Who moved my purse?

I am sure many of you have read the book titled "who moved my cheese". Well today we are going to talk briefly about the purse, and who moved it.

Your customer is your purse; they are your money/income. Your product is not your money, it is your cost - it is a liability until you get it our of the door and get someone to pay for it. Therefore, if your customer is your purse, it is really important that you know how to make sure your purse is always fat and always with you, regardless of how much you take from it.

1. Understanding your customer is like getting to know the purse

You have to know how and where the purse is in order to get to it. You have to really understand your customer; and when I say customer I mean those who had paid for your goods, not some prospects with no buying experience from you. Understand how they look like (male or female); what do they do (housewive, working mom,  professionals, loafers); what is their characteristic (teenager, middle aged and grumpy etc); which segment do they belong to; where do they normally hang out, work or live; what do they like to do; what is their problem; what are their needs. You have to know the purse because if you lose it you need to know how to find it back.

2. In most cases you misplaced your own purse

You do this when you change your 'delivery channel' to your customers. For example, moving from direct selling to in-store selling or online sales. In this case, your direct selling purse is left behind somewhere and you are now holding an in-store purse. Most of the time you will be wondering why is the purse empty, no customers, when in fact you are holding a new purse- the fat direct selling wallet is left behind. You have moved your own customers, you moved your purse.

Therefore, the point is whenever you are expanding, check if you are moving onto a new purse and if so, make sure the connection to the old purse is maintained in the same momentum as before while you work to build the new purse. It will be hard work at first but if you plan properly and accordingly, you will achieve success and avoid the unnecessary frustration and angst.

3. Put a string on your purse

Pareto rule states that 80% of your income will come from 20% of your customers. Always, always have means to keep in touch with your customers, old and new. This is like having a string to your wallet. If you are a cleaning company, send them and email or sms every thursday asking if they need house cleaning. If you are a cake company, a week before someone's birthday, send their friend a message suggesting cakes (you can get it from facebook nowadays or some other ways). And always make sure that the customer can get 'in touch' with you easily, either through web or otherwise.

This is a case of building customer loyalty, retaining them from competitors- those people who want to steal your purse.  Remember, first there is customer acquisition and then retention. Acquisition is much harder than retention but the result from retained clients is many times higher than customer acquisition. Retained customers not only will keep buying from you, they would refer other customers to you - doing the customer acquisition job for free. Therefore, keep the string to your purse strong.

Work smart people

-end-

The Author is the principal of ElixirEducate- a training house for Smart Entrepreneur Training Series. He was an international investment banker, corporate financier and now serial entrepreneur and business coach. You can find more information on ElixirEducate at their facebook page, here.  And be a facebook friend  of Yazdi . Please share this information to your entrepreneur friend who may benefit from this post. Thank you.