The Circle of Business
Imagine your business in the middle of a circle. What will you be surrounded with? What is it that you should be faced with?
We have often defined a successful business as one with customer loyalty. The circle of a successful business is customers. Customers are the circle of business.
For a business to succeed, it has to concern itself with the needs of the customer. For most entrepreneurs starting up, the biggest challenge is getting loyal customers and building brand recognition. This is a challenge because we often have the belief that once we launch/offer a product or service, the market will come rushing us
We often believe that if we invest in buying new equipment, opening bigger offices or moving to a new location will automatically boost sales. We fail to understand that the only investment that is secure in any business venture is an investment in customer understanding.
We discussed about understanding customers in our previous discussion. It’s worthwhile to refresh our memory later for a deeper understanding. With the age of digital communication and technology, understanding customers has never been more crucial.
E-commerce giants and trillion-dollar company, Amazon, have a very interesting story. They’re the largest selling book store in the world and they don’t have a physical store. They sell online.
Amazon’s success story is mainly driven by ideas and innovation in technology. These ideas and innovation stem from carefully analyzing customer behaviour. Some weeks ago, I wrote a blog https://paschalagonsi.com/drop-shipping-the-side-hustle-friends-and-family-will-never-know/ . The article featured a Nigerian entrepreneur, Valerie. She uses e-commerce to sell only to foreign customers in the US and UK. She understands that customers in these regions find it easy to buy and shop goods online.
Based on that understanding, she developed a strategy to create awareness in these niche markets, and she’s smiling to the bank till this day. Most entrepreneurs jump into business, eager to sell products and make profit without Understanding the customer.
There’s a story about a certain man who wanted to start a restaurant and instead of opening one right away, he went to work as a waiter for one of the biggest restaurant chains. That gave him the perfect opportunity to study customer behaviour and needs. Armed with this knowledge, he has today, a very successful business.
Entrepreneurs must be like an Army General. He/she must have and truly possess the ability to lead his/her business to the victory. Entrepreneurs must have a customer understanding strategy in order to compete. Here’s some tips from the Customer Corner on how to attract and keep Customers in your circle of business:
1. Make Customers Your Friends
Once you have been able to identify who’s your target customer, you need to start networking with them. Make prospective and loyal customers your friends. Hang out with them.
Learn their needs. Offer support and recommendations for other solutions they may need. Why not spend time with people who are contributing to your success?In return, you’ll gain Loyalty and brand recognition
2. Neglect is the chief cause of failure
A sure way to kill a business is to have a lack of understanding of who your customers are, what the market trends indicate, what products are in demand, etc. You never want to be in a situation where a prospect has more product and industry knowledge than you do. That would be disastrous.
Never neglect to always update your understanding of your customers and your industry. As explained earlier, customer understanding is key to opening up new ideas and innovation that will drive your business success.
3. Don’t clog your wheel
Impatience and Inconsistency are prime killers of business success. You have to always be focused on delivering customer satisfaction, product superiority and operational excellence. Again, understanding that the customer wants a service that is available and reliable will help us stay consistent or lose otherwise.
It’s important that we consistently remove/refine anything that will hinder us from delivering excellence service to the customer.
Summary
- The circle of business is customers.
- If you’re not attracting and keeping customers in your circle, you must be neglecting customer understanding.
- Business is about customers and as such, our every activity must be in line with customer acquisition and retention
