Want more customers? It is the easiest thing to do in business, the most essential thing for success and yet paradoxically the easiest thing to mess up.
I have been helping businesses start up and ramp up for over 15 years now and I have seen dozens of ways to fail. I’ve seen every mistake that I would have never thought of and made most of them too.
One of the simplest things you can do to attract more customers is position yourself correctly. It’s impossible to be all things to everyone and those that try learn that lesson in cold hard cash.
There are three ‘pivots’ in your position. There are many more factors you can use to position yourself at your market but these three, I like to call them pivots because everything else seems to be leveraged off them.
The pivots: Price, Product & Delivery. I’m often told that I have missed ‘value’. No I didn’t, these things make value! Depending on your business, Product could be replaced by Service. Delivery also includes the sales process and aftersales service.
The theory is that you can’t have all three. You can’t have the cheapest price, the best product or service and have the best, fastest or most convenient delivery. If you try, one of the pivots will suffer and because you have likely made representations to your customers, you will end up with unhappy customers.
The best businesses I deal with focus on one and have some minimum standards for the other 2. I have seen several businesses successfully focus on 2 but never all 3.
Let’s look at a simple commodity such as soft drinks to illustrate the theory.
Plain brand soft drinks are quite cheap. Do you really expect them to be the best quality? The delivery is ok, (average), it’s right there in any supermarket but it is not available in say, a snack bar.
Compare that with your favourite branded soft drink. It is rarely on special or as cheap as the plain brand. In reality, the cost of making your favourite brand name soft drink is 1 or 2 cents different from that of the plain brand. Branded is dearer, you expect good ( average) quality and it is available at triple the supermarket price in snack bars, service stations almost everywhere.
There is a brand of brewed ginger beer that is very hard to find. The quality is superb. When I see it I can’t help myself making that choice and to be honest, I don’t care how much it costs. It is often half as much again as the famous branded soft drinks.
So, how have you positioned your product or service? If you are trying to be the cheapest and the best and the best sales/aftersales service, your days are limited.
If you want more customers, pick one or 2 of the pivots and focus your efforts on those. Decide on what level you will pitch the other pivots and communicate the reasoning to your customers. When your customers are making a value judgment, these factors have a pivotal effect. Be careful of what you wish for!
“The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.” Peter F. Drucker
If you want help with your position let me know. I am happy to have a quick look at how you have your pivots in action and will give you a free, no obligation, report.
peter@specializedmanagement.com.au