Learn

Maximum Time: 65 Minutes

1. The Importance of Customers

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Customers must be the focus of your business. Their experience with your business will largely determine how well it does. Center all aspects of your business on meeting their needs. You want them to be enthusiastic about the experiences they have with your business.

Activity (10 minutes)

Step 1: Individually circle one “do” and one “don’t” that you feel are most important in being focused on your customers.

Being Customer Centered
Do’s	Dont’s
Build long-term relationships. Help customers understand the “why” behind your business. Provide opportunities for the customer to be engaged. Listen to the customer. Deliver exceptional service and provide a memorable experience. Help the customer become a champion of your business. Create a strong community of loyal customers. Ensure that interactions benefit the customer.	Concern yourself with making only an immediate sale. Make assumptions about customer preferences. Make decisions without considering customer feedback or data. Be inflexible in providing customers options. Fail to follow up with the customer after the sale. Fail to act on customer feedback. Fail to stand behind your service or product. Insist on being right at the expense of the customer.

Step 2: Share with the group your selections from step 1. Name a business that illustrates either the “do” or the “don’t” that you selected.

2. Who Is My Customer?

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As a business owner, you should gain a detailed understanding of the types of people, groups, or organizations that are most likely to buy your services or products. The more you understand your customers, the more specific the messaging, experience, and support can be for them. Some factors that can help you discover target customers include:

• Demographic: age, gender, marital status, occupation, income level

• Organizational: public or private sector, trade or professional, wholesale or retail

• Geographic: location, population density

• Psychographic: personality, lifestyle, interests, attitudes, opinions

• Behavioral: buying behavior, brand loyalty, benefits sought

Activity _{(10 minutes)}

Step 1: Turn to Mark Bailey’s Personal Business Planner (in the appendix). Have someone in the group read aloud how he described his target customer for his stadium tour business.

Step 2: Now go to your own Personal Business Planner. Be as specific as possible in detailing your target customer, and write this information under “My customer.” Try to include demographic, organizational, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral factors in your description.

Step 3: Have a few group members quickly share some aspects of their target customer.

3. Defining My Business Message

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After you have identified your target customers, it’s important to communicate to them why they should be interested in the service or product offered by your business. To help communicate this, develop a short business message that quickly promotes and differentiates your business offerings. It should include three key parts:

1. The name of your business.

2. Your service or product.

3. The reasons why your service or product is different or better. (Refer to your Personal Business Planner to review reasons why your service or product is different or better.)

Here is an example of a short business message:

“Hi, I’m Terry. I’m starting a business that will be called Hidden Fields Catering. We provide healthy catering options for business events, family reunions, and other groups. We use only the freshest organic ingredients in our meals. Our focus is on delighting health-conscious people who want creative vegetarian dishes and a hassle-free experience.”

Activity (15 minutes)

Step 1: Write a first draft of your short business message in the space below. You will not likely have enough time to finish this now, but at least write down the main ideas. You will be able to refine and improve your business message in the future.

Step 2: Divide into pairs. Practice sharing your business message with your partner. Provide feedback to each other. Use the feedback from your partner to revise and improve your business message.

4. Determining the Best Sales Channels for My Business

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It’s important to find the most effective ways to reach your customers. Many business owners use multiple physical and e-commerce channels to sell to and communicate with their customers. However, it’s best for new business owners to focus on developing no more than one physical channel and one e-commerce channel. Additional channels can be added when the business starts to grow. Common sales channels include those listed below.

Physical Sales Channels

• Direct sales: You or your salesperson sells directly to customers through personal contact.

• Distributor or wholesaler: You sell to a distributor or wholesaler, who buys your product in bulk and then sells it to other retail businesses.

• Retailer: You sell to retail businesses, and they sell to customers.

E-Commerce Sales Channels

• Website: Sales transactions occur on your own website.

• Online store: Sales transactions occur on an online store’s website, not on your own website.

• Mobile app: Sales transactions occur through a mobile app.

Activity (5 minutes)

Step 1: From the list of sales channels above, individually write down one physical channel and one e-commerce channel that would make the most sense for your business. Provide additional details about those channels if you desire.

Physical sales channel:

E-commerce sales channel:

Step 2: Divide into pairs. Explain why each channel you selected makes the most sense for your business.

5. Attracting Customers … with What?

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Your business will not automatically attract customers. You need to offer things they care about and that they believe will benefit them. Make sure your business message is tied to things that your potential customers want. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and ask, “Am I interested in purchasing the services or products that this business offers? Why or why not?”

Smart business owners are creative in getting the attention of their customers. Some ways to get customers’ attention are listed below.

Providing information and insights through videos, blogs, newsletters, articles, and trade shows.

Aligning with customers’ interests and social causes, such as by sponsoring events.

Allowing the customer to experience the service or product at little or not cost, such as by offering samples or coupons.

Instilling confidence in the company’s reputation and the quality of its service or products through customer reviews, industry awards, or other quality assurances.

Providing convenience and time savings by making your business easy to find and work with (for example, search engine optimization can help make your business easy to find online).

Partnering creatively with a popular, noncompeting business that serves the same customer group.

Activity (10 minutes)

Step 1: Based on the list above, individually identify at least one way that you could get the attention of your customers. Write your answer(s) below.

Step 2: Now divide into groups of three. Share the ways that you intend to get the attention of your customers. Get feedback from group members on these ideas.

6. Measuring the Success of Communications with Customers

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It’s important to measure whether your communications are attracting the interest of customers, contributing to more sales, and increasing profit. To do this, you need to measure:

• A specific way you are communicating with your customers.

• What the business result is.

Review the following examples.

Being busy isn’t the same thing as being successful. If your communications aren’t producing results, then they aren’t a good use of your time. This is why it’s important that you always measure your results.

Activity (10 minutes)

Step 1: Consider the following question and write your answer in the space below: How will you measure whether the ideas you identified in section 5 are working?

Step 2: Discuss as a group a few ways that you will measure whether these ideas are working.