Know Your Costumers

The most important barometer for the success of your business is your costumers. Know not only the costumers that constantly buy goods or services from your business but also those who bought and never came back again, and those costumers you never had.

The good costumers are those consumers who always make you smile. They are the cybershoppers that you want to keep coming back over and over again. The question is how? To keep those good costumers you may need to know more about them, not just their likes and dislikes. Knowing individual costumers on some personal basis isn’t enough. No, it isn’t. Success is more than just selling products and services to individual buyers. Success is a matter of knowing who the costumers are, their backgrounds, and fulfilling their needs better than the competitors does.

When it comes to understanding your costumers, one good strategy is to find out what other businesses try to learn about their customers. Monitor what information other companies ask. Then, Track where your costumers are, break them down by country, states, city or neighborhood. Figure out who your costumers are, such as knowing their ages, gender, occupation, income if possible and most of all nationality. Learn more about how they live. Set up a questionnaire carefully so you don’t offend them. Know their hobbies, favorite sports team, restaurant choices, and vacation destination.

The other kind of costumers that I would like to discuss with you is the bad costumers. Why there is a need to know these people they don’t patronized my business? Remember that you don’t define the business that you are in, your costumers do. How do you distinguish bad costumers from a good costumer? A good costumer usually does the following like, ask you to do things that you do well, Place value on the things that you do and are willing to pay for them, Challenges you to improve your skills, expand your knowledge, and focus your resources, Take you in new directions that are consistent with your strategy and planning. While a bad costumer do the following such as, Ask you to things that you are not equipped to do well, Distract you, causing you to veer away from your strategy and your business plan, purchase in such small quantities that the cost of doing business with them far outweighs any revenue that they generate, Require so much attention and services that you can’t focus your efforts on more valuable costumers, Remain dissatisfied with what you do, despite all your best efforts.

Obviously, you want to keep all your good costumers and keep them happy and satisfied with your products and services. But, what about the bad costumers? What would you do to them? Try to examine the situation and surprisingly you’ll find out that there are some that you’ll like to keep and a few you’d rather give to your competition.

How do you handle bad costumers? Figure out who they are. Convert them into good costumers. And after all the efforts you did, still can satisfy them. They give you more trouble such as orders always not in stock, or orders are always return, they don’t pay on time. Hand them over to someone else.

You may wonder, what about the other costumers that I never had? How can I lure them into my business? Make it as your challenge. Find out what your market really thinks is important. You competitors’ costumers are telling you what you are not. This information is really important especially when you want your business to succeed. This will define who you are and who you want to serve.