loyalty | Now That's Business.

What kind of salesman do you absolutely dislike or just find them unconvincing? How many times do you have absolutely no clue what the salesperson is actually selling?

According to the Sales Executive Council research chart below, there are mainly four parts to customer loyalty, company and brand impact, product and service delivery, value-to-price ratio, and sales experience, and sales experience contributes more than half out of the 4 drivers. To analyze further, we can see that the most important aspect of a sales business is the human connection.

Want a customer to come back? Don't give them great deals, give them a great experiences

One of the standard textbook tactics for a salesperson is to identify the customer’s need, and offer solutions accordingly to their problems. Ironically, most customers’ “need” is to figure out what they need. The assumption that customers know exactly what they want is false, and if they do, they do not need a salesman. Rather than asking the customers what they need, it is better to tell them exactly what they need in a professional manner. This way, the customers are more likely to trust the salesperson, and go ahead with his suggestions, rather than being creeped out by the question “what’s keeping you up at night?“

As the economy recesses, “Coupon Economy” has become a trend amongst shoppers. A new term, “Extreme-Couponing“, was created, and refers to people who would not consume unless they can get discounts or bonuses from their collection of coupons. This action, however, alarmed the businesses that they might be throwing away money and receive no return from these coupon hunters. The creation of group purchase sites like Groupon and coupon-sharing websites like RetailMeNot did not help the cause either.

Coupons used to encourage customer loyalty, but with these extreme couponers, it is practically impossible to gain any profit. The exploitation of the coupon forced the businesses to rethink their approach in order to establish customer loyalty. In this internet era, it is easy for consumers to share and spread the “love for coupons”, therefore businesses would definitely need to change their marketing strategy to avoid low-yield customers.

This showed that in the field of business, there is no permanent, golden rule or tactic that will apply universally and forever. However, the age of coupon is not over yet. The key is to fully evaluate the customers, create a formula to encourage spending with coupons, and ride the trend to the top.

Now That's Business.

Tag Archives: loyalty

Mr. salesman, what keeps you awake at night?

Businesses starting to review their “coupon marketing”