Badminton Set

Nurture Your Customer Relationships

Just yesterday, I went to check on a new style of badminton shoes for myself in a small sports store across the highway of my hometown city (how I wish I was in a city like London). The name of the store is Racket Plus and I had bought most of my badminton equipments there.

As I was trying on their new stock of badminton shoes like the ones from Mizumo, I was expecting that I will be entertained by one of the sales agents but surprisingly, I was approached by the owner himself and he greeted me using my first name.

Our conversation centered mostly about shoes; where they got their supplies, how they handled their inventory, and marketing. Of course, he asked me what I did for a living and how I got to know their store. Through out the conversation, I noticed from him a very important trait that any business start up should have and that is nurturing his relationships with his customers.

As a sales and marketing person myself, I am a bit keen and very particular to customer relations. Although in essence, I do not fully agree with the belief that the “customer is always right”, yet I have a bias on the importance of the customers’ right to know. For me, there is no business if there are no customers. We business people exist because we are there to provide and serve our customers.

Now that we agree, here are several ideas that I used to nurture my business specially in the start up stage.

1. Create an atmosphere of open communication.

Like any relationship, open and continuous communication is very important. In my experience, this usually contributes 90% of disengagements of business entities. Being uncommunicative is like a small leak in a dam, once it is not treated it will soon create large cracks along the dam which will eventually cause the dam to collapse.

In my case, I follow the Pareto Principle and concentrate on the 20% of my customers that contribute to the 80% of my business income. More than just being partners in the business, I treat my top 20% as real friends. I talk to them personally, give them time and enough attention and even invite them in personal activities like anniversary parties, product launches, and even a simple office blessing.

I also taught my supervisors and managers that no matter what the issue or problem that we encounter in dealing with our customers, respect and understanding should be their top priority.

2. Give surprise incentives.

I believe this is one of the long and existing business start up ideas that can still grow any kind of business. As you all know, I started my career as a sales and marketing person, hence, I had a comprehensive training on this and I was able to use it in all of my business ventures.

Maybe a lot of you would complain and say, “ah that will only make my ROI longer, I will just stick to current marketing strategies so than I can save on overhead cost”. Please bear in mind that surprise incentives do not need to cost much, in fact there are many ways you can give incentives for free.
In my next post I will be giving you more ideas on how to give surprises that cost little or nothing at all.

3. Make it easier for your customers.

Remember that the world is an ever growing continuum, and with people having limited time to do so many things in a day, so this really makes “their time” very important. We are in a world full of too much clutter, so everyone wants everything to be automated.

Hence, we too as entrepreneurs must make everything easier for our customers. Specially the process of buying and acquiring the goods.
As humans, we usually want fast gratification of our needs and wants. By nature, when we buy something we want to get it fast and use it right away.

Think of it this way, our business acts as a solution to a need or want and the fastest business to provide the solution gains the most number of customers. For example, if you are selling a computer program to build websites and your instructions are unclear and insufficient, other products of the same nature who offer simple, user-friendly “newbie” steps with good customer support will eventually overtake your business.

It is important that as your business grows and your list of avid customers grows, your business needs to improve on how to make your customers’ lives even better. Service is one of the many secrets to business success.

Now go apply this to your business start up, and move from start up to success.

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