There are two major causes of business failure that result in closure or bankruptcy. The first is a company’s inability to sell its products or services, and the second is a company’s inability to get paid on time, which leads to it running out of money.
1. A company’s inability to sell its products or services: Nothing happens in a company until a sale takes place and the sales person brings in the money that everybody can live off. (more…)
If there is one strategy tool for building profitability in a service organization, it is the service-profit chain.
This ‘chain’ works based on the natural concept of chains which is that a chain is only as strong as its links. Hence, to make a chain strong, all the links must be made strong. Conversely, if any link of a chain is weak, the whole chain is as weak as that link. (more…)
No one has control over the state of the economy. Today, due to the pandemic and its resultant impacts, the aggregate consumer demand is low. We are indeed in tough economic times.
However, this is not the time to focus less on marketing, but rather the opposite. In reality, reducing your marketing efforts in tough economic times is the last thing you should do. Instead, it is recommended that you change your approach by expanding your channels of marketing so as to increase reach without spending more. (more…)
Many organizations think that the only way to grow their business is to find new customers. But often, the best source for growth is sitting right in front of you – existing customers. (more…)
At some point in the sales and marketing process of most organizations, they will use the phone to reach the right person, close a sale, follow-up with a customer or to handle a customer inquiry. Thus the phone is necessary and integral to most organizations’ success.
This is primarily because there is nothing entirely as personal and as fast as a phone call, which is why potential customers still prefer to call, despite having other options such as social media or chats.
Also, many people have phones. There are almost as many phone subscriptions as there are people on the planet. In Nigeria alone, the total active telephone subscriptions were 182.70 million at the end of November, 2019. This ubiquity of phones means that many prospects are accessible through calls. (more…)
What are your products and services actually worth to customers? Not many organizations are able to answer this question, but it’s very important.
In fact, right now, with so many things changing in the way we live, the ability to understand the value of our product or service from the customer’s perspective has never been more important. And that’s where the value equation helps.
Value means the benefit the customer gets from our product or service compared to its cost to them. Put differently, it means benefit to cost ratio. (more…)
Businesses spend a lot of time and money figuring out how to attract new customers to their product or service. But less thought is given to customers who stop buying and simply leave.
Customers leave for various reasons. And it’s not always easy to pick out the exact reason why they leave. When you ask, they may give a variety of excuses but those may not be the real reasons.
Statistics, depicted in Figure 1 and Figure 2, tell us the major reasons why customers leave. (more…)
When e-learning was first proposed as a viable alternative to classroom-based learning, many organizations were skeptical. And, at the time, their suspicions were well-founded. Unfortunately, while the quality of e-learning has improved greatly over the years, many of these early misconceptions have yet to fade way.
Here are some of the top myths many organizations have about e-learning, and why they’re either not true, or not the complete story. (more…)
To do their work, employees typically need hard skills. For example, Customer Service Officers need to know how to solve customers’ problems, Computer Programmers need to be able to write functional codes, and Accountants need to be able keep and inspect financial records.
However, beyond the hard skills, which customer service officer do you go to? The one who is pleasant and takes time to answer your questions; or the one who treats you like a number in a long line of customers?
Which programmer do you retain when the economy is down? The one whose attitude is positive and upbeat, and who is always willing to help; or the one who is inflexible and has a hard time admitting mistakes? (more…)
When a supervisor is not assertive, then in real terms, they are either aggressive or passive.
Aggressive supervisors use their positions of power and authority to belittle, intimidate, and control those who report to them.
As a result, their team members begin to resent them. Then their productivity begins to fall, and if the dictatorial behaviour of the supervisor continues, it will not be long before the organization begins experiencing a high employee turnover. (more…)