How important is customer for your business ?

Everybody knows that without customers you can never build a business. While you may think that you have created a breakthrough product but unless you are able to create customers for your products you will never be able to sell it. This is a very common answer that most people know. According to me this is one of the three step process that is needed to build brands, which will then lead to sales.

Various experts have cited different ways of gaining customers. As a sales and marketing expert, having launched 10+ brands in the country and running a consulting firm; I have been able to evolve a better way of achieving this goal. Through Sharp Strategies That Work I will be putting my thoughts on this and how you can achieve growth and sustainability thorough customers.

Many say that you are not into the business of sales but into the business of customer acquisition. Yes it is true. Until and unless, you are unable to acquire customers, you will never be able to build business. This requires are lot of clever investment. Target audience understanding is the key pre-requisite of how we can achieve this goal with precision.

For an instance, lets assume that the above statement is true. Remember that customer acquisition program is an expensive preposition. You can keep on investing and creating more and more customers. However, remember that any brand is considered to be successful when there is self pick up. Through customer acquisition program we are trying to push a brand. The sales and promotion team is continuously pushing the sales. The moment this push is reduced the sales reduces drastically. This creates panic and more money has to poured in to gain customers. But how long can one invest. There has to be an end to it, for if you invest more than what is needed, money will drain out and you will still not find an answer to why when the customer is left alone, she is not buying.

Consider the famous example - When you fill a bucket and take it from point A to point B, you notice that before you reach the point B, the water in the bucket becomes half. So go you back to A and refill. But as you reach point B, the water again become half. After repeating, this process a few times, you realise that there is a hole in the bucket. So no matter how many times you fill, it will reduce. The water is not being retained.

The second step and the most important step in gaining customers is customer retention. Many entrepreneurs are afraid to go to this step, because when we devise customer retention program, we have to go slow on customer acquisition. There is sudden dip in sales because now the product will be left alone. Through retention program, you have the make the customer come to you. It is an acid test. Most companies choke and think that they have reached the end of the road. I must make you aware here, that until and unless, a brand is not able to retain customers, it can never succeed in a competitive market force. A bigger effort is needed to retain customers. I would also advise that when a brand is launched along with acquisition, the points that needs to discuss is - duration of acquisition process; initiation of retention process and strategies related to both.

The process of acquisition and retention done well, will lead to customer adoption. This is when your brand is registered in the mind of the customer. Once you have the customer with you, then your cost comes down drastically and strategies changes. At this stage you have to remind the customer about your existence and periodically keep your self updated with an eye on competition. If you see and decline in sales, then may be it is time for you to re-think your strategies again. Innovative strategies are quite helpful to re-invent. As a strategist, I think a little tweak here will need less investment and result in good numbers.