It’s important that we provide quality, on trend pieces at an affordable price point. However, it’s also important to listen to trends and understand the macro environment in which your business operates.
Knowing what is going on around you is a vital ingredient to the success of any company and will help you sell more. To sell more, businesses need to understand their customer and what’s influencing them, otherwise your business will never reach its full potential.
So the question is, ‘how do you know what your customer’s need and want?
Customer requirements on the surface may seem like a simple concept, but it is difficult to master for a number of reasons. Having the correct research skills is the first step otherwise you will have inaccurate information to work from.
This however may seem more complex than originally thought because customers are not always sure of what they want until they have it – bear this in mind when undertaking the necessary research.
It is also important to keep your goals and vision realistic as you may not have the ability, such as, the management structure or technology in place to make the changes required to meet your customer’s growing needs.
Companies that can provide the correct research skills, establish what their customers want and have the ability to make it a reality, will undoubtedly gain sustainable competitive advantage over their peers.
My 5 tips:
- Talk to your customers directly
- Undertake a competitor analysis – are my direct competitors offering their customers something better?
- Read the news and know what’s going on – this will help you forward plan
- Put yourself in your customer’s position and see things from their perspective
- Be realistic because you cannot achieve the impossible
