Building Customer Loyalty through Value Adding Sales and Marketing Techniques

Delivering continued customer satisfaction through value adding sales and marketing techniques is essential to ensure that customers remain loyal to the product/service they enjoy. Ensuring customer satisfaction is no mean feat. In today’s business world, an increased buyers bargaining power now means that buyers have become increasingly knowledgeable about product choices, service standards and above all, customer rights. It then follows that exceeding customer expectations is a must do for any business that is serious about building customer loyalty.

Customers care about their own satisfaction than they do about the success or failure of the company. Simply put, without the customer there is no business, and to remain in business, their satisfaction is all you should care about. It is this satisfaction that brings about loyalty in the medium-long term.

So how do salesmen and marketers help build customer loyalty to the brand they represent? Below is a diagram of the “sales and marketing reward chain” that illustrates the reward process from the sales effort to customer loyalty.

 

 

The salesman engages the customer in a bid to sell the product/service; the customer then uses the product/service and enjoys value added. This value added is what then leads to customer satisfaction and subsequent repurchase. Repeatedly going through this cycle will lead to customer loyalty.

For the marketer / salesman to help build this value adding process, good selling techniques are involved. Good selling is providing the right product/ service to the customer. Having an effective selling strategy helps you to logically craft how to identify and manage the whole sales process.

As a general rule, you should try to create interest first in what you intend to sell. If you don’t believe in what company does, why work for them? If you don’t believe in a product/service, why sell it? If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody will. There’s nothing more embarrassing than a salesman who lacks product knowledge.  Above all, good selling is value selling. When a product purchased or service rendered exceeds customer expectations, value is received and customer satisfaction is guaranteed. In selling, always pinpoint the benefits derivable from a product to ensure the customer constantly enjoys this benefit.

Good selling should provide a suitable platform and mechanism for expressing customer satisfaction/ displeasure with a product/service. Customers must be allowed to enjoy value at every instance they come in contact with the company either through its products, personnel or service channels.

In conclusion, if the product offering is excellent and customer service delivery is superb, the marketer/salesman will have gained advantage delivering value to the customer. Based on value continuously enjoyed, satisfaction sets in; customer loyalty and trust become a reward.

Valentine Okolo

To get the full course "Basic Sales, Marketing and Business Development Skills" kindly click the course logo on the right or visit the Braincert LMS

Cash Management and Cash Audit Procedures for Small Business Owners

Effective cash management and cash audit procedures will help businesses reduce the incidence of cash fraud through misappropriations and outright theft.  Every small business owner should have basic knowledge on cash management to enable them effectively keep an eye on the receipt and disbursement of cash within their business. Maintain a cash book (your cash book should have a cash at hand and cash at bank)

Tips for auditing cash transactions

1.       Perform a physical cash count and compare the amount to the balance in your cash book.

2.       Obtain all cash receipts and trace them to the cash book

3.       Obtain all bank receipts/tellers/cheques and trace them to the cash book

4.       Ensure all cash expenses were properly recorded and are represented in the cash book

5.       Ensure all expenses in the cash book were properly authorized

6.       Ensure the amounts on the receipts, tellers and expense vouchers tally with what is on the cash book.

7.       Add up all the amounts on the cash book to ensure it tallies with the cash book balance.

Tips to employ for effective cash management procedures

1.       Ensure no single individual is allowed to receive, record and keep custody of cash

2.       Always keep cash securely locked in the vault or cash safe

3.       Ensure the cash vault/safe requires at least 2 persons to open it

4.       Surprise cash counts should be done by independent/control personnel who are not involved in receiving or disbursing the cash

5.       A Bank reconciliation statement should be prepared regularly to keep track of bank cash

6.       Staff handling cash should be rotated regularly

7.       Any significant change in revenue or expenses should be promptly investigated.

8.       Employ the use of alternative payment systems such as pos, online payments, etc to reduce the receipt of cash

9.       Cash audit should be performed regularly.

10   Alterations on receipts, registers, cheques and expense vouchers should be investigated.

11   All cash items such as cash book, receipts, cheques and registers must be securely printed, numbered and locked from unauthorized persons. They must also be securely locked by persons currently using them.

