This article is a collection of some of the best advice I’ve given to my students and clients. It features actionable tips and strategies that can be implemented by business owners and entrepreneurs to launch, manage and grow their businesses successfully. It covers a wide range of issues including branding, customer service, customer relationship management, employee motivation, advertising, marketing, competition and many more.

Implementing just one out of the several tips I will be sharing will yield significant positive results in your business. How much more if you’re able to implement all?

This article is an invaluable resource to every business owner or prospective business owner. It will save you hundreds of thousands of naira you would have paid to consultants. You are free to share with your friends and relatives.

Here are 35 Highly Effective Tips For Business Owners:

1. Define your brand. No two businesses are alike just as no two customers are. Hence, there is need for you to brand your business. What does your business stand for? What differentiates your business from other businesses in your industry? What do you want to be known for in the market place? What is that special thing about your business? No one business can appeal to everybody. So your best response is to define your brand and consistently communicate and promote your Unique Selling proposition(USP), the unique qualities that differentiate your products from the multitude and compelling reason customers will patronize you instead of your rival. Your goal is to be different and better than your competitors, and the first step to achieving that is to ask yourself – What does my business stand for? What do I want my business to be known for? And What picture do I want to create in the minds of my customers and the general public?

2. Target the right people. If you try to advertise to everybody, you will end up targeting nobody. Your first step in improving your marketing effectiveness is to identify a group which has the greatest need for your product. Having identified your niche, you need to grab their attention by highlighting what is beneficial and important about your product in all your campaign. Customize your promotional materials and advertising campaign to appeal to their greatest needs and focus your marketing efforts towards your target customers. When you target prospects with the greatest need for your products, your marketing efforts will produce the best result at the lowest cost.

3. Launch your business by hosting a Grand Opening Event. If you are not working on a tight budget, you may consider marking the establishment of your business with a grand opening ceremony in which prospective targets will be invited to grace the occasion. This will give your target an avenue to learn about your products and business and will give you the opportunity to showcase samples and demonstrate how they help your targets to solve problems. At the event, you should create a register to collect the names, contact information and other important details of participants for the purpose of reaching them with periodic reminders about your products. You should also provide them with promotional materials. The only reason they’ll not patronize you subsequently, is if your product does not add value to them.

4. Let your business stand for something. Otherwise, it will fall for anything. To remain competitive, you have got to be distinctive. You must revisit your reason for being in business and make it one greater than just making profit. If there is nothing peculiar and unusual about your business and how it relates to meeting the needs and solving the problems of the market, then you have no reason being in business. Focus on the value you will be delivering to your customers first and keep improving on that, money comes naturally, because people will only keep paying for what they consider valuable. Offer your customers something special, a value, a benefit they cannot get from your competitors, such that they will have a second thought about patronizing your competitors.

5. Choose a competitive advantage for your business. There are basically three key areas available to you to focus on when choosing a competitive advantage:

Quality: You can choose to beat the competition by offering a superior quality than others.

Price: You can choose to beat the competition by offering the lowest price in your industry.

Service: Or you can choose to beat the competition by offering an unforgettable customer service.

The first two forms of competitive advantage will cost you a lot and often time, customers can choose otherwise. There is always an alternative to quality; if you focus on only offering the highest quality, at a premium price, customers will scout around for lower quality at a cheaper price. There is always an alternative to price; if you focus on offering the cheapest price possible, it will require that you drive down your costs to the barest minimum. And this may result in low quality products and customers will begin to complain.

My recommendation is that you select either of the two; price or quality as your competitive advantage and complement it with service. Without the element of service in your competitive strategy, the customers cannot be satisfied. People may not remember how great your product is (quality): They may not remember how much you made them pay (price), but they will never forget how you made them feel (service).

6. Create a customer database for your business. Your customers are the lifeblood of your business. The more you know about them, the better chance you have of providing products and services to them that they actually want to buy. Research has shown that it costs 20 times more to get a new customer than it costs to maintain older customers. Customers are very expensive to attract that is the reason your business needs to focus on a Customer’s Lifetime Profitability (CLP) rather than on a one-off purchase. Your business should place more emphasis on building an enduring relationship with customers rather than making a new sale. Your customer database is your best marketing tool. Along with the name and contact of your customers, your customer database should include products purchased and date of purchase. You can then use this information to target your advertising and marketing strategies by reaching them again with periodic reminders and offers.

