Customers

 

Without customers, there is no business

For this reason, focus on a deep understanding of your market, it’s size, competitors, demographics, buying intentions is vital. You must have the processes in place to effectively handle leads, enquiries, sales execution and customer service.

Research

Many businesses fail due to a lack of market research. They have not sourced and analysed the right data, to assess if there is a large enough market to support their growth plans and create sustainable returns.  Smart and early research and market testing will help you assess how well your goods and services meet customers’ needs. 

Your research should also inform how you communicate value to your customers compared to your competitors. When a business with quality goods and services builds a great brand and promotes it well in the market, it builds long term business value.

Innovation & Pricing

Research will also help you to price for value, and by comparison to your competitors.  Good pricing strategies can be necessarily complex and should be executed in conjunction with your Finances, Operations and Risk Management, balancing customer value against your Gross Margin, Profitability and Risk Appetite.

The most innovative businesses can compete on value rather than price, and may even establish their own unique niche where they are more or less immune to competition. We therefore recommend that you both budget time and funds for goods and services innovation, and invest in customer feedback loops to stimulate that innovation and keep ahead of competitors.

We advocate the “Ïf it ain’t broke, break it” principle that has driven Apple Inc’s success since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. Keep ahead of customer needs and competitor responsiveness and you can dominate markets in which you operate.

Acquisition & Conversion

It is not good enough to simply understand the broad metrics of your market. You need to understand what attracts customers to your business, what you ideal customer “looks like” and what influences their decision to transform from a prospect, just interested, to a customer, placing an order.

Retention & Loyalty

On average, the cost of finding a customer is 13 times greater than the cost of retaining an existing customer. Similarly, it is much easier to sell to a prospect introduced (or referred) by an existing customer.

Your need customer retention (repeat purchase) and referral programs in place that systematically turn one sale into many at a fraction of the cost of finding new customers.

Monitoring Market Performance

There is a massive amount of data you can capture digitally these days about how a customer of prospect is interacting with you digital presence of company systems that can provide invaluable research to predict future behaviour and hence plan product and service offering, changes, and pricing models that can optimize your sales performance. Developing systematic approaches to this analysis is vital as your business grows and captures a greater share of market.