If you want your customers to spend with you why not make it easy?
This may seem obvious to you, but it is not always obvious to most business owners and I would like to get you thinking a bit here. Let me explain by example…
I have just got back from a break myself and the guy that owned the apartments also owned the small supermarket down the road. The apartments were self catering so it would be good for the owner if the people staying there were to cook food and purchased from his shop.
When we arrived he took time to mention his shop so that we would visit, which we duly did and I am sure you are waiting for the but here…and there is and not just one the way I see it.
1. If the owner were to say to the people staying in his apartments…”should you buy from my store I will give you a discount off all of your purchases” This discount could be 5% or 10% or whatever, but it provides a sense of loyalty and this guy has a ‘captured audience’, albeit there are a number of other supermarkets around and some that I found to be cheaper. This business man has lost out on a significant amount of extra business, which is staring him in the face.
2. The facilities in the apartments were not what I would call ideal for self catering purposes and consisted of two electric hobs, a fridge and a few pots and pans – no oven or grill, no toaster, no kettle and no sufficient utensils for cooking a good meal. If he were to provide better facilities people might be more inclined to cook meals instead of going out for dinner, thereby giving the owner a better opportunity of extra food purchases.
3. The supermarket did not sell cold meats that could be cooked in the apartments – when I asked him where he had any meat or if there were any supermarkets around that did – he replied no and you would need a car to get to the nearest one. As it happens there was a discount store with a much better selection and at cheaper prices just a short walk down the road. So he has now not only lost out on potential sales and on holding his ‘captured audience’ by offering a discount to create some loyalty, but he has now broken my trust in telling me a un-truth about what is available locally.
This is just a simple story to try and illustrate a point about trying to make it easy for your customers to buy – one of the 7-ways to grow your business is to sell more to your existing customers and this business man failed badly in my opinion.
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Many times we find businessmen who do business for their own convenience and not for the convenience of their customers. It’s mostly a kind of way to isolate themselves from the people of lower extraction.
Being a slap in the face of everyone who would go to their business shop, there’s not much future for such a business mentality.
And it’s a pity to see valuable resources wasted in so so projects with so so results. Every little business needs relatively substantial resources to merely exist, and the misuse of those resources doesn’t help anybody’s efforts.
Well, hospitality is the key to any business success. When you see someone trying to pull you into the purchase badly making up all kind of stories and showing that he’s the only one around, run from that place. The true quality of the product or service should be obvious without any further interpretation…
Yeah you definitely need to make it so you encourage customers to become loyal customers and reward them for it. He certainly could have made a lot more by not being so dishonest or rewarding customers for loyalty.
.-= Jessica Guerro´s last blog ..Building A Successful Business Website =-.