Whether your goal is prize new customers from someone else or to keep your current customers compliment you from their EcoCash wallets the goal is ultimately the same, keep them choosing you. It’s easy to do drop buzzwords but it really comes down to giving the customers reasons to choose you. The 6 strategies contained herein are practical and applicable from the biggest business in the land to the vendor on the street.

Pricing

Yes, the lower the price the better, in any economy let alone our own. But it’s really not all about having the lowest price. Consider issues such as providing value for money. Cheaper products tend to end up being more expensive so the right price for the value is a much more important consideration.

Service and delivery

I’ve written before about how manufacturers are the only people in the goods business and those reselling goods are actually in the service business. Therefore as much as you may feel your business is goods based the service you offer is the real draw. Granted the Zimbabwean situation with scarcity and supply-side challenges makes it very much a seller’s market but what many have found is that when scarcity goes, nothing lasts forever, the customers will go where they feel treated better. Your business processes should provide a pleasant and efficient experience for the customer.

Staff

Those business processes are off course carried out by people so your staff are a big part of getting customers to decided to spend with you or against young. It’s not easy finding the right people, it never has been but the fact of the matter remains that the right people are out there and somebody will get them. Why cant someone be you? Assess employees for both job and culture fit. Train them in customer service and also pay attention to their recommendations. They spend a lot of time with customers and products too.

Competition

Entire businesses have been started by the provision of something customers felt was missing in the market. Econet wasn’t the first mobile telephony provider in Zimbabwe. Ecocash wasn’t the first mobile money provider in Zimbabwe. In both cases, they came to the market as the best based on the preferences and circumstances of the market. Study your competition for both what they are getting right and wrong.

Convenience

In many cases, if you can do the customer can too. Fresh in a Box provides greengrocery and other grocery items in a single package delivered to your doorstep daily. Sure I could go around to various locations securing the freshest fruit and vegetables and bring them home. But the amount of running around, fuel costs, negotiation and just time involved in the process is worth more to me than what they charge to do the same. That’s convenience. Are you making it easy for your customer? Easier than a DIY approach? Easier than the rest of the market?

Consistency

Consistency for the purposes of this manner is behaving in a manner that is exemplary of what you have held yourself out to be. By all means, do an influencer campaign for your product but does your business provide service that matches what your adverts and campaigns lead customers to believe? It is an absolute turnoff to the customer to be received by staff who are unprepared or otherwise unaware after being lured in by a great digital campaign.

What many schools of thought will never tell you but is found to hold universally true is that people tend to spend money where they enjoy spending it and that’s what the 6 points above are all about; creating an enjoyable experience for the customer. The success of your business can come down to how much people like you more than anything else. Don’t get in the way of them liking you.