Not the usual blog but so many people are asking me about this topic…
- Ignore all accepted wisdom and assumptions about you business, the market , competitors and customers.
- Dig into service levels of your business and add 25% to the quality and standards given
- Be your own customer – ‘mystery shop’ yourself to understand how the customer is treated and how that can be improved.
- Talk to every customer you can; find out what they would like from you in service and products
- Look at how customers want to trade with you. Frequently? By phone? On line? Etc etc
- Increase the value of what you offer by adding zero cost elements to the service given. Yes, they DO exist.
- Look at how you can increase on-line business
- Join LinkedIn and industry groups and links in the site.
- Put yourself on face book and maybe even Tweet!
- Maximise the team’s customer focus – top to bottom of the organisation, inside out.
- Train everyone in commercial excellence – maximum sales/quality/profit delivery.
- Examine very closely what your competitors do to perform well
- Examine why competitors fail – there are as a many lessons in failure as there are in success
- Steal ideas from other industries. The world is full of gold nuggets.
- Examine how to retain existing customers better
- Look at lapsed customers and how to recover them.
- Create an internal demand for innovation ideas
- Give your team the freedom to create a winning culture
- Lead with a culture of accountability
- Use Stephen Archer’s ‘From Good to Great to Exceptional’ programme to move the whole team into the growth mode – overnight!
- Go to point 1 and go round again and again…