So today I want to talk about something that every business needs and that is customers.
Now, it doesn’t matter if you’re running a multi-million pound company shipping goods around the world or you’re a local sandwich bar. If you don’t have customers, let’s face it, you are not going to survive!
The trouble is that most businesses don’t have an endless queue of people outside their door, banging to get in to buy something. And, even if you are pretty happy with the number of customers you have today, the chances are you’re probably going to lose some over time so you will certainly need even more in the future.
So today, I want to share some tips on how to find new customers and whether it’s through direct sales to customers or business to business, the principles are going to be the same across both.
Now, the first rule of finding customers is to be really clear on what you’re trying to sell. That might sound a little bit strange, but let me explain…
Most businesses are not single product businesses and they sell a variety of different products and services. Now, history shows that if you try and sell everything to everyone, you’ve got to spend a lot of time talking to a lot of people about stuff that they really don’t want. So the starting point has to be deciding what you are trying to sell to whom.
Let me give you an example. If I’m running a restaurant, I need to decide whether I’m trying to increase lunchtime traffic or evening bookings. If I’m selling electrical products, I need to ask myself if I want to focus on white goods or is my focus going to be around TVs and soundbars?
Having a focus is super important. It might seem like a great idea to tell all of your customers about everything you offer, but let me assure you categorically that it will not work.
There is actually a theory called the paradox of choice. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, is a book that’s been written by an American psychologist called Barry Schwartz.
Now in this book, Barry argues that eliminating customer choices can massively reduce anxiety for shoppers and make buying decisions easier. You’ve probably suffered from it yourself, I know I have! You’re looking through a 20 page restaurant menu, you keep flicking between the dishes because you can’t make your mind up what to eat and the more choice they give you, the more confusion there is, right?
So, rule number one is decide what you want to sell because it makes it easy for the customer to then choose it. The second rule is to know who your customer is going to be.
If I go back to that restaurant example, if I’m trying to put up my sales of Sunday lunches, then I need to think about the sort of customers who are likely to come out for Sunday lunch.
The good news is that if I already offer a Sunday lunch, then all I need to do is look at who’s already coming in. I might discover that they’re mainly couples or they’re retired people or younger families. Whatever that research is telling you, it’s going to be really important because it’s going to shape the way that you go out and find even more of these customers. So we all know what we want to sell and we think we know who’s going to buy it right? Well number three is all about targeting your customers with an offer that is specifically designed to appeal to them.
There’s no point just telling people what you do. You have to make the message really personal and you have to make that message speak directly to them.
So, let’s back to the Sunday lunch sales. We’ve established that we tend to get certain types of customers. Great. There’s our starting point. We know what we’re doing. If we want to attract retired couples, we might want to share a message that appeals like a small plate Sunday lunch for the lighter appetite or a two course lunch that includes a tea or a coffee to finish, for example.
For the families, it might be an offer that’s based around Sunday roast alternatives for little ones or free ice cream might appeal, or we can promote the fact that we’ve got free activity packs to keep the young ones occupied. Think about what might work for that customer group.
Now, while both of these initiatives are aimed at achieving the same goal, more Sunday lunch sales, the way we would go about attracting those different customer segments is very, very different. In my businesses, we’ve applied these principles consistently. We think about our products, we refine what we want to present, and then we target the customers that it might appeal to with language and offers that we think they might be interested in.
Don’t get me wrong, it sounds easy when I say it, right? Every campaign to find customers and get sales up is a bit of a learning curve but the truth is that there really is no alternative.
Well, I mean, you could sit there and hope that people will find you, but let’s face it, is that going to have much success?
The final thing I wanted to touch on is marketing, because getting those messages out to potential and existing customers is a huge subject. So it’s not what I’m going into detail on today, but I do want you to think about this as the next step.
There are so many ways that you can market your business and they all come at a cost whether that’s a time cost or a money cost, but regardless of how much you’re investing in marketing, it’s easy to understand what you’re trying to sell and who you’re selling it to. And that’s the really vital stage that should precede all of the planning of your campaign. So remember, every single business needs customers.
Some customers you know already, others you need to introduce yourselves to because they don’t know that you exist yet, but regardless of how successful you are today, you will lose some customers for a variety of reasons so topping them up is essential.
I want you to think back over those tips, hopefully apply them to your business, and I guarantee you’ll get some great results.