Chapter 8: Responsiveness

Every situation good or bad presents an opportunity. It’s up to us if we use it for our good or bad. Same logic applies in business. Let me explain it with a very recent example. This is very popular topic nowadays in India. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently announced that old notes with 500 and 1000 denominations will no longer be valid. This step is taken by Indian government to act against black money.

This news came on November 8^th, 2016 in the evening somewhere around 8 o’clock in the evening. Old notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 were going to be invalid from midnight of 8^th November. Everyone thought that it’s a big problem as they won’t be able to transact. However very few saw an opportunity in it. On the same night I got a text following message from one of the supermarkets

‘We are OPEN till 11:50 pm TODAY. We welcome you to shop at the nearest store’.

This store turned this situation into an opportunity, whereas others thought it was problem. They tried to maximize their sales within few hours of one night. Management should be very fast in responding to any unusual change in the market. Often government policies have impact on business. In every situation management should carefully analyze circumstance and find how the business can benefit from it.

Responsiveness is key for every business to derive benefit from any and all changes happening within its environment. 

Chapter 7: Sales and Service

Primary purpose of any business is to sale its product so that it can make money. Any organization has to build a customer base to whom it can sell its product. Apart from building a customer base, retaining customers is also equally important for long term survival. One loyal customer is more valuable than ten customers who are not loyal towards the product of the company.

In this chapter we will cover two aspects:

• .      Building a customer base
•      Retaining customers

Building a customer base

This is the first step towards customers. The way an organization approaches customers depends on nature of business. If the company is in retail business marketing through television advertisements is the most common way to inform consumers about your products. Sometimes you can see two brands competing with each other through advertisements also. Cold drink brands Pepsi and Thums Up are always engaged in war. They literally challenge each other through their advertisements.  

Door to door marketing is also a good way to build customer base. Companies send their salesmen door to door to sell their product directly to consumers. Introducing discount offers, free gifts is also a good way to attract customers.

Retaining customers

Retaining customers is equally important for any business to survive. Nowadays with so many competitors in the market selling same product getting a loyal customer has become very difficult. The only way to retain a customer is to give a good quality product at reasonable rate. An organization should keep on improving quality of its product/service. As explained in chapter 3: Life Stages (Part 1) introducing new features to product is very important.

Just selling a product/ service to a customer is not enough, seller need to keep in touch with the customer even after the product/service is sold, because customer has a very week memory. They will forget you soon if you are not in touch with them. If the consumer is facing any problem with the product/service, the company should make a sincere effort to solve that problem.

So in simple words key to success in a business is build and maintain good relationship with customers.