Questions To Ask For Business Growth
Getting better market knowledge
Getting better market knowledge
Is your business operating at optimum potential?
Is your business worth the time you are investing in it?
A fantastic business should be one that excites both you and your customers. It should add a sparkle to your eyes and create a sense of satisfaction in your customers. If yours is a high end luxury product or service the customer should feel it is worth every dollar paid. If it is a budget product or service the customers feeling has to be good value for money. Either way the base customer emotion should be, “what a bargain”. Equally important is your genuine appreciation of having delivered on your promise to the customer.
A happy customer can very quickly become your client and advocate who promotes’ your product or service through social endorsement and recommendations to family, friends and the wider community. There is no better advertisement that that of a genuinely satisfied customer. Money cannot buy you that. You will have to earn the support of your customer advocate not through marketing campaigns but through actually delivery on the promised quality and experience. It is critical that you ask the question, “Am I succeeding on this front?”
So, how do you find such customers? To avoid trial and error of feedback after sales, conduct market research and surveys as to the potential market that exists for your offerings. Do people want what you are offering? Do you need to modify your offering? Get feedback from both the physical and virtual market. Either way you will need to get feedback from authoritative sources and potential customers. With this preliminary data you may want to test market your product or services and obtain the subsequent feedback.
Giving free samples or demonstrations in return for feedback is another way to obtain information that can help you plan your marketing and pricing strategy.
The biggest fear in doing preliminary surveys is the concern that somebody else may steal your idea. You can utilize intellectual property protection to a certain extent. However, it is more important to identify a market rather than to allow the fear of losing the possible market to some other business to prevent you from conducting such a survey.
At the stage of conducting a preliminary survey there is no real market to lose. A potential competitor may not necessarily have the same quality of skills, knowledge, commitment and resources that you and your team may have.
A survey might help you understand why others may have failed previously. It is cheaper to learn from the mistakes of others. In many areas of business we find competitors vying for what appears to be the same market. But very often we also find one business that appears to have a commanding share of the market way ahead of the other businesses in the market place. This very often is because such market leaders tend to be responsive to the evolving market demands. Hence we see fast food chains adding fresh fruits and salads to the menu alongside processed foods. This reflects the growing consciousness amongst the wider population of the link between nutrition and health.
Very often success comes not just from having a good product or superior service but additionally from having the right vision and drive to succeed combined with facts regarding market realities as the foundation of your business strategy and plan of action.
International Business Consultant
Your connection to global markets!
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, North America
The geographical centre of the world’s largest market!
