business success strategies

Have you ever stopped to think about what your customers really want?  Small business success is achieved by satisfying customer needs and wants, so it makes sense that the competitor who really understands what the customers want and makes sure they give it to them is the one most likely to succeed.  And don't make the mistake of thinking that all customers want is a lower price.  If that is what you focus on then you are leaving a lot of profit on the table and a lot of customers unsatisfied.

Customer Service

When the idea of starting an airline business was first suggested to Richard Branson, he did some very basic market research to discover a need that was not being met by competitors in that market.  He conducted a simple exercise of phoning the People Express customer reservation line and discovered that it was almost impossible to get connected to a customer service operator.  He surmised that either the major competitor for the type of service they were planning was either very poor at customer service or so extremely popular that they had excess demand for their service.  Either way, Branson thought that this situation presented an ideal opportunity for the entrance of a new player in the market.  Branson's start-up company, Virgin Airlines has done pretty well by identifying an unmet need in the market.  Why didn't the existing companies understand what their customers really wanted?

Technical Expertise

A business can have an exciting vision and a clear mission, but until it has a customer it achieves nothing.  For a business to succeed, nothing is more critical than finding customers and satisfying them.  From this perspective, business performance can be broken down into a very simple equation.  The level of profits a business can achieve is a direct function of the number of customers it can attract, multiplied by the number of sales transactions with each customer, multiplied by the level of profit it can make on each sale, less the overhead expenses.

Total Profit = number of Customers x Sales to each customer x Profit per sale – Overhead Expense

It is useful to look at business through this strategic formula. Many business managers actually limit the effectiveness of their marketing and selling processes because they operate only through the accounting equation which says:

Profit = Revenue – Cost of Sales – Overhead Expenses.

The result of operating only by the accounting equation is that we only see the task of making sales as a single task instead of focusing on how to optimally perform each of the three specific marketing elements included in our strategic success formula. When you break down the marketing process into these three objectives, you can exponentially multiply your results.  Your profits move into supersonic range when you start to develop specific strategies to achieve three specific results:

In the normal business there is often the expectation that the sales inquiries should come because the business has a good product and a good position in the Yellow Pages. Perhaps in the good old days of the twentieth century that was enough. Today’s marketplace is different. There is greater competition, and the consumer is better educated. The recession has added even more pressure to the market, in many industries decreasing demand and increasing competition. The key to success in your small or medium size business is to be proactive in marketing, rather than hoping sales will happen as they always used to.

Today you cannot wait for a customer to come looking for you. You have to be able to first attract their attention, and then communicate why they should choose you over your many competitors. You need to be proactive in marketing. Being proactive is about making things happen. The really successful businesses make things happen; there is no waiting and hoping something will happen, like hoping a customer may call with an inquiry. The really successful business is always working to generate a customer response through powerful, proactive marketing methods.