1.Find out who your customers are and what they need.
2.Determine your customers` location,age,income,occupation,habits,interests and lifestyle.
3.Know the reason customers patronize your shop and improve on that aspect.Remember that there is always room for improvement.
4.Understand the market forces affecting your customers` behavior when it comes to price and how much they are willing to pay.
5.The price of a commodity has an imperative role to play in the quantity of products purchased.Provide lower prices than that of your competitors and also better customer service.
6.Seek suggestions from loyal customers on how you can serve them better.
7.Try to re-establish lost or inactive customers.
8.We are in the era of relationship marketing.Customers are more confident to purchase goods from people they are familiar with.Every business that wants to succeed in this epoch must establish and nurture meaningful personal relationships with customers.
9.Use a questionnaire to help you determine customer needs.
10.Train your sales attendants to attend to customers in a polite,friendly and professional manner.
11.Analyze customer complaints and take prompt and necessary actions to prevent future recurrence.
12.Get attractive T-Shirts with your business name and logo printed on them for your employees to wear.
13.Call customers to inform them when you receive new products.
14.Produce bags with your business name on them to pack goods for your customers.
15.Create new opportunities for customers to purchase more frequently from your store.
16.Nobody wants to associate with a dirty environment so keep your shop as neat and tidy as possible.
17.Study other successful businesses and implement their proven business formula.
18.Have the name of your business boldly and beautifully printed on a signboard at the top entrance of your shop.
19.Many small business owners view financial record keeping as a waste of precious time.Proper accounting records provide information that would assist in making business decisions.A small retail business without adequate internal control system and record keeping can easily be ruined by dubious employees.Keep proper records of sales,inventory,purchases,cash etc.
20.Develop a system for tracking slow-moving merchandize and those that are your best-sellers.
21.Know your average sales transaction and what you can do to them.
22.Offer discounts and incentives to customers.
23.Your employees are in the best position to give advice on how customers can be served better and how your business can be improved.Feel free to seek their opinions regularly.Respect your employees and make them feel important.
24.Reward employees for their extra efforts and innovation with bonuses and gifts.
25.And finally,the most important of them,location.The location of your business can make or mar it.If you have not already decided on a location for your business,congratulations.Make sure you choose a location that makes you visible to your target customers.Choose a location with a lot of traffic.An authority in marketing wrote:"The three most important factors to be considered in business are location,location and location."Thanks for reading.

The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something.It's as simple as that.A lot of people have ideas,but there are few who decide to do something about them now.Not tomorrow.Not next week.But today.The true entrepreneur is a doer,not a dreamer-Nolan Bushnell.

My son is now an 'entrepreneur'.That's what you're called when you don't have a job.-Ted Turner.

Biz tools , dats a gud one i love ur contribtn abt business consultation.

Thanks

That's is very detailed information.Consultancy free of charge.
Thanks

@ MGinfomarketer: Thankyou

Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character.But if you must be without one,be without the strategy.-Norman Schwarzkopf

The golden rule for every businessman is this:"Put yourself in your customer's place."-Orison Swett Marden

I have to make my own living and my own opportunity!But I made it!Don't sit down and wait for the opportunities to come.Go up and make them!-C.J. Walker

Managing business finance can be very tricky. If business finance is not properly handled, it will eventually lead to the closing down of the business.

A team of people have put together an application to easily help small and growing businesses to manage their finance from any where at anytime.

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The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance.Remember,the greatest failure is not to try.Once you find something you love to do,be the best at doing it.-Debbi Fields

Life is too complicated not to be orderly.-Martha Stewart

Business opportunities are like buses,there's always another one coming.-Richard Branson

The winners in life think constantly in terms of I can,I will and I am.The losers,on the other hand,concentrate their waking thoughts on what they should have or would have done,or what they can't do.-Dennis Waitley

There is no royal,flower-strewn path to success.And if there is,I have not found it.For if I have accomplished anything in life;It is because I have been willing to work hard.-C.J. Walker

Great thread, I will like to share some few tips in the area of Competitive Strategy.

How do Business face off competition

Competitors do two things to ur business, namely they reduce your profitability and secondly they might eventually kill off ur business.

They r three strategies a Business could adopt

1. Cost Leadership: Here we have the lowest price strategy that is you sell your products at the lowest price based on an efficiently running your business based on experience you have built over the years. Most customers gravitate towards low cost QUALITY goods, Most times your business serve the entire customer segment, the main priority in this strategy is controlling the cost of production through developing an efficient system that eliminate wasteages and blocking leakages.

2. DIFFRENTIATION strategy: in this strategy the business man designs his product to be different from other products, take cars for example, u have honda, toyota, mercedez etc, which stands out
! Mercedezs, make sleek cars which compared to the others are more expensive. Hence differentiation focus of making a product different by branding, design etc Product differentiatio involves substantial investment in Research and Development.

3. FOCUS strategy: the focus strategy requires a directing your product to a particular segment of the market, for instance in the sales of soft drink, you could make a product that caters for people who require low sugar content, this sort of market is refered to as niche market. This strategy usually protects you from competing in the general market.

Business is more interesting than any game.-Lord Beaverbrook

Learn to listen.Opportunities do not like being noticed.Hence,they do not knock hard.One could be knocking at your door this morning.