7. Focus on what your customers really want. Your customers really don’t want your products or services. They don’t even want what those products or services do for them. What they want is to derive the specific satisfaction they desire after buying and using your products or services. Keep this in mind when designing your web pages, sales letters, fliers and other promotional materials. Emphasize the feelings produced by using your product instead of talking about what your product is or how it works. Convert the benefits delivered by your product or service into clear word pictures. Then put your prospects in the picture by dramatizing what it feels like to enjoy those benefits.

8. Keep communicating with your prospects. Most prospective customers will not buy the first time they see or hear about your product. You’re losing a lot of sales if you do not persistently follow up with those prospects. You cannot follow up with prospects if you do not know how to reach them. You must set up a system for collecting the names and contact information of all prospects that make inquiries about your products or services but do not buy from you, for the purpose of reaching them with periodic reminders about your products.

9. Make sure that you and your employees have an in-depth knowledge of your products. Prospective customers make inquiries before deciding whether or not to purchase a product and you should be able to provide them with every information they require, pertaining to your products and/ or business.

10. Visit your past customers: Call them or have them called by your staff. See how they are doing. Ask them why they have not done business with you recently (this is a very valuable method to understand the customer’s perspective of your business). If there are any issues preventing them from patronizing your business, resolve them immediately. If not, engage the customer and get the relationship back on track. This is one of the reasons you should maintain a customer database.

11. Try to increase the number of time customers spend at your office. You can achieve this by making your office as tidy and attractive as possible and by playing informative and entertaining videos.

12. Ask for testimonials from existing customers. Good testimonials are perfect for your web pages and promotional items. Don’t just collect testimonials and keep them lying idle. Feature them in everything you do-website, advertising, handouts, fliers etc.

13. Make use of referrals: 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:

A. He wants to help you.

B. He wants to help the person he is referring.

C. 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. I 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).

14. Ensure that your employees are happy at all times. An unhappy and unmotivated staff cannot provide a desirable customer service. Hence, it is recommended that you regularly conduct an employee attitude survey to measure and improve employee satisfaction. This will have a positive impact on the way they attend to customers.

15. Attend to your customers promptly. Customers do not like waiting so do not delay in attending to them. If there is any reason not to meet-up in this regard, make them understand the circumstances. Apologize and assure them that it will not repeat itself in the future. If you don’t do this, you may lose your important customers.

16. Treat your customers well at all time! Regardless of your mood, you have to always greet your customers with a smile and implore your staff to do same. A genuine smile and honest conversation keeps your customers coming back to you. Give your customers undivided attention. That personal touch and genuine interest in them will speak volumes-not only in the amount of referrals you will get from them, but also in your profit.

17. Provide customer service training to your employees on a regular basis. The advantages that come will these are numerous, your business will enjoy more patronage, sales, referrals, to mention but a few, as a result of the improved customer service they receive from your employees.

SOURCE: Accounting Wizards’ Blog

18. Always try to exceed customer satisfaction by offering them more than what they desire. When you do utilize this tactic, make sure you do communicate to them that it’s an added service. It will evoke a positive emotional connection with your brand. The customer will also be aware that you went the extra mile to make their experience a splendid one.

19. Maintain a high level of courtesy in all your dealings with customers. Imbibe the same culture in your employees.

20. Never compromise integrity. Your success or failure will depend on the reputation you create for your business. Let your customers know you for your credibility.

21. Welcome customer complaints. Resolve them promptly, with integrity and efficiency and put adequate measures in place to prevent recurrence.

22. Invite your customers to make suggestions on how you can serve them better. Implement the improvements they suggest if they are feasible. Listening to your customers’ recommendation makes you feel valued. You will also be in a best position to give them exactly what they want, not what you think they want.

23. Make your business reachable to customers in the ways that is convenient for them to reach you. You can achieve this by featuring your email address, mobile numbers and address on every of your promotional materials and other business documents.

24. Listen to your employees. Nobody knows their jobs better than your staff. They see all the problems and issues on a daily basis. Chances are, they also know the best ways to solve them too. Ask your staff what the biggest issues are and get their ideas on how to solve them. Not only will you make your employees happy by seeking their opinions, you will also get some brilliant cost-saving ideas too.

