Ever Wonder What Your Customers Wish You Knew?

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It’d be great if we could read minds but, unfortunately, that just isn’t possible. But whose mind would you read first if you had the chance? Hopefully, you’d jump at the chance to be able to read your customers’ minds. After all, if you are able to offer them everything that they want, then you can guarantee their loyal custom for years to come.

Reading your customers’ minds is impossible, but if you’ve ever wondered what your customers wish you knew, you should keep reading. We’ve done some research and have uncovered some wishes from the general public.

Quality Is More Important Than Speed

When it comes to the products that they buy, the majority of consumers agree that the quality is a lot more important than speed. Sure, it’s nice to get a product delivered to your door the day after you order it, but if it isn’t up to scratch then there is a high chance that it will be sent back. So, to make sure you don’t have to give out too many refunds, you should always prioritize quality over speed. Slightly increase your delivery times if it means you can improve the quality of your products.

They Have A Short Attention Span

Your customers might not want to admit it, but they don’t have particularly long attention spans. Not when it comes to deciding which company to do business with anyway. So, you shouldn’t overload your website with too much content. Otherwise, you might end up compromising on the overall user experience of your website. Keep content slick and concise so that you get all the information you need in it, and so it doesn’t overwhelm your customers when they visit your site.

Customers Love Things That Are Personalized

Did you know that customers absolutely love personalized products and services? It’s true! In fact, a few different research groups and studies have shown that most customers are will to pay as much as 25% more for products and services that are personalized. So, it really is worth trying to see if there are any ways you can personalize your products. This doesn’t mean writing names on all the things you sell – if your customer service team use a customer’s first name when addressing them, then you should find that this personal service goes down very well.

They Want To Hear Stories

Customers are very bored of traditional marketing strategies and advertising campaigns. I’m sure you are as well! However, there is a current trend for telling stories through advertising. That means setting up a large-scale advertising campaign in which each individual advert makes up a larger story. A story can hold the public’s attention much better, and they will feel a lot more involved with the campaign in general.

So, as you can see, there is plenty that your customers wish you knew. Hopefully, if you take advantage of the above points, your business will reach more of the public and can vastly increase your client and customer base.

The importance of news in a student’s life

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It is very important for you to instil the habit of following the news in children from a very young age. There was a time when people used to wait for newspapers in order to catch the previous day’s happenings. Thanks to the internet, every latest information now is available with a click of a button. There are a lot of benefits of following the news, especially for growing children. Few common ones are listed below.

Vocabulary

So many top news media have experts working on their content. Every article is filled with new words and complex sentence formations that help students a great deal. Once the child is used to noting down difficult words and finding out their meaning, his/her vocabulary improves drastically and this will help in future assignments and essays.

Reading skills

Unfortunately now, the skill of reading is becoming a thing of the past. Kids are moving away from books to computer games and social media. When you can get them to start reading news online or offline, their brain is triggered to take up reading as an active hobby.

Writing skills

You might be surprised to hear that the more a person reads, the better his writing skills become. When you keep reading through content written by good editors, your brain maps the flow of sentences and the format. It then automatically recreates the style when needed.

World’s happenings

Kids are the future of the world. When they grow up without any idea of what is happening around the globe, their survival is at stake. Encourage your child to choose good news media and to follow it religiously every day. Smart media like the trinity newspaper come in online formats to help youngsters connect with them easily. If you kid is fond of the traditional reading style, then you can also subscribe to any good newspaper to be delivered to your home.

Confidence

Ask any expert the requirements of being successful and confidence is something everybody will talk about. When your children grow up to be confident, they take better decisions, they shoulder bigger risks and have a better chance of being successful and popular. Being updated with the world’s happenings and being informative is a great confidence booster. The child will take part in discussions more frequently and will participate in events and competitions with ease.

Present better essays

Good essays can always be the difference between picking great colleges and ending up in mediocre ones. With all the information gathered for years together, a student can put together detailed and well-thought out essays for college applications. If you have great dreams for your children and want them to have top careers, then the news becomes inevitable in their lives.

With children, the art of instilling good habits takes just a little push from your side. Help your children enjoy the news and to logically analyze information and they will grow up to be responsible citizens.

Selling Your Products: DIY Or Distributors?

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When you manufacture a product that you are proud of, the goal of your business is to get that product into the hands of as many people as possible.

There are two primary options for this:

DIY Selling

As a DIY seller, you will be responsible for:

  • Selling the product for yourself. This can mean pitching and selling to retail stores; selling the product online using an ecommerce site; or selling through a third party.
  • Dealing with customer issues, returns, and refunds.
  • You will also be responsible for photographing the product to be sold online.
  • You will package and send all products.

The alternative option…

Distributor Selling

A distributor effectively acts as a middleman, so your products are no longer your responsibility when they have left your warehouse.

  • The distributor will buy your products directly, and then sell them on wherever they see fit.
  • A distributor will usually sell to a retail store. The store is then responsible for customer service, sending the items out if they sell online, and all the associate work.

When you have a product to sell, it’s vital that you work out which is best for you. Below is an overview of all the different areas you have to consider, as well as some suggestions as to which option might best suit your needs.

Workload

If workload is a problem for you, then you may want to consider distributor selling. After all, you’re a manufacturer; you just produce the product. You may not have the skills and connections required to pitch the products to store; nor do you have the time to build a good customer service department or send large amounts of packages on a daily basis.

