Three ways to make your business stand out from the crowd

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Posted on 14th September 2010 by Krishna Gupta in Business Intelligence

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When you are shopping for something, what’s the first question you ask yourself when considering a particular vendor or store? If you are like most consumers, the fundamental question, asked on reflex, is “Why should I do business with this person or business?”

Have you answered this unspoken question for your own customers and prospects? If so, does the answer make you stand out in your field, or are you simply part of the herd?

Every day, your customers and prospects are showered with advertisements, brochures, newsletters, Web sites, and other media that ask them to open their wallets. As a result of this barrage, buyers strive to tune out the noise by ignoring things that are the same.

Said another way, they commoditize the available choices. They identify the goods or services that, in their perception, are identical and differentiated only by price. Commoditizing makes everyone the same, part of the herd, and helps prevent “decision overload” by decreasing the number of choices from which to select.

Your challenge is to keep your business from being turned into just another sheep in the herd by your customers and prospects. How do you do that?

Perception.

If consumers look at your business, your competitors’ businesses, and (it can happen) a totally unrelated business, and see them as the same, you are in trouble. When this happens, your only competitive criteria are price and convenience – no customer loyalty, no recognition of value. Some companies may be able to stay alive as sheep, but they are unlikely to grow in any significant way or stay healthy over time.

Perception is reality. To differentiate yourself from the herd, you must clearly articulate your value and unique benefits. This is easier said than done, but it definitely can be done. To differentiate your business in your customers’ eyes, consider this approach:

Articulate your view of the business (your internal perception). For example, why are you the one to choose over your competitors? Where do you create needed value for your customers? What are the values by which you conduct your business and how do they benefit buyers? Express your internal perception as clearly as possible.
Look at your company through the eyes of your customers and prospective customers. Be realistic. Understand the strong tendency to commoditize and don’t fight it. Ask customers why they do business with you, what works and what doesn’t. Get a feel for how prospects view you, and how they make buying decisions.
Pinpoint mismatches between your internal perception and your market’s perceptions. Don’t overlook simple things: Make sure your appearance, your Web site, your e-mails, and anything else that your market sees of your business all conspire to create the desired perception.
To differentiate yourself, stand out by creating the right perception. When your customers and prospects know that you aren’t just part of the herd, they will buy, and they will stay.

This article is written by Murray Smith from OneCoach Team!

How do I find more customers?

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Posted on 9th September 2010 by Krishna Gupta in Business Intelligence

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In my previous two posts we addressed the questions: How do I generate more profits per sale? and How do I get more sales per customer?

The third question that every business owner should ask themselves every day is: How do I get more customers?

John and I have spent years learning the answer to this question. In fact we have taken this it to a whole different level by adding one critical word that, when you add it to this question, can skyrocket your business growth and help you achieve a whole new level of success.

Ask yourself: How do I get more of my ideal clients?

Serving more customers is not nearly as critical to your success as serving the right customers. In order to obtain more ideal clients you need to have a clear marketing campaign and all of your strategies and tactics should be in sync. For example, your marketing and sales tactics need to be cohesive with your sales process.

Further, you know exactly who your ideal client profile is, what they look like, their demographics, their psychographics, etc. This is your target audience, and all of your marketing campaigns and sales processes should be aimed at appealing to this group of people.

Don’t be afraid to test out different methods of marketing. There are hundreds of market tactics to choose from, whether it be direct e-mail campaigns, Web banners, or postcards. Try some out and see what method has the highest turnover rate for your ideal customer. Then try different things. It’s about testing and continually refining so you get better and better at reaching your ideal clients, speaking to them in the language they understand.

The sooner you have identified your ideal client, and know the most effective way to reach them, the sooner you will create the business of your dreams!

This article is written by Murray Smith – Onecoach Team!

Be friends with your marketing

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Posted on 8th September 2010 by Krishna Gupta in Business Intelligence

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As the CEO of your own company, you are in sales and marketing, whether you like it or not. Thusly, there are many societal forces we must contend with in order to dominate the market. And whether you realize it or not, you are constantly engaged in the battle for mind capture and getting attention. Those who can persuade the most effectively, call it sales or influence, will win and pass their ideas or their innovations onward.

