Enticing prospects away from other brands is part of your job as a business. It is called competition. You want to develop a presence, a product and a service like no other that customers will come running to with great excitement and anticipation. And then, you want to fulfill their needs. So, how do you do it? How to you look more charming and wonderful than your competitor? Well, first, companies succeed because they provide a product or a service that matches up to what the consumer wants. These products or services solve a consumer’s problem in an effective way and provides top quality benefits... compared to the competitors. There are several strategies that you can employ to win prospect over to your products or services.
First, to gain market share, you need to gather information about the consumer needs, and then you design products or services to meet these needs. Try creating a system that continually gathers information about trends in consumer needs and preferences. Spot these trends ahead of competitors. Information on what is popular can come from the news, social media, movies and simply talking to friends. Pay attention to industry forecasts in trade publications. Think about how new technology that might change your industry.
Talk to your customers about what they want and what are their needs and concerns. Use the customers' ideas. Coach employees and your entire company to engage customers in conversations. If an someone decides not to buy from you, ask them why. You should consider this as valuable information. In this way, you can tweak your product to be more aligned with what the customer wants. Use customer surveys for existing customers or poll your target markets and that will provide you with further results. By putting customers at the center of your business and letting them state what they want, you have opened an avenue for customer ideas.
Make sure that you respond to your customers or prospects immediately. High quality customer service is essential in any business today. Consumers want to feel they are appreciated by the companies they do business with. Getting their questions or concerns addressed immediately is the only way to do business.Today’s consumer wants a company to go out of its way to fix any problems they have with the products or services. Making a great effort for customer satisfaction leads to higher customer retention and a greater market share. Because of social media and the internet itself, you no longer have the choice of responding to a customer’s issues within a week or 48 hours. Customers want a response NOW! Responding in real time when the problem happens moves your company right up the popularity ladder. Customer-support should be a department in your business and they should be trained with the utmost of care. Robot like responses or uncaring attitude will drop your company off the playing field. Customers are very savvy on what they are looking for and the right response time and attitude will be a strong basis for moving over to your company.
While you are developing your prospects and cultivating your customers, you need to keep a constant watch on your competitors. Make yourself aware of what they are doing to draw customers to them. Have they changed something suddenly that looks like there is a change in a customer’s needs? See if the same change works for your business. Are your competitors having a sale on a particular item? Try a sale too. The process of trying to increase your market share is a continuous one. You will have to constantly be trying to win over new customers. Remember that your competition is doing the same thing. It is a constant game. If you go into a town of some size, you will notice that restaurants are all gathered together on the same four corners. You can pull into any parking lot and have a choice of the type of food you want to eat. It is a strategy that works well and keeps every restaurant on their toes knowing what the other guy is doing and staying on top of their own game.
And finally, never take your customers for granted and assume they are completely satisfied, even customers you have had for years. Customers can turn on a dime when another business can suddenly look so shiny and new. If your competition has determined what a customer needs and it is better than what you are offering, you will start to slowly lose them to those competitors. Never assume customer needs are the status quo. They are constantly evolving and what you offer your customers must evolve as well.
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