If you opt for DIY selling, then you have to be aware that your workload is likely to be substantial. You’re going to be responsible for the entire process; the manufacturing of the product, the pitching to stores, the advertising, the sales, and the customer service. If you are a small business then this is usually manageable due to the smaller quantities of products you are responsible for. Larger businesses, dealing with higher product numbers, may find this more difficult; outsourcing some of these tasks to a distributor will likely be beneficial.

Profits

Of course, it’s important to consider which of the above options will make you the most money.

It is easy to assume that DIY selling is the winner here, but there are hidden costs that you have to be aware of. When you sell your own products, you can charge the retail price for them, which should mean that you make more money. Distributors will buy at a wholesale price, which is usually substantially lower than the retail price.

However, with DIY selling — if you want to do it right — you are going to incur additional experiences. You’re going to have to find top Magento developers to help you build the most user-friendly ecommerce store; you will need to pay for web space and a domain name; you’re going to have to take product photographs; and you’re going to have to pay shipping costs to get the items to customers. You will have to run the numbers and ensure that these costs are factored into your purchase price.

Despite this, DIY selling is more lucrative if you are a small business, so stick with this method if it is working for you. As you grow in future — or if you are already anticipating a high number of orders, you may want to consider expanding into distributor selling.

Simplicity

When it comes to evaluating the choices on the basis of simplicity, there is a clear winner: distributor selling. Distributor selling takes a huge number of problems off your hands; you don’t need to worry about marketing, pricing, interacting with customers, or any other such issues. You can just focus on what you’re good at; making the best product you possibly can.

Involvement In The Business

As useful as the simplicity of distributor selling is, it does rather separate you from the process. This is useful, but it also means that — ultimately — your business is in the hands of others.

This separation from your end customer can be problematic, especially when considering the future of your business. You will not have the opportunity to directly see what customers are buying, which products are doing well, and which are performing poorly. Instead, you will get this information second-hand, often months after the data was collected; you only find out when the distributor places another order.

If you’re in the early days of your business, you need customer feedback. You need to know, as quickly as possible, which items are proving a hit– so you can make more of them. You also need to know which items aren’t really working out; you shouldn’t keep manufacturing a product which is not selling well. Gathering this data for yourself with DIY selling is worth doing, so this may be your best choice in the founding years of your business.

By the time you have been in business for awhile, the need for immediate feedback and direct customer interaction is reduced. You will have built a name and a reputation, and you should also have honed your business instincts so you can have an idea of what products might be a success.

So Which Is Best?

Reading through the above, the solution is rather stark.

If you are a new business, a small business with no immediate plans for growth, or a lifestyle business, then your best option is almost certainly DIY selling. You have more control, you have access to the data, and you stand to make more money from individual sales. It’s unlikely businesses of this size are producing enough products to make selling for wholesale price a viable option.

If you are a medium to large business, or have immediate expansion plans that want to turn into a reality, then distributor selling might be the best choice for you. You can focus more on your product and less on your sales techniques, and you’ll be manufacturing a high enough volume to make wholesale prices worthwhile.

Hopefully this guide has been able to assist you in making the right decision for your company. Good luck.

Dealing with Change as Your Company Grows

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While most entrepreneurs hope their fledgeling business will one day grow into a multi-national corporation, making the transition from being the head of a small, tightly-knit team to overseeing a large number of employees working across a range of departments can often present a host of unexpected challenges. The following tips will ensure you are ready to pay the price of success.

Expect conflict

Just because you have hired the best possible people for every leadership role in your company doesn’t mean they are all going to get along all the time. As the departments become larger and more focused on their individual areas, there is an increased chance some of they may end up at odds. Perhaps the marketing team is pushing for one set of goals while the sales team wants to go another way. Perhaps the technology team want to spend more time developing an upgrade to your product, but the finance team insist the money is better spent elsewhere.

You may have once been solely responsible for all such decisions, but you now need to adjust your leadership style to ensure that everyone from all the key areas of your business has a voice and is able to participate in company decisions. Foster an atmosphere of trust between the key personnel of the leadership team so they are more willing to work together to achieve whatever is best for the company.

Add by subtracting

As your company grows, many of the systems and procedures you had in place in the early days will no longer be effective and may even begin holding you back. Focus on finding new strategies to maintain and accelerate growth. For example, one senior VP of HR at Adobe eliminated the need for employees to produce performance reports, allowing them to devote their time to something more productive instead.

You should also look for ways to replace any element of your business that isn’t working as well as it should. At Twitter, team members were made to hand over their phones during meetings, and the meetings became far shorter and far more effective as a result.

Upgrade your software and systems

When the time comes to invest in specialist software for your business, ensure your system is modular so you can simply add to it, rather than having to start over from scratch. Although such a system may initially cost more, you’ll make huge savings in the long run, both in monetary terms and in terms of the time you save by not having to retrain staff.

In the very early days of your enterprise, especially one in the manufacturing sector, you are likely to have only a few facilities and a small number of maintenance workers and managers. Once your company begins growing and starts to purchase or lease a number of large, expensive pieces of manufacturing equipment, you’ll need to invest in enterprise asset management software to provide a clear, big-picture view of the operation.

Such software will give you the ability to compare asset performance and the relative costs of different facilities while also keeping tabs on regulatory compliance, both across facilities, departments and locations, and without it, your business will not be able to continue to succeed.