And so, one of the first things you need to keep in mind is that the marketplace is not just skeptical, it’s cynical. This is because we are overloaded with so much marketing noise, so much hype in the media that we are very jaded towards advertisements.

There are simply too many choices out there, and the number of choices is only going to increase. Thomas Friedman’s book, The World is Flat, illustrates the impending fierce competition of India and China, and the need to raise the bar immediately – a tremendous resource for a snapshot of today’s marketplace and where it’s going. The point is if you think it’s tough now, imagine when these super powers kick it into high gear.

This competition is heightened by the massive bombardment of marketing messages every single day, ranging from 1,500 to 3,000. Think about it, even on the low end that equates to about 10 media messages every minute – not even counting the other thousands of neural messages.

What chance do you have to get through all that noise? Well, in order for our brains not to fry out and explode, we have become very good at tuning out marketing messages. In addition, today’s customer is much more empowered and smarter than ever – probably the biggest catalyst for that is the Internet.

Another major challenge we’re facing is time starvation or deprivation. With all the new gadgets, technologies, stimulation and new forms of media, we actually feel as though we’re at a deficit or a time shortage.

So, we’ve got six forces that we’re up against:

cynicism in the market
too many choices
too many messages
people are very good at tuning out marketing in general
the market’s smarter than ever
and we’re all time starved.
We need to be aware of all of that going into battle to effectively present our product or service through this great big labyrinth of marketing.

This article is written by OneCoach Team!

How do I generate more sales per customer?

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Posted on 7th September 2010 by Krishna Gupta in Business Intelligence

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In my previous post we discussed how to get more profits per sale.

Today we’re going to look at the second of the three crucial questions that every business owner has to ask themselves every day, and that is this: How do I get more sales per customer?

After all, you absorb substantial cost and expend a lot of effort to obtain your customers, so why not try to sell them more?

First, there are several things to think about. You need to consider:

The frequency of interactions you have with your customer
Their lifetime cycle (how much they will buy from you over the five years or so of your relationship)
Their value per transaction.
In order to optimize your relationships with each customer, you have to tell them about every component of your business. Your customers should be aware of all the products and services that your company provides. You can achieve this through back-end sales or “upselling” a client with a particular product or service that compliments what they are already buying. This can be as simple as asking at the point of sale, “Do you want to super-size that?”

Another for-instance: Many small businesses have taken an example from airline companies by starting their own frequent buyer rewards card. This is smart. Offering rewards to loyal customers will not only increase their frequency of purchase, but also extend their lifecycle.

Other alternatives include expanding your product line or range of services to accommodate a more diverse customer base.

The ultimate goal is to first get more profits per sales, then engage your customer to buy more!

In my next post, we’ll look at the crucial question: How do I find more customers?

This article is written by Murray Smith – OneCoach Team!

How do I generate more profits per sale?

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Posted on 2nd September 2010 by Krishna Gupta in Business Intelligence

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The ultimate goal for every business, obviously, is to be successful and make money.

To create that success, there are three crucial questions that every business owner must ask every day. These three questions will help you optimize your business performance and ensure that you are taking the right actions to increase profits and decrease overhead costs.

The first question you should ask yourself is: How do I generate more profits per sale?

It sounds like a simple question, but there are many ways to answer it. When looking at obtaining more profit per sale, we are talking about optimizing each sale. Logically, the more profits you acquire per sale, the higher your revenues will be.

There are numerous ways that you could go about this. You could:

Raise your prices.
Decrease your costs.
Do both of the above.
Bundle your products, combining separate components, and thereby creating a new composite offering of higher value, which commands a higher price.
Unbundle your products, so you can charge for each separately, and grow your profits that way.
It all comes down to how much value your place on your products – and there are many ways to do that, so it’s worth thinking about carefully.

In my next post we’ll examine the second of the three crucial questions: How do I get more sales per customer?

This article is written by Murray Smitha from OneCoach Team!

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