For every success you’ve got in developing your market share, another company or other businesses will inevitably be right behind you.
Here are five quick and effortless small business tips to get a competitive edge over your competitors and insulate yourself from the threat of new entrants on the market.
1. Do not sell products, provide solutions
Like it or not, people out there aren’t looking for your brand, they are just looking to resolve a problem or find a specific kind of product. Explain to the client in simple, straightforward terms why or how your product can help them assist in the attainment of their targets. How can your product or service — along with your delivery stage — solve other people’s issues and make their lives easier or more pleasurable?
2. Always optimize your pricing
Dropping prices does not necessarily increase sales, though it’s going to surely squeeze margins. If you place yourself as a premium brand, then your clients are not necessarily value-driven, and cutting costs may even tarnish your brand. If you are a premium brand, there are ways to maximize your pricing without lowering costs. By way of instance, offer the quality-conscious client an’ exclusive’ advantage your rivals don’t or can’t provide. If you’re at the value-driven end of the marketplace, on the other hand, do not assume slashing prices means incurring a loss. Low prices can help you quickly onboard a pile of new clients who might also purchase other items in your store and return. The best way to market a $5,000 watch, for example, could be by placing it next to a $10,000 watch.
3. Hire friendly customer-facing staff
Yes, it seems obvious, but it is so essential! Whether knowingly or not, individuals are more inclined to buy a product if they enjoy the sales assistant who is attending to them. While the worker’s character has no bearing on the purchase price of your product’s capacity, favourable customer-facing staff will always pull in more sales. Be rigorous in hiring individuals that are genuinely cheerful, outgoing and friendly. Ensure that your training program instructs them to embrace a consistently warm strategy that puts clients at ease and feel like a priority.
4. Stay open even longer
Say you are a bricks-and-mortar shop and you are getting a rush of clients as closing time approaches, why not shut up an hour later? While this may lead to disgruntlement among employees, solve this dilemma by getting creative with rosters. Monitor customer footfall through the day and week to spot your busiest periods, and staff people so. You might even reduce headcount during quieter periods to offset the higher prices and longer working hours generated by your extended opening hours. It’s a win-win!
5. Do not make customers dig deep to get a phone number
Even in the electronic age, some clients will always prefer to contact you by telephone instead of email or Facebook. It is well worth giving customers the choice of having a voice-to-voice conversation with your brand. By all means, slash the time and cost spent responding to questions by funnelling clients to standardized, pre-existing responses on your page (i.e., FAQs). But if their query isn’t in the drop-down menu of FAQs, then do not make them click more than once more to locate your telephone number. Place it front and centre in your webpage, especially if you’re a retail offering.’ Live chat’ bots are an inexpensive means of offering real-time communication, also.
To wrap it up: there are tons of ways you can improve your company, and not all of them are complex!