FtcWindsor

Small business owners are known to wear many hats, the operational hat, sales hat, marketing hat and so on. This has lead to people believing that small business are not capable of wearing hats such as the strategy hat. The problem is aggravated by lack of knowledge on strategy and the fact that it is placed on a pedestal. So many believe small business can’t strategise.

THIS IS A MYTH, all small business can strategise. All they need is to understand what strategy is using the KISS principle. With this knowledge strategy becomes possible for the small business. So, here is the break down of strategy for any sized business.

There are seven small stages to creating and implementing a strategy.

1)    Information: Gather information on customers, competitors, your environment or the areas of interest or potential.  Also gather information on the firm’s skills, resources and current activities (both on what is working and non working).

2)    Analysis: Examine the information gather for opportunities for you to explore or to expand your business. Also look for things that could impact the firm negatively or threats. Examine the information on your firm for areas of weakness and also strengths.

3)     Options: Generate ideas on what you can do next. How can you overcome weakness? What can to do with your strengths? Can your strengths help to overcome weakness? What do you want to do next? How can you pursue the opportunities available? What can you do to prevent the threats from impacting your business? Can your strengths be used to nullify threats or take advantage of opportunities? What improvements can you make?

Do not be afraid to flesh the ideas out by writing a paragraph or so on them, it will help you decide on their viability.

4)    Decision making: Decide which of the idea you would like to pursue.

5)    Plan: Write a list of what you have to do to make it happen and place it in order of priority. It would be good if you add a time limit to each item on the list, it is essential in cases where there is a event at a specific time that needs to be incorporated.

6)    Follow the plan: Start doing the things on the list generated in step 5.

7) Review and adjust: As you go along problems will be encountered and new information will be gathered. Use this  knowledge to review and adjust the plan.

The key to growing your customer base is to get them to return. Research has shows loyal customers account for more than 50% of a business’ sales and help a business to attract new customers based on their recommendations. A positive “word of mouth” often carries more weight than many other sources of information. On the other hand, customers that have had a bad experience with your business will tend to tell others about their experience and generate a “strong” negative image of your business.

So the key is to provide a positive experience for customers by providing a quality and cost effective service and hopefully earn their loyalty in return.

In order to ensure that a customer has a positive experience with your firm you first need to accept and understand that they are “KING”. Put simply your business would not exist without customers; you are in fact dependent on them. As a result you must never take you customers for granted.

If you accept the customer is “KING” you will focus on satisfying your customers needs more easily.

Customer satisfaction is achieved by;

1)   Satisfying your customers needs with your service/product

2)   Building a relationship with your customers.

Here are a few tips on how you to satisfy customers need and build a relationship with them.

1)   Accessible: Make it easy for your customers to locate your business

2)   Competent: Know your product or service and share this knowledge with your customer.

3)   Courteous: Be polite to your customers. Acknowledge they exist.

4)   Credible: Other customers’ satisfaction provides you with a positive reputation. The quality of your environment and service also provides credibility.

5)   Reliability: Provide a service or product consistently. Do what you promised!

6)   Responsive: Listen to what customers want and supply it. Also react positively to their complaints.

7)   Customer understanding: Listen to what the customer wants or maybe anticipating what the customer wants.

8)    Communicate: Listen to what customers want and respond to their queries.

9)   Supply: Provide a service or product that exceeds the customer’s expectations!

Most small businesses advertise on an ‘ad hoc’ basis, however giving advertising some strategic thought will often benefit a business greatly. The benefits of strategic advertising might come in the form of a reduction in cost, the ability to reach the customers you want to reach and ultimately a more effective campaign.

So what does a small business have to do to create a strategic plan?

1) Firstly select a time period for the plan, for example 6 months.

2) Consider which forms of media will be the most effective in reaching your potential clients. This is the most important consideration because for example advertising on the radio when you customers read newspapers would be a waste of money.

3) Where do your customers get their information about products/services such as yours? Newspapers, bulletin boards, radio, TV, websites, magazines, signs, leaflets, social media, or other sources. List the top 5.

a) What is the cost involved in advertising on the top 5 places for your potential customers get their information? And how realistic is it to advertise there for the business? However, do not rule out something as ‘unrealistic’ until is has been thoroughly investigated.

4) Advert related decisions

a) Advert frequency: How often do you want to advertise using that medium. In the beginning this should be more frequent in order to create awareness of your business. Once awareness has been created advertising can be less frequent as it is only designed to remind your customers of your existence. The only exception to this rule is when the advert acts as a contact point, for example the yellow pages or the classifieds in some newspapers give customers information on contacting you. When your advert acts as a contact advert it is best to advertise as frequently as possible.

b) Advert message: Decide on what message you want to send to your customers. Make sure it is branded if possible and affordable.

c) Decide on the size or length of the advert. Bigger does not necessarily mean better. Frequency and message clarity is far more important.

5) Re-quote – Give your advertising consultant your planned frequency and advert and ask for a quote. The frequency of your adverting can help to decrease costs. Also ask for extras such as write up, photographs, an interview, special mention etc.

a) At this stage ask questions about coverage, peak periods, best location/time for your advert etc.

6) Adjust your plan based on the above and proceed to implement it.