Discover 15 + 1 Ways To Grow
Get to Know Your Customers
1. PERSPECTIVE - View your business as the customer does. From my years working with medical office clients, 99% of the time the staff enters a separate entrance and misses the dated magazines, dusty pharmaceutical brochures, and dead flowers in the patient waiting area. Does your business welcome customers with good "curb appeal" right into the store or office?
2. DATABASE - Analyze current customers to learn how to grow their repeat business and how to attract new ones. One client of ours considered opening a store in an expensive downtown area. A customer analysis showed this location to be a considerable distance from her affluent customers. She bought a van equipped as a mobile showroom and takes her custom art right to her customer's homes instead. Prepare and keep a customers database. Study purchase patterns and learn how to create and offer new products, services, or promotions.
Create New Ways to Market
3. DIFFERENTIATE - Make your product or service different from others in your market to provide something that brings customers to your door. Buy a turkey sandwich at most delicatessens, and that is what you get. But you have to wait in line at the Washington, DC deli where sandwiches are designed and named for famous people.
4. DISTRIBUTE - Find new ways to get your product to your customer or your customer to your product. There was a time when you had to visit the restaurant to purchase a gift card. Now these are available from supermarket and pharmacy display racks. Customer convenience has improved, card sales are up, and card distribution has created new business opportunities.
5. PARTNER - Look for businesses that can help you get your product or service to market. A client preparing to launch a franchised publication was able to partner with a printer at a reduced rate with the promise of more business and a software firm seeking to expand its franchise client base.
6. MAXIMUM YIELD - Accommodate your most valuable customers while you increase your revenue. Just as airlines and hotels price their services at different levels, adjust your pricing by location, day or time. The barber shop with a long wait on Saturday may raise its prices while offering a lower cost special on Tuesday when business is slow.
7. CROSS AND UP SELL -Exchange business with a non-competitive but complementary service. The consignment shop that offers a discount coupon to the local dry cleaner is rewarded with business from the same dry cleaner that offers a discount at the consignment shop.
Place shopping baskets throughout the retail store so customers who visit for one item are more likely to buy more if they can carry it out.
8. NEW DEMOGRAPHIC - Seek to add a new customer base to your existing one. A traditional spa decided to offer "sports buff" treatments for the men who accompanied their significant others. Now they have a new line of business in addition to their existing client base.
9. LOYALTY - Give existing customers a reason to return and rave. My pool store tracks my chlorine purchases, offering a free refill every tenth time I come in. No reason to go elsewhere and miss these savings. On my recent visit to my favorite bank, I was offered a cup of green tea and cookies. All the bank officers say hello as soon as I open the door. Make customers welcome and they will come back.
10. SIMPLIFY -Make ordering easy for your customers and simplify choices. I always wait in line at the nearby fast food restaurant that offers custom variations on only six menu choices. When compared to the usual fast food locations with up to thirty choices, the food is fresher and the quality better. Package a few items together like the fast food "combo meal" and you can even increase your business volume.
11. BEFORE AND AFTER - Identify businesses that can refer to you, and to whom you can refer. A hospital client wishing to introduce its new maternity service partnered with a locally-owned pharmacy to place information for new moms adjacent to the pregnancy test kits. New moms taking advantage of the physician referral service offered were directed to doctors who practiced at the new maternity unit. Look up and down stream from your business for these opportunities.
12. PLATFORM - Design your product or service to serve as a platform for other uses. A harvester manufacturer uses GPS and a computer to track crop yield. It then sells the information to the farmer so the yield the following season is even better. If you deliver a service to customer's homes, seek a complementary product you can offer whenever you make a visit.
13. EXPERIENCE - Customers are willing to pay extra for an experience. Cruise ships gain significant revenue from the land side trips that take passengers to exotic destinations at each port of call. When you visit Seattle, most everyone visits the Pike Place Fish Market where you catch flying fish in your arms. Adding showmanship to service enables a business to sell more.
14. LEGISLATE AND REGULATE - Monitor government legislation for opportunities to grow your business. The FCC opened a new market for television station equipment and tower companies when it mandated the digital TV system. For one client, we discovered a way to expand a new health plan into their market by closely examining the state insurance regulations.
15. SECOND MOVER - Take advantage of the innovators in your industry. An entire "after market" of new products has developed around the portable music players created by a major computer manufacturer. Headphones, amplifiers, and associated gear is offered by manufacturers responding to customer demand for complementary products.
Innovate to Grow Your Business
15 + 1. CREATE MARKET SPACE -Seek opportunities to break ground with a new product or service where no other business has gone before. While hospitals routinely adjust their prices across the board to meet rising costs, our client developed and patented a software system that applies retail pricing techniques to hold down these increases. This unique approach allows hospitals to slow the rising cost of treatment in their communities while gaining budgeting and revenue advantages.
"The essence of strategy is sacrifice". What are you willing to give up so your organization can focus on key growth strategies?
Call 407.451.7330 or send an
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