Valentine Okolo
valentineokolo.blogspot.com

Rules for Niche Marketing: Tips to Help You Find and Manage your Niche/Target Market

A niche is a focused targetable portion of a market. It can also be described as the people interested or people that might be interested in that particular product or service that you intend to provide.

It then follows that if you intend to sell sporting information on football players, clubs and or football matches, then your niche market are those that watch or play football. However to be more effective at identifying your niche market, you need to narrow down the audience to a specific target. The whole world should not be your niche market. The question then arises: how do I narrow down the audience to a specific target. The answer to that question lies in researching your target market, industry, competitors and environment thoroughly. See some articles which will help you in researching.  Better still, for a more detailed approach get the course “Basics of Starting a New Business”.

Also avoid markets that nobody knows about. Before you can sell any product, there has to be enough demand for that product or service that will sufficiently keep you in business. It is difficult to create demand on your own and of course I would advise you not to try to do that. As a matter of fact, you cannot create demand. Ensure that what you are presenting to your niche is something they want and you can make easily available for them. It is also a good idea to provide differentiated products or services that make a bold statement for you in the market place.

Also there should be a level of competition in the market for you to compete in. Don’t worry about how to deal with the competitor. The course “overcoming competition in Business” will help you take care of that. Your market should not be too little or too large. Reducing your niche to specific targets ensures you increase your chance of reaching your actual potential clients easily. It’s your ability to be able to reach your actual customers and satisfy them totally that will determine your level of success in that niche. To satisfy your customers, you need to know and understand what your customers feel they will benefit from using the products you create.

Learn to create marketing options. This allows you to increase actual sales and ultimately your actual customer base. This also means that different customers may have different uses for your products and so a formidable niche is not just a fixed number of targeted audiences but a flexible number of targeted audiences. You will also need to understand specifics concerning your niche audience and circumstances that may affect your niche market. For instance, certain products or services can only be offered at specific time seasons or periods. You need to understand specific periods when your niche market is hot and when it is cold. This will enable you to make the most out of your audience when the going is hot.

Have a clear understanding of what is obtainable in several locations within your niche market .this will ensure that you customize your products to perfectly suite your target audience.

Valentine Okolo

Get the course "Basic Sales, Marketing and Business Development Skills" and "Overcoming Competition in Business by clicking the Course button on the right or at Braincert https://www.braincert.com/course/Basic-Sales-Marketing-and-Business-Development-Skills
https://www.braincert.com/course/Overcoming-Competition-in-Business

Mystery Shopping: a Tool for Excellence in Service Delivery; Mystery Searching: a Tool for Excellence in Business Management

A mystery shopper is a person employed by an organization, often temporarily, to buy goods and services from it with the aim of ascertaining the quality of service delivery by staffs within the organization.  The mystery shopper is often times unknown to the staff that will be attending to him/her. This distinct advantage allows the mystery shopper to obtain facts about the conditions of service given to him/her and obtainable within the organization without bias. For instance, if a mystery shopper is hired to observe the conditions of service obtainable in a mall, he may be required by the employer to obtain facts such as:
* the length of time spent on queues,
* the service approach of the front line staff,
* how much product knowledge the staff had,
* the look and ambiance of the service store,
* the ability of the staff and manager to handle difficult situations or handle an irate customer (this
   the mystery shopper can achieve by pretending to be difficult or even unreasonable),
* the type of products that may appeal to customers by observing the preference of multiple mystery shoppers etc.

