editors and bloggers in the industry, the total spending on fake  or “knock-off” designer goods eclipses the amount actually spent on the real  thing. In fact, if you see someone on the street with a Versace, Hermes or Fendi  bag, there’s only a 1 in 100 chance that it’s authentic.  Customers prefer replicas.

So how does this impact you and your business?

Unfortunately, many consumers would rather invest a little to give the appearance that they appreciate quality. The fakes are inferior, but many customers choose them anyway because they want to maintain a facade. They want the quick fix – the easy path to looking successful but few want to make the necessary investment of time and money, required to BE successful.

In order to stand out in a marketplace where imitations and charlatans are  plentiful, you need to do the opposite of what your competition is doing.

Where their message is confusing, yours must be simple.

When they are selling features and benefits, you must present the  solution.

Where they are focused on their brand, you must identify your customer’s pain  and cure it.

Where their claims are unsubstantiated, yours must be tangible.

There will always be a long list of vendors and products to satisfy the  insatiable appetite for “almost authentic”. And in the end, the purchaser will  always get exactly what they paid for. If you continue to compete based on price  alone (or intangible claims), 99% of your customers will continue to assume that  you are not the real deal either.

Rest assured, your potential customer will continue to be in pain no matter which  replicas and quick fixes she purchases in the meantime. Eventually, the pain  will become so acute that she will seek out your genuine solution. Make it  easier for her to find you by having a clear message that helps her to decide  and say “Yes.” Help her to know that you are authentic – put a fair price on  what you do, provide tangible proof your solution works and then deliver on your  promise.

Solutions are like diamonds, precious and rare. Fakes are like dry leaves in  the fall, found everywhere.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6586136


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