All companies have a type of loyal or almost loyal customers….
These are the ones who buy from you without ever discussing prices, who are happy with the payment terms, with the service you offer… you say they don’t exist? It’s not true, they do exist, but they are RARE. The real problem is how to find them and then hold on to them; in fact, they are definitely necessary if you want to increase your turnover and operating margin.
Now let’s look at the classic situation of a company operating in an open and competitive market:
The company suffers from the difficulties of its target market, increasing competition and customers to whom the word loyalty is unknown.
In order to be able to sell something, you are forced to look for customers, prepare all kinds of quotes, then call them back to find out their opinion on the matter, followed by downward negotiations of course. Your competitors will not stand still and will do everything they can to ‘steal’ your customer.
Not all customers are like this, of course, and there are often other factors that come into play that are not purely commercial, such as the ability to create a certain empathy with people, sympathy (I will never buy from him, I really don’t like him…) and others. So there are non-weighted factors that enter into the sales process.
Let’s talk about customers for a moment, then we’ll see how to find the ideal ones.
All of us are someone’s customers and we behave exactly like the customers of our business, i.e. we make our own interests known and try to optimise them.
It is our job to first try to understand who we are dealing with, how they think, what they are looking for, what their expectations are of my business;
I think there are basically two categories of customers:
Those who only look for the best price and always compare you with the competition.
Those who choose you regardless of your offer and don’t care how much the competition does (the non-weighted factors).
The first are those who don’t know you (yet) and when they receive an offer, their main mission is to compare it with other quotes from competitors, which from a psychological point of view protects them from not having done their job properly. At the end of this process, what do they do? They almost always buy from the lowest price.
Why is this? It’s simple: we haven’t managed to explain the difference between us and the competition, we haven’t been able to add value to our proposal.
The latter, on the other hand, are the desire of every company, those who buy without making any remarks about the price or the service/product provided.
But where are these customers? Do they really exist?
The answer can only be positive: they do exist, and they are not so difficult to find.
Everything lies upstream in the design of the service/product. If you have carried out a precise and careful analysis of the market, of the needs of your customers and, of course, of what the competition has to offer, these customers will be easy to reach.
It’s all about satisfying even the smallest or most marginal detail of these customers’ needs. If you succeed in this, customers will definitely buy from you and, above all, they will have no reason to switch to the competition.
But beware, we all know that markets are dynamic and not static, and innovation is the key to current success. You must continue to develop and innovate your service/product, otherwise sooner or later someone will offer something that we are not able to, and then the customer will be lost.
So good planning and continuous innovation are the basis for keeping these ideal customers.
But how can we be sure that we are planning and innovating in the right direction?
There is only one way, and that is to know your customers and their needs very well and to try to understand what your competitors are doing or will do better.
But who can gather all this information?
It is those who maintain relations with our customers, i.e. the sales structure, our salespeople in the area, who, duly instructed, must constantly report this information, which is vital for the company, and this is why having good, prepared and motivated salespeople is fundamental.
If I can answer these simple questions, I’m on the right track for a good business strategy:
Do I know the needs of my ideal customers?
Do I know all the issues in my target market?
Has my company been created with an added value that allows me to be chosen over the competition?
In the end, I am aware that knowing the target market, its customers and competitors is the basis for every choice I make for my business.
However, this is only the basis of everything, the rest is done by an excellent marketing/communication strategy and an equally excellent sales strategy, possibly multi-channel.
So don’t improvise anything, plan as much as you can and in as much detail as possible, and I can certainly give you a hand in this. Don’t hesitate and contact me at this email address to make an appointment, it doesn’t cost anything, at least this!!!!!
marco.ramponi@mramponiconsulting.com