Never forget to ask yourself – ‘so-what’?
Taking a step back from your business is hard to do – you don’t have the time and if things are running ok is there really any need to do this?
Find the time – taking a real hard look at your business and your future goals is not an option it’s a necessity and at least once a year! Being truly objective can be hard and many owner-managed businesses don’t get this right. Getting someone you trust to facilitate your thinking can be really helpful but you have to remember to remain open to new ideas.
Establish a Marketing Strategy – set out how you are going to grow your business and achieve sustainable competitive advantage. It needs to cover everything from where you are now through to where you want to be. It should cover your initial and realistic situational analysis and consider market-orientated strategies to achieve your business goals and marketing objectives.
Growing your business – in short, there are only two ways you can grow any business.
1. Get your existing customers to buy more of your products and/or services;
2. Gain additional customers. The adage of ‘its way more cost effective to get your existing customers to spend more than get new one’s’ is true but you need to focus on both.
Once you understand what you are trying to achieve, have clear goals and know why your customers or prospects should buy from you then you can begin to consider what your strategy should be. Only then can you begin to build sales & marketing plans to inform, educate, engage and influence your customers and your market.
Keeping your existing customers happy and getting them to spend more – do you understand your customers’ needs and wants and can you meet them? Right product or service, right price, right place and/or timescales? Is what you offer truly unique or different and is it better than your contemporaries and if so why? Are you able to articulate this easily and do you communicate it succinctly and clearly – if you don’t then how do you expect your customers to understand it?
Getting new customers and making them happy – do you know why customers should buy from you, do you make it easy for them to buy and what are you going to offer them to give you a try?
We are all consumers at heart but our motivations are different on many levels – you need to understand the reasons why people will buy. Once you understand what it is you do and why you do it….ask yourself the ‘so-what’ question – why does this matter to your customer and then build your sales & marketing systems around answering the so-what question. Make it real for the customer, focused on benefits to them not what is easy for you!