How do I grow my business? and How do I get ahead of my competition? These are just some of the questions that entrepreneurs ask every day. So, here are 5 tips that will allow you to answer both positively.
Let’s accept it There will always be competition in business. Whether direct or indirect, the competition will try to step on your feet and take away customers. But this is healthy. Healthy for you and your customers.
As a business owner you need to keep innovating, looking for ways to compete and using attraction and retention strategies. Without this you will become vague and reactive and you will not reach your maximum potential.
As a customer, competition favours you. You can stay where they treat you well, leave if they do not, compare prices, seek better services, greater convenience, better products and countless options. It’s the smart business owners who take advantage of this so that you spend your money with them.
The serious mistake of most business owners is to believe that simply because they offer a product / service, nothing else has to be done and that it is enough to sell it to some consumers, wait for them to come back and continue to sell them, ignoring even basic advertising strategies such as using a pop up stand to attract new customers in a mall or taking advantage of specialist banner printers to produce large scale display advertising that really stops people in their tracks.
But, apart from advertising, here are 5 tips to bear in mind if you want to get ahead of your competition, and stay there!
- Be clear about your vision
- Look to the future to know where you want to go.
- Stay tuned to trends reading articles, the newspaper, magazines and everything that concerns your field of business, as well as the local or national economy to know what strategies you can implement.
- Listen carefully to your customers.
- Have a clear vision of why you are in business so that you can communicate it to your customers.
- Put passion into what you do
- Serve your customers
- Listen to their needs.
- Ask them constantly to tell you how to improve.
- Send them thank you cards (by hand if possible).
- Smile, greet them, say good morning, thank you, come back soon, we value you.
- Be willing to change and innovate
- Improve the service, and customer service.
- Improve the products or services.
- Offer conveniences, such as a web page, printed or electronic bulletins, better schedules, and so on.
- Stay alert to the competition. Study their movements to take advantage of them.
- Looking to grow constantly
- Partner with other businesses to attract more customers.
- Join non-profit organisations.
- Support the community.
- Support other entrepreneurs.
- Love as a golden rule
- It sounds old-fashioned, but love breeds love. You make it!
- Love yourself and your neighbour.
- Do for others what you want them to do for you.
- Put yourself in the shoes of your client.
These universal rules are the ones you really need to make your business flourish and stay ahead of your competitors. Because vision engenders passion. Passion attracts constant change. Change is the brother of growth. And love is what you need to visualise, to be passionate, change and grow so that your customers will not go to the competition.
