In my previous post I asked the ultimate business question:
Why do your customers buy from you? Too many business owners do not have an answer to that question that is compelling. Things like great service, great quality, fast shipping may give you a leg up on your competition, but don’t you want to destroy them? Better said, don’t you want to do better than you’re doing right now? If the answer to the ultimate business question is obvious, then you’ve done your job and it is likely that business is great – or at the very least, better than your competition. I’m guessing for most there is room for improvement.
I promised to give you some ways to improve on your answer to the ultimate business question and here is #1:
Have an incredible offer for your customers
Obviously it isn’t easy but think about it. What you offer to your customer, is it with the usual terms, the usual quality, the usual promises? An incredible offer doesn’t and probably shouldn’t mean an incredible price. That is a losing proposition and frankly easily imitable by your competition. It may require work on your product, your service, your delivery or some combination of all the factors, but if you can offer something that is meaningful to your customers that they aren’t getting anywhere else, what an advantage!
One of my favorite business books of all time is The Irresistible Offer by Mark Joyner. Mark says, and I agree, that at the core of all business is the offer: “You give me x and I’ll give you y.” If you can make your “y” seem so overwhelmingly worth the x, you’ll be able to print money.
Joyner says that to have an irresistible offer, it must have 3 components:
1. A high return on investment. Your customer needs to feel a real value is present.
2. A touchstone. Something easy to understand and memorable. Joyner references perhaps the most powerful touchstone in American business history to make his point. 30 minutes or less or it’s free was the touchstone that took Domino’s Pizza from a local chain to a worldwide pizza phenomenon. Joyner further proves the power of the touchstone by pointing out something that was true of Dominos during the explosive period of growth: The pizza sucked. But Dominos understood that fast pizza is good pizza and possibly free pizza is even better.
3. Believability. It must be realistic to the customer. Did Dominos give free pizza away? Absolutely but at a rate that was financially negligible. What they did was improve their system to assure that they could meet the time demand.
So developing an offer is not an overnight process. It may require some fundamental changes to how you operate. And you need to spend some time in figuring out how you will present it to your customer base so that they truly believe they have to at least try what you are offering. If you aren’t already doing it, you should be surveying your customers. Beyond all of the valuable feedback you get about what you’ve already done for them, looking at their comments should give you some valuable market research into what they really want from you. Your offer should speak to their most valued desires. You may need to test it, tweak it and practice it. Anything of value should take some hard work but the payoff of truly considering your offer in a serious fashion may be just what your business has needed.
Why do customers buy from you? How cool would it be to answer: “Just look at what we offer our customers – they simply can’t resist us!”