Mystery shopping has become a perfect tool for achieving excellence in service delivery as organizations now use this to improve on areas that impact negatively on service delivery. But mystery shopping only helps us improve the quality of service delivery by front line staff. How about the quality of service delivered by back room staffs, departments, senior managers, human resource personnel, sales personnel, finance personnel and research personnel. These groups of people also deliver service to the organization even though not at the front line. Whilst it may be argued that control personnel are there to monitor the quality of their service delivery, we must not forget that control personnel also monitor the performances of front line staffs. In essence, the mystery searcher is there to provide a third eye that is usually missed out by internal staffs. The ability of these groups of staff to deliver business excellence will affect the growth of the organization. This is where I encourage the use of people I call mystery searchers to perform what I call mystery searching.

A mystery searcher is a person employed by an organization temporarily or otherwise to ascertain and observe the conditions and quality of service delivered by back room staffs, senior managers, human resource personnel etc. For instance, an organization may employ the use of a mystery searcher as a candidate in a recruitment exercise to observe the quality of the recruitment and quality of service delivery of staffs assigned to attend to potential employees. Also mystery searchers can be included as vendors to search out the activities of staffs in purchasing unit. A mystery searcher may be assigned as an employee in a department or unit or to observe the controllers assigned to units. 

There is no limit to where a mystery searcher may be deployed as long as it is employed to achieve excellence in service delivery. Whilst it is crucial to ensure that front line staffs deliver excellent service, it is also crucial for organizations to ensure that the managers and back office staffs they employ deliver excellent service to the organization.

Valentine Okolo

Get the course "Delivering 5 Star Customer Service" by clicking the buy button, at Braincert or send me an email.

Tips for Developing Strategies to Overcome Competition in Business

Competition includes all the actual and potential rival offerings and substitutes a buyer might consider. This includes actual and potential offerings from industry operators, potential new entrants and market competitors.

The ability to identify and analyze all actual and potential competitors to your business is key to surviving in a fierce market place, keeps you ahead of them and helps you develop strategies to overcome them. To analyze its competitors, a company must identify its competitor’s strategies, objectives, strengths and weaknesses and then device its own strategies to overcome them. It must also have a clear understanding of the environment it operates in. Understand that the environment you operate in is similar to that of your competitors. Learning how to overcome the challenges in your business environment is a step towards overcoming the competitor.

Companies are also increasingly being faced by the threat of buyers growing bargaining power and suppliers growing bargaining power. As such companies must spend time to research and understand its actual and potential customers, what they expect from them, how to exceed their expectations as well as what influences their buying patterns. Exceeding customer expectations is no mean feat. In today’s business world, customers are increasingly knowledgeable about product choices, service standards and above all consumer rights, hence the increase in buyers bargaining power. Exceeding customer expectations has become a must do for any business that is serious about gaining market share, loyalty and customer trust. You must understand that if you are unable to impress potential customers and keep your current customers loyal to your brand then you have already lost to the competitor no matter the strategy you choose to adopt.

Understand that the customer is the reason why you are in business and not the competitor. If the product offering and service delivery is excellently superb, then your competitors will naturally have a hard time keeping up with you even if you have not deliberately prepared an attacking strategy to defeat them. Understanding the customer is the first step towards building a strategy that will keep them coming back to you. Therefore, in other to defeat your competitors you will need to:

·         acquire practical skills that will enable you to understand what customers expect from you,

·         exceed their expectations on product and service delivery,

·         understand what drives their behavior when buying,

·         understand how the environment you operate in can affect you and your competitors,

·         get a clear understanding of who your competitor is and what they may be up to,

·         Develop strategies that will help you attack the competitor and effectively defend your flanks.

The strategies available to a company will depend on the strength of opposition it is facing, its distinctive competencies, the expectations of its customers, the conditions prevalent in its environment, its resource capabilities, the cost/benefit derivable from the application of the strategy and its current position within the market.

Valentine Okolo

To get the course "Overcoming Competition in Business" please click the Course button on the right or, please visit Braincert at https://www.braincert.com/course/Overcoming-Competition-in-Business