I caught up with a colleague of mine last week. She runs a successful small business and during our quick lunch we got on to the topic of finding new customers and general business development strategies.<\/p>\n
She put half her toasted focaccia down and said, \u201cIt\u2019s all about going right back to basics. Everything we do must have a direct impact on the market we want to attract<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n I nodded in agreement.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to know the psychology of your target market<\/em>\u201d, she said before taking a sip of her mineral water.<\/p>\n My colleague has never been one to reinvent the wheel. If a strategy has worked well in the past, she will put it into action in her business. And I know she has always been a strong believer in creating a client base of \u201cfans\u201d who will then, in turn, actively promote her business to others.<\/p>\n When I got back to the office I did a bit of research and came across an article which although written a few years ago, I feel is still relevant today. It discusses really<\/em> knowing your customer and defining your target market.<\/p>\n When I used to manage large teams of sales people, the one question I used to ask them before they embarked on finding new business was:<\/p>\n \u201cHow well do you really know your existing clients?\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I didn\u2019t want to know about what business they had provided us in a particular quarter (after all I could see that information in our database). I wanted to know if they knew where their clients were going on their next holiday, or whether they had any kids … or pets! More importantly if my sales people were calling their clients<\/em> whether they could say, for example, \u201cHi Sarah, it\u2019s Paul<\/em>\u201d, or whether they needed to say \u201cHi, Sarah, it\u2019s Paul Slezak<\/em>\u201d, or if they had to give the full greeting \u201cHi Sarah, it\u2019s Paul Slezak from ABC Limited<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n Think about how you announce yourself to your existing customers when you call them.<\/strong><\/p>\n But once you have a core group of customers, you would (one would assume) probably want to expand your customer base, at which point defining your target market becomes a key strategy \u2013 and of course there\u2019s plenty of interesting reading out there on this topic too. But with all the information out there, it\u2019s still important that everything you do has a direct impact on the market you want to attract.<\/p>\n I must admit that my colleague would be the first to refer to herself a bit \u2018old school\u2019 in some of her strategies. But sometimes going right back to basics when it comes to new customer acquisition and business development can be just as powerful as all the digital marketing avenues (or \u201calgorithms in the background of cyberworld<\/em>\u201d as she likes to refer to them) available today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I caught up with a colleague of mine last week. She runs a successful small business and during our quick lunch we got on to the topic of finding new customers and general business development strategies. She put half her toasted focaccia down and said, \u201cIt\u2019s all about going right back to basics. Everything we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n