A salesman at work. FOTOSEARCH
A friend recently asked for my view on
why his sales people were performing dismally despite the incentive and
training and other resources at their disposal.
Having
being a sales marketing manager of several companies, he knows how to
hire, train and equip a sales team. True, he had the best team in my own
judgment but his weakness was so obvious that anyone would wonder how
he missed the point — his products were not as good.
He
was trying to push an inferior product using a superior marketing. This
hardly works. The most rewarding of all business activities is to
develop products or services of high quality.
The
success of marketing is dependent on the products. This is way it pays
to start marketing before you develop a product to find out what your
target customers will appreciate and would be willing to pay for at
price profitable to you.
Experts stress that quality is
the most powerful and effective of all marketing strategies, and since
quality is relative and subject to customers’ perception, it is good to
involve the customer from the beginning.
More than 80
per cent of business success will be determined by the quality of a
product rather than the amount of marketing. It is very expensive to
market an inferior product.
Even though you may
persuade customers to buy, they will hardly come back or recommend their
friends to buy it. A good product makes marketing very easy and
enjoyable. It helps you create a brand that people will always be
willing to pay a premium and which makes your satisfied customers your
free marketing agents.
Another key success factor in business is your customer retention strategy.
You
cannot depend on quality alone to survive in the market, especially
when there are so many competitors who can match your quality. You need
to retain your customers by building good relationships. Psychologists
tell us that human beings are creatures of emotion not logic. Most
buying decisions are made emotionally and justified logically. Thus your
ability to connect emotionally with customers is the greatest asset in
retention.
Client loyalty is a product of good
relationship with business staff. In other words, the quality of the
relations that you create with customers determines whether they will
keep buying from you and recommend others to you or not.
The
only way to make good profit in your business is to either acquire
customers at a very low cost, or retain them long enough to become your
cash cow. The latter is always the most economical.
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