I just thought I'd tell you about how I was made to feel like a 12-year-old school boy the other day. And I challenge you to ask yourself this question: are you putting barriers in your customers way that they either don't want to come and do business in your industry or don't want to do business with you?
If there's one thing we know in business it's that we need customers, people need to use our goods or services.
We're fortunate enough to have a swimming pool at home and the other day I knew that it needed some chemicals as it was a little bit out of balance. So i took a sample down to a local provider and got them to test it. They spent the next 10-15 minutes giving me a lecture in science, understanding why I didn't know anything about alkalinity or ph or chlorine.
This experience really made me feel like a 12-year-old schoolboy in a science class. And so i guess the point of this story is to think about what you do with your customers and the interactions you have with them. Are you actually putting barriers, consciously or subconsciously, in their way? Because if you are putting barriers in your customers' way they've got a couple of choices.
1) They can go to another competitor in the same industry.
2) They may actually go and move to a completely new industry altogether.
If you're familiar with what I've talked about around blue ocean and red ocean strategy, creating new customer demand is what we're trying to achieve when we're looking at blue ocean strategies. And here's a really good tool called a Buyer Utility – a very easy visual way to let you ask some questions around your customers and to check if there are barriers stopping them from doing business with you.
So if you're looking at updating your strategic plan for the coming period I suggest you go and have a look at the Buyer Utility Map – www.blueoceanstrategy.com/tools/buyer-utility-map – run through the questions and try not to treat your customers like a 12-year-old school kid!
Thanks for watching and until next time, take care out there.
For more about making your business a success, give me a call on 021 748 142 or flick an email to john@planaconsulting.co.nz