25. Decentralize Your Internet Presence: In the 90s, your “Website” and your “internet presence” were basically synonymous. Today, they’re not. If you’re on a tight budget like most entrepreneurs are, consider paying less attention to your website and focusing more on the rest of the web online. Customers today are all about relationship marketing because they want to do business with people they know and trust and the best way to create that relationship is to go to the places they are and those places are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Nairaland and other online social forum. Establish your business presence on these sites.

Question: Besides your main site, how else can you establish a cost-effective internet presence?

26. List everything your competitors have in common…then do the opposite: Too often, businesses get wrapped up in only competing on the same items as their competitors. They want a website that is similar but better, products with the same features done better, etc. In order to distinguish yourself and standout among your competitors, try your hand at writing out everything that they actually do, then spend a little more time thinking of the exact opposite of them. Do they use a lot of black in their imaging? Use white in yours! Not only will you get noticed for being you, but you’ll appear in front of a whole new set of eyes. People easily get tired of similarities.

Question: What are some things that your competitors do that you can do differently?

27. Get Emotional. As much as we’d like to think that our decisions are rational and logical, they’re also driven by fears, aspirations, gut instincts, a desire for affiliation, and a medley of other emotional promptings. Skip the rational arguments, and appeal to those hard-to-reach emotions instead. It will give you a stronger personal connection, and set you apart from your competitors.

Question: What are your customers’ emotional needs? What can you do to satisfy them?

28. Let your business standout from the competition. To achieve this, the first thing I’ll need you to do is to work on the outlook of your shop. Paint your shop using attractive colors. Also enhance the visibility of your business by placing an outdoor signage. It is an effective marketing tool in the sense that it attracts the attention of potential customers. Get a graphic designer to design an attractive and stylish signage for your business. The signage should contain a light source (bulb or fluorescent lamp) to make it visible at night. Also consider placing a small sign at the street entrance.

29. Get in early. A potential customer shopping around may visit about ten other websites (or stores or offices…) before making a decision. As typical of every businessman/woman, you would put on a good show and hope they eventually come back to buy, but there are often ways you can connect with customers, even before they make a choice, so you can build a relationship and follow-up when your competitors can’t.

Example is a free download of vital information upon entering their email address-you give them something to remember you by, but retain theircontact information for follow up.

Question: What real value can you give your potential customers in exchange for their contact information?

30. Say something nobody else will. Every industry has norms about the content in sales materials, and it’s often the case that businesses imitate one another instead of thinking about what customers really want to know.

Question: What information would your customers love to have that most of your competitors don’t talk about openly?

31. Aim for a different target market than your competitors. There are always other tribes of individuals who are just dying to hear about your product or service. They may be a bit smaller than your main market, but you should start thinking of the possibilities of targeting a smaller niche. The niche is out there. All that is required of you is to discover creative ways of reaching them. Question: What are some different markets that you can target that your competitors don’t already reach?

32. Maintain proper records of all your transactions. 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.

33. Maintain personal relationship with your customers. We are in the era of relationship marketing. Customers are more confident to purchase goods from someone they are familiar with. Every business that wants to succeed must create and nurture meaningful personal relationships with customers.

34. Don’t create a product and start looking for a problem that it will solve. A lot of people are guilty of this. They create a product and start looking for a market for it. Following this approach is the first step to business failure. Instead, scan your environment for problems and then go ahead and create a product (good or service) that can solve the identified problem. In that case, you won’t have to struggle to sell your product because you are meeting an already existing need.

35. And finally, the most important of them, Choose a good location for your business. 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. Like I always tell my clients, the three most important factors to be considered in business are location, location and location. Get your location right and your problems will be half solved.

I hope it was helpful?

SOURCE: Accounting Wizards’ Blog

cc: Mynd44, Dominique, Lalasticlala

Quite a good read.

Thanks.

chidekings:
Quite a good read.

Beautiful! This is the best business tips I have read so far.

Thank you.

Olayinka777:
Beautiful! This is the best business tips I have read so far.

Thank you.

Olayinka777:
Beautiful! This is the best business tips I have read so far.

Great points! Very informative and useful. Thanks OP.

Also see 7 INDISPENSABLE TIPS THAT WILL HELP YOU START AND SUCCEED IN ANY BUSINESS.

FrankTalk1:
Great points! Very informative and useful. Thanks OP.

You're welcome.

Please, feel free to add yours, if you know any other success tip for business owners.

KitKatAn:
Thanks for these tips.

You're welcome.