Customers

Over dinner on Sunday some one asked me; “What new course have you got for the times?”

Ah! The downturn discussion! I thought about this and chimed “something on concentrating on your core business and market your way forward with strong selling points and customer service”.

Somewhere in the back of my mind a lamp flickered and lit up the remarkable story of Andrew Cook who in the late 1970s early 80s transformed William Cook, a well established family manufacturer of steel castings, into a market leader when all was against him.

At that time the economy was dismal, dark and uninviting. Output in the industry had been falling for a number of years. But Cook on taking over the company went completely against the trend an invested in increased efficiency, quality and capacity in the least value segment – all at a time when capacity was double the amount of industry sales. Rivals thought he was mad. Indeed conventional thinking would have dictated that Cook milk the business and leave the industry or go into a higher value and differentiated niche.

Remember too that Cook’s didn’t have the image of a Mercedes or an IBM amongst its customers. Neither was it a technological leader, nor did it possess some secret process to guarantee extra income. Nonetheless, Andrew Cook backed his intuition. In a few months his efforts began to yield results.

His investment in a hostile environment transformed the business. Within a few years sales had risen 10% against industry losses. He was the first to invest in BS5750. Within a couple of years he had acquired two of his major competitors and by the ‘90s he had become the market leader.

“What did he do?” you ask. It’s really quite straightforward. He understood his customers. He recognised the value they wanted. His improvements saved customers money which naturally increased demand for his product. Thus Cook generated a double advantage – higher value and lower cost.

When others saw what he had achieved they changed too. They sought to catch up and invoked intense battles … but that’s another story.
For more on how to manage in difficult times why not check out our coaching and workshop programmes in Services

I mentioned last time that any effort to craft strategy must be aimed at creating a UNIQUE STRATEGIC POSITION. I also mentioned that current practices are inadequate. What is required is a dynamic approach that replicates the success of strategic innovators.

Such an approach is to be found in this THREE-Fold framework of strategy formulation that concentrates on:

1. Customers and value; the issue here is to question how to achieve full value and service for customers – something that strategic innovators understand – the majority give the area lip service ONLY.
2. How we respond to customer demands for value with a proposition based on our market mission, distinctive capabilities, strategic assets and our ability to differentiate against the competition instead of unimaginative ‘me-too’ responses to every problem and opportunity.
3. Building an organisational environment that supports creativity and inventiveness, excellent relationships with customers, staff, collaborators the development and implementation of our strategy.

More next time

Best wishes

Andrew Pearson

If your attempts to grow your business have met with sluggish results even though you have got the other result areas that are presented in this Business Growth Series in place – it’s almost certainly your MARKETING TACTICS that are holding you back and restricting you to lackluster results.

Let’s look at some of these tactics now.

Quite simply we can separate marketing tactics into two camps; “Front-End“ and “Back-End”.

You can think of “Front-End” as the first sale; the pipeline that brings new customers into the business. The “Back-End” is the product (or hopefully the series of products and services) that you sell to your customers after they have purchased your initial offering.

The question to ask now is what tactics you should use in each area? And here they are:

Clearly front-end marketing is vital for your long term business success. This is why it’s so important to inject the power of marketing into your business so that you can increase the number of customers that come to your business as a continuous flow…

I said previously that people buy for emotional needs and those emotional needs are never fulfilled. Your role as a marketer or as the business owner is to continue to exploit those needs because it’s the emotional void that creates the desire to buy that never gets fulfilled by the purchase of the product or service. Therefore, in order to do your job right, you need to have multiple products and premium offers on offer throughout the length of your pipeline – or at the back-end.

You’ll always make more money from back-end offers than from front-end ones. They offer a much higher conversion rate, they usually sell for more money and you can make a bigger percentage on the profits on them too. And it’s always easier to sell to a customer than a prospect.

But remember the long term; you must have customers coming into the business. You can’t just rely on your loyal customers. By the way, if you have competition then you can bet that most are competing at the front-end and trying to attack your front-end offers with their own so as to eventually weaken and erode the strength of your own USPs and offers.

The question I have for you is this; are you doing any type of marketing whatsoever, and if you are where is the focus of your efforts?

So once you have found your HUNGRY CROWD …WHAT next?

The trick is to find a distinguishing benefit that conveys the problem you will solve or the “want” you’re trying to satisfy that sets you apart from your competitors. This benefit – or unique selling point (usp) is the foundation for your business for it defines what you do or say. In short it helps you:

• Attract and keep customers
• Accelerate market diffusion
• Create a point of difference
• Fill a perceived gap in the market place
• Motivate prospects and customers to act

There are many examples of this type of ‘selling point.’ Only the other day I overheard a major financial institution marketing its high interest bearing ISAs with the message; ‘finding ideas for your money!”

How to come up with a winning offer
The challenge is to explain or to present in conversation and in literature, COMPELLINGLY, what you do to provide a major advantage to your customers that your competitors don’t, or can’t offer and turn this into a few words that offer the means to GRAB your prospects’ attention.

Here’s one way – a 5 step USP generator …

1. Find the problem people have most trouble with …
2. Identify the implications of the problem … ’which means …’
3. Define your solution … ’well, what we do is …’
4. Describe the benefit of your solution …
5. Distil the results down and find the few compelling words that make the difference.

So use the USP generator, it will help you find in a WORD; the solution customers want most and it will help you to stand your business head and shoulders above its rivals.

Points To Remember Are:

• Build a business around a HUNGRY CROWD for whom you offer value with a pipeline of products.

• Prospects and customers have got to see and understand why they should buy from you and how you are different from your competitors, so find the COMPELLING WORDS that will do this for you.

How A Right Hand Can Double Your Profits
As your business begins experiencing growth, it’s vital that you bring on a right-hand man (or woman) to help you in your quest for success. The sooner the better, because when your business is expanding, it’s difficult to take time out to train another person for tasks you need to delegate.

Still, you can’t just bring anyone into the equation. You need to make sure they have the same passion for your business and ideas that you do. How do you achieve that? By compensating them based on their performance or by giving them a percentage of the sales.

Use Performance Incentives
Incentives go a long way in motivating any staff, but with an assistant who works closely with you to realise the ultimate goals of the company, it’s even more valuable as a benefit and reward.

You have to be willing to put all of your trust into this person. You don’t want to worry about what they’ll do or how they’ll go about something. They should always strive to make your company look good in the eyes of your customers and business associates.

The type of person you want to hire on as a right hand man or woman will be highly motivated and able to handle their tasks with minimal input from you once they’ve been instructed on how to do something.

The person should be willing to learn new ideas – and eager to take on more responsibilities in the company. Don’t hire anyone who sits back waiting for an opportunity, or who scoffs at the idea of having to do more work.

Motivate Them With Vision
Your goal is to get them excited about the business – help them recognise the possibilities so that they actively work with you on accomplishing everything the business needs to do to grow and succeed.

Someone once said that recruiting the perfect right hand man is like finding the right suit – they have to fit in just right with the company or else you’ll feel uncomfortable allowing them to handle certain responsibilities.

In a best-case scenario, the right hand man should be able to fill your shoes in any situation – without missing a beat. But this doesn’t mean you have to look for someone exactly like you – in fact, it’s better if his talents and skills complement your own – skills he possesses, you lack, and vice versa.

You have to be careful not to hire someone whose only goal is to replace you within the company – or steal your idea to launch his own business. His loyalty to you should be paramount.

If there are other employees within the company, make sure you hire someone who earns the respect of the others. You can’t have a right hand man who treats your staff with disrespect.

Be Very Selective
You may have to go through several assistants before finding the right fit. You’ll realise that not everyone has what it takes to stand in such an important position. When you do find the right person, you’ll know it – because you’ll instantly feel a sense of relief that your business is on the right track to success.

After finding the right person, the two of you will work in sync to help the business experience growth. Having a right hand man will free up your time so that you can focus on more important tasks.

If he’s good enough at what he does, then you can double up on (or leverage) tactics that show promise in your company’s financial future. If you’re both good copywriters, then you can double the amount of high-converting content you write.

If sales are your strong point, but he’s better at customer service, then divvy up the responsibility for the betterment of the business. You can constantly assess both you and your assistant’s capabilities and leverage each of your skills to their optimum potential.