₦airaland Forum

Employ referral marketing techniques by encouraging, informing, promoting and rewarding customers and contacts to think and talk as much as possible about your products, business and the value and benefits they derived. There are only three reasons a customer will want give referral to your business:
1. He wants to help you.
2. He wants to help the person he is referring.
3. He wants to help himself.
To get more referrals, you must encourage these motivations and make it EASY to refer you. Customers will only refer their friends and relatives to businesses they know, love and trust. We recommend you employ the following techniques:
Incentives: A gift, a commission or a discount, can all work as incentives for customers to help themselves. Adding an incentive alone is not generally sufficient, since whatever you offer is unlikely to make up for the possible risk involved. Think of incentives more as the carrot to push a referrer from ‘thinking about referring you’ to ‘actually referring you’. If you do offer incentives, it is important to do it with tact and care. This is because you don’t want your customers to feel you are trying to buy them and neither do you want their referrals to think they were referred for some other reason than for your awesome products and services.
Ask and you shall receive: Don’t be shy, come out and solicit referrals from satisfied customers. If you don’t like asking in person, then, send an SMS to your customers to tell someone about your business. They will be happy to do that.
Provide them with the tools they need: Ensuring your referrers have an easy point of contact-whether it’s a website, a Facebook page or just a business card to give out means you are removing one more obstacle to getting those referrals. And of course, make sure that the phone gets answered, emails get responses and you follow up on those referral leads. Don’t let them go to waste or you are unlikely to get referred again by that person. (Note: A large number of satisfied customers telling the world about your business is much more effective than any amount of advertising you can pay for).

Espirit de Corp.I'm a member of November November.Any business that does not require your physical presence would do.Avoid transportation business.If you're married,I'll suggest you open a retail store for your spouse to manage,while you do the overseeing.Remember the key to a successful retail business is location.Your failure or success will depend on the level of competition and the amount of traffic in your location.I wish you success.

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wooleyboi: joining the Nigerian Armed Forces is not as difficult as people think, yeah.

Are you a member of the Armed Forces?How did you arrive at your conclusion?

Unfortunate.

Distribution,If that is where your passion lies,I'll suggest you go for it.SUCCESS.

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I’ve shared this on this forum before.
25 POWERFUL RETAIL BUSINESS TIPS

1. Find out who your customers are and what they need.
2. Determine your customers` location, age, income, and occupation, population, buying habits, interests and life styles.
3. Know the reason customers patronize your shop and improve on that aspect. Remember that there is always a 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 as an imperative role to play in the quantity 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 who they are familiar with .Every business that wants to succeed must create and nurture meaningful personal relationships with customers.
9. Use a questionnaire to help you determine customer needs.
10. Train sales attendants to attend to customers in a friendly and professional manner.
11. Analyze customer complaints and take prompt and necessary actions to prevent recurrence.
12. Get attractive T-shirts with your business name and logo printed on them for your staff to wear to work.
13. Call customers to inform them when new products have arrived.
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 be associated with a dirty environment so keep your shop as neat and tidy as possible. Arrange your goods neatly on shelves.
17. Implement proven business formula of other successful retail businesses in your area.
18. Have the name of your business boldly and beautifully printed on a signboard at the top entrance to your shop.
19. Many small business owners view financial record-keeping as a waste of time. Proper accounting records provide information that would assist in making business decision. A small retail business without adequate internal control system and record-keeping stands the risks of being ruined by dubious employees. Keep proper records of inventories, sales, purchases, cash etc.
20. Develop a system for tracking slow-moving merchandise and those that are your best sellers.
21. Know your average sales transactions and what you can do to increase them.
22. Offer discounts and incentives to customers. They so much appreciate it.
23. Your employees are in the best position to give advice on how customers can be serviced better and how your business can be improved. Endeavor to seek their opinion regularly, especially before making strategic decisions. Respect your employees and make them feel important. One of my lecturers at the University of Benin once said that man is the hub around which every activity in an organization revolves. All other resources put together without labor to co-ordinate them, amounts to zero output.
24. Reward employees with bonuses and gifts for their extra effort and innovation.
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, ensure to choose a location that makes you visible to your prospective customers. Choose a location with a lot of traffic. An American authority in marketing wrote that the three most important factors to be considered in business are location, location and location.

We develop business plans not business proposals.You can download a free business proposal template at www.biztree.com

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Sijo01: 1. Planting a kiss on my lips when i least expect.

2. Holding me on ma waist.

3. Playing with ma hair (platin/loosing)

4. Ironing ma cloths.

d list is endless abeg!

5.Washing your cloths

omotola1: I‘m impressed! Kudos...

Thanks.

May his soul continue to rest in peace.

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gaby: Good nairalanders I'm presently in a grave dilemma as to how and what to put 5mn naira into as Per investment.please note that I've been terribly finger-burnt with my last investment in haulage which I'm yet to fully recover from.
Been thinking of setting up an eatery/bar or importation of used auto parts but will need guidance and advice on how to go about any of these.
thanks for your help.

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Follow me on this thread while I provide you with free,yet powerful tips to help you grow your business.To start with,you must identify your competitors.Your competitors are other businesses that offer similar products or services to the same customers you are targeting.Examine your competitors to see if you can identify a weakness in their products that you can use to win their customers.Can you provide a consistently better product/service for the same or lower price?Do not forget to download the free manual on my signature and start your own Liquid Soap Production business today.SUCCESS!

O boy.

It takes an entrepreneur to identify opportunities.

Very funny

I wish Nigeria victory.

Congrats to all admitted students.

A deep kiss.

Nice

Don't forget to call on us to help you develop a professional business plan.