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| Subject: Connect With Consumers In Their Specific Situations | |
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Author: Dennis S. Vogel |
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Date Posted: 02:33:10 05/31/15 Sun In reply to: Dennis S Vogel 's message, "Connect With Consumers To Establish Business Relationships" on 02:21:28 04/30/15 Thu It's important to have your messages & customer service "meet consumers where they are". This applies more than just physically. I'm referring to consumers' general conditions - especially conditions you can help clients eliminate or improve. Though upselling & cross-selling can help your business thrive, & your thriving business can keep serving clients, please be sure your profitable efforts are appropriate for clients' situations. You should do your best to consult with them & help choose their best options. Novices might decide to buy more advanced products/services before they're ready to fully benefit from those. They'd be frustrated, confused & possibly feel cheated out of money, if they think you should've advised them. I've inadvertently frustrated some who told me their plans, then later they made mistakes. Sometimes, it can be hard to know if people are just making statements or if they want guidance based on what they say. If we say nothing, they'll be frustrated. Yet if we critique them, they may be angry. At times, a good reply would be a question like, "I think I understand what you're saying, do you want some guidance?" I'm using 'client' to make a point. You may think a 'client' is somebody served by a consultant. When people are sensitive about needing help, consulting should be subtle. Consultations are apt to be very important to newbies. Maybe you have customers, not clients. Maybe that is or will be your problem. Clients Get More Than Customers Do Customers just do transactions with businesses instead of with people in businesses. Clients have business connections that go further than just transactions. Clients get advisory services, not just products. Clients get guidance to help avoid or mitigate problems. The guidance is from people, not just from a business. Test, Monitor & Adjust, Then Repeat Consistently I hope you've been monitoring your niche members' needs & desires so you can determine if they need different solutions. You should also be testing your marketing methods to be sure you have effective methods as your previous methods become less effective. Whether people accept your offers depends on factors that vary with each person & situation. I'm including more of those factors below. Some of what I've written below pertains to attracting a niche of prospects - known as beginners, novices & newbies. There are probably other prospects who have bought the same or similar things (as you offer) but from other sources. If you offer what fits their criteria better than other retailers, you should give consumers your offers to consider. Expensive But Necessary Since clientele attrition happens, you'll probably need to attract prospects to attain & sustain profitability. Prospects may be novices or people who have varying levels of knowledge & experience with your business category, but not specifically with your business. It's important to remember this - Compared with attracting previous clients, it's usually more expensive to attract prospects because they're not familiar with you & your store. Yet, if you don't attract prospects consistently, you'd probably end up urgently struggling to attract a lot of them in the future. You need to invest enough to 'educate' consumers who are unfamiliar with what you offer. You can inspire their trust by giving them information & guidance. By showing your loyalty to them, you can earn loyalty from them. Their trust & loyalty could increase their tendency to buy from you or at least, check in your store. If you don't offer what they want, they could choose another store after giving you the first chance. Even if you don't urgently need them now, you should attract a number of prospects consistently. You might thoroughly serve current clients to the point of diminishing returns. At that point, they wouldn't get much more benefit because you'd have little else to sell to them. Lack of profits would only be part of your problem. Without money flowing in, you would have a cash flow crunch. You'd be very stressed if you would have to invest a lot of money to attract prospects & pay overdue bills at the same time. (I've covered attracting prospects in other posts.) Trying to pull competitors' customers away could be too expensive, especially if it would set off a competitive battle. A battle like that could include increased advertising expenses, decreasing prices (possibly profits also) & adding more value to offers. Adding more value to offers would mean: 1- selling higher grade products/services at a price point of lower grade products/services; 2- adding more products/services to transactions but apply a low markup; &/or 3 - customizing what you offer for specific clients' situations. Customization is a valuable differentiator. It's vital to remember variety adds costs, but not always more profit unless the costs are added into the prices. When somebody is busy customizing for a client, other clients may feel neglected & buy from somebody else. If you offer the same things as competitors (without adding more value), you should seriously consider changing products, services &/or customer service practices. You can increase your differentiation by adding minor & major factors in synergistic ways. The combination can make major differences. As you monitor your results, you should notice which factors matter to your clientele. You can adjust by iterating toward an optimal combination. By tracking results, you can compete with non-consumption to avoid competitive battles. There are a lot of sources of information about competing against non-consumption. Here's a link to a 2-page article - Competing Against Non-Consumption: A Conversation with Clay Christensen http://www.businessinnovationfactory.com/files/pdf/christiansenconversation1.30.06.pdf Why Do They Do What They Do? It's vital to focus on consumers' activities & reasons for their needs & desires. Needs & desires are past, current &/or future gaps which products/services can fill. This is analogous to physical gaps. What will patch or fill a gap? What will eliminate (permanently fix) the gap? Examples of possible gaps: Past gaps can be regrets - If applicable, people might want to reduce or prevent future effects of old problems. Current gaps - People want to mitigate regrets while their problems are happening. Future gaps - People want to avoid regrets by learning from mistakes & missed opportunities or they want to mitigate lingering regrets. When you know their gaps, you can learn about their priority levels & aspirations. How (much) can your business help people with their ambitions? Which aspirations could you help them with? If clients are emulators, whom or what do they imitate? Do they emulate a person or a person's specific trait? What do they need to emulate that person &/or trait? Do you offer what they need? Thank you for using this blog. Dennis S. Vogel thrivingbusiness@email.com Your business success depends on understanding why consumers want & need certain benefits. Please use this URL to get for free information. http://www.voy.com/31049/